Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey is big mad.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Nike was pulling the Fourth of July version of the company’s Air Max 1 sneakers. The decision came after Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who was blackballed from the NFL, reportedly suggested the company not sell a shoe embroidered with what is commonly known as the Betsy Ross flag, an early design of the United States flag with 13 stars. The report led to a chorus of Online Conservatives declaring the company was again pacifying the SJWs of the world, and on Tuesday morning, Ducey decided to join in.
Starting at 5 a.m. ET on the dot, Ducey launched into a Twitter tirade about Nike’s decision. Ducey wrote that “our system of government and free enterprise have allowed them to prosper,” which, sure, but underpaying foreign factory workers seems to have helped a good amount, too.
Then, the Arizona governor dropped the announcement that the state will no longer be offering any financial incentives to Nike for its recently-announced plant near Phoenix.
Just yesterday, the Goodyear City Council signed off an agreement to bring one of the international shoe giant’s manufacturing facilities to Arizona—the setup would be the third Nike manufacturing plant in America. The city agreed to waive roughly $1 million in permit fees and reimburse Nike another $1 million, per AZCentral.
As Nike raked in $9.8 billion in the fourth quarter of 2018, and as its effective tax rate went from 13.7 percent to 6.4 percent thanks to the Republican tax law, I’m not exactly sad to hear the Goodyear city government might hold onto its $2 million. (Cities: Please stop giving massive corporations our money!)
Whether or not Arizona or Goodyear follow through with the threat is to be determined. All I’m really hoping for at this point is that we get a video of Ducey burning a pair of newly-bought Air Maxes to own the libs.