F Ford Motor Company

President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday he was "making progress" in convincing Carrier Corp. to change its plans to close an Indiana plant and move production to Mexico.

Carrier, which makes air conditioners and heating equipment, confirmed for the first time that it had discussions with the incoming administration but gave no details.

"Carrier has had discussions with the incoming administration and we look forward to working together," the company tweeted from Carrier's corporate account. "Nothing to announce at this time."

Mr. Trump had taken to Twitter about an hour earlier to boast that he was "working hard, even on Thanksgiving, trying to get Carrier A.C. Company to stay in the U.S. (Indiana)."

His vice president-elect, Mike Pence, is the current governor of Indiana, and has negotiated with the company since the closure was announced, including winning repayment of some state training grants from Carrier.

A spokesman for Carrier's parent, United Technologies Corp., declined to comment. An official at the union representing workers at the Indianapolis plant didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The company has said in the past that the decision to close the Indianapolis plant, and a smaller factory in its electronic controls unit in Huntington, Ind., came only after careful deliberation.

Earlier this month, Mr. Trump took credit for Ford Motor Co.'s decision to keep production of the Lincoln MKC crossover at an assembly plant in Louisville, Ky. Ford had initially planned to move output of the Lincoln model to a plant outside the U.S.

Mr. Trump seized on both Ford and Carrier as examples of U.S. companies taking advantage of free trade to move jobs to Mexico. In a Republican presidential primary debate in February, Mr. Trump pledged to "bring jobs back" from countries including China and Mexico, and specifically referred to the Carrier layoffs.

In April, at a campaign event not far from the Indianapolis plant, Mr. Trump pledged to impose a 35% tariff on goods made by Carrier in Mexico. "They're going to call me and say, 'Mr. President, Carrier has decided to stay in Indiana,'" he told a campaign rally that month.

The Carrier plant became a campaign issue after a video surfaced showing an executive telling workers about the plans to close the facility and move production to Monterrey over the next three years. The three-minute video became a viral sensation and provided a ready example of the sort of cross-border outsourcing Mr. Trump and Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders denounced throughout the campaign.

"It became clear that the best way to stay competitive and protect the business for the long term is to move production from our facility in Indianapolis to Monterrey," the Carrier executive said in the video to a crowd of workers, before being repeatedly interrupted by angry shouts.

United Technologies, a conglomerate that also makes Otis elevators and Pratt & Whitney jet engines, is in the midst of a wave of cost-cutting in its commercial building businesses, of which the Indiana plant closures are the largest in the U.S. this year.

The Hartford, Conn., based company has emphasized that it gave the 2,000 affected Indiana workers three years' notice before the facilities are to complete the move to Mexico. The company has also offered workers education and retraining programs for up to four years after the move is complete, aimed at helping the displaced workers find new jobs.

In February, United Technologies Chief Executive Gregory Hayes suggested in an interview on CNBC that he thought Mr. Trump was unlikely to be elected. "He might get the nomination," Mr. Hayes said, using no names, "but that's it, right?"

Earlier this month, Mr. Hayes said the company "looks forward to working with the Trump administration as we have with every U.S. administration throughout our nearly 100 years in business."

Write to Ted Mann at ted.mann@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 24, 2016 19:35 ET (00:35 GMT)

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