AOC boasts she was right after Amazon ceases building HQ2 in Washington DC

GUSTAF KILANDER   THE INDEPENDENT March 3, 2023

New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez subtly noted that she was right about her stance on Amazon after they paused construction on their second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, just outside of Washington, DC.

She retweeted a post by lawyer Max Kennerly saying that “Amazon wanted $3.5 billion in benefits from NY to build this thing they’ve stopped building. @AOC was right”.

He included a number of headlines from early 2019 outlining the progressive Democrat’s opposition to the second headquarters being built in New York.

The news of the delay was first reported by Bloomberg.

The boss of Amazon real estate John Schoettler said in a statement that the company is delaying the beginning of the construction of PenPlace – the second part of the Virginia campus. The initial phase called Metropolitan Park is set to open in June and house 8,000 members of staff.

As revenue slows and the economy appears less than ideal for the company, CEO Andy Jassy has attempted to limit expenses, CNBC notes. Amazon recently revealed its largest layoffs ever – 18,000 members of staff.

“We’re always evaluating space plans to make sure they fit our business needs and to create a great experience for employees, and since Met Park will have space to accommodate more than 14,000 employees, we’ve decided to shift the groundbreaking of PenPlace (the second phase of HQ2) out a bit,” Mr Schoettler said in a statement, according to CNBC. “Our second headquarters has always been a multi-year project, and we remain committed to Arlington, Virginia, and the greater Capital Region.”

The progressive think tank Data For Progress wrote in January 2020 that “after stern objections from prominent officials like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, Amazon decided not to develop an HQ location in New York”.

“Nevertheless, the company recently announced it would bring 1,500 jobs to New York—despite no offer of a tax break,” they added.

The think tank noted that “high-profile proponents of the original Amazon deal, including New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, initially pushed back against Ocasio-Cortez’s criticisms of the tax incentives”.

“This is a big money-maker for us, costs us nothing, nada, niente,” Mr Cuomo said at the time, according to the New York Post.

Mr De Blasio agreed with Chuck Todd of NBC’s Meet the Press that the tax incentives didn’t represent “money you had over here, and it was going over there. This is money that didn’t exist.”

Data For Progress said that “the argument that the city would not literally pay cash to Amazon is superficial and semantic”.

The think tank added that taxpayers in New York “would be subsidizing Amazon’s activities in the city by surrendering $3 billion in would-be tax revenue,” adding that there were “enormous hidden costs associated with Amazon’s residence”.