INDIANAPOLIS – Rep. Braun still hasn’t answered pressing questions about the fact that his business makes and sells products from China, and has yet to indicate how much of his company’s growth and his own profits can be attributed to his reliance on Chinese manufacturing.

Questions have been mounting following the Associated Press’s Friday report on Promaxx Automotive, a brand of Rep. Braun’s Meyer Distributing that makes and sells Chinese auto parts. For months, Rep. Braun has been falsely claiming his business is “made in America” while failing to disclose that his company relies heavily on Chinese labor over American workers for its own parts.

The Promaxx brand was established in 2011, during the midst of the recovery from the Great Recession. The timing is interesting, as Rep. Braun has repeatedly explained that his company didn’t have the success to expand from a regional to a national distributor until after the recession. Rep. Braun said that “the company was aggressive in filling a vacuum left after many competitors couldn’t survive the 2008 recession,” the Dubois County Herald wrote in 2015.

Considering the similar timing, it’s unclear how much of Meyer’s growth is due to the addition of Promaxx and the decision to manufacture parts in China, or how much of Rep. Braun’s profits have come from his own foreign parts. Last year alone, Rep. Braun made $18 million as the CEO of Meyer Distributing, yet he won’t say how much of his profit came from Promaxx, and his campaign refused to tell the AP what percentage of Promaxx’s parts are made in China or how much profit they derive from it.

“Hoosiers deserve to know how much of Meyer’s growth has been due to Promaxx, and how much of Rep. Braun’s $18 million in profits last year alone are due to his own company’s line of Chinese parts. His refusal to divulge much of anything about Promaxx or answer for his business’ foreign manufacturing simply makes him look guiltier of profiting at the expense of Hoosier workers,” said Michael Feldman, spokesman for the Indiana Democratic Party. “If his company were ‘made in America’ like he claims and not making substantial profit from peddling Chinese products, why would he be incapable of setting the record straight?”

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