President Donald Trump says the corporate chief executives who quit his advisory manufacturing council are "leaving out of embarrassment" for manufacturing products outside the U.S.
Trump told reporters New York that the CEOs are not taking their jobs seriously when it comes to domestic production.
He said he has been lecturing them on what he says is the need to bring manufacturing back to the United States.
Kenneth Frazier, the chief executive of Merck Pharmaceuticals, CEO Kevin Plank of the Under Armour sporting goods company, and Brian Krzanich, who heads the technology giant Intel, all quit Trump's American Manufacturing Council on Monday. They were joined Tuesday by Scott Paul of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, as well as AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and the group's Deputy Chief of Staff Thea Lee.
They apparently left the council to protest Trump's response to Saturday's deadly racial violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, believing the president's early condemnation of racism to be weak.
Trump belittled the departures with a pointed retort on his Twitter account.
"For every CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place. Grandstanders should not have gone on. JOBS!" he said.
Trumka and Lee said in announcing their resignations that they cannot be a part of a council for a president who "tolerates bigotry and domestic terrorism" and that the group was never an effective way to help workers.
"From hollow councils to bad policy and embracing bigotry, the actions of this administration have consistently failed working people," they said in a joint statement.
Trump's initial remarks about the Charlottesville protest condemned the violence between white nationalists and counter-protesters, but did not single out neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups by name. Instead, Trump said the unrest was caused by "many sides."
He used the words neo-Nazis, KKK, and white supremacists when he made more explicit remarks two days later. But many critics said those words denouncing racism came too late, and he drew more ire Tuesday when he again addressed the issue and reasserted "there is blame on both sides."