As
thousands of General Motors workers await word on more U.S. plant
closures, reports that the company plans to import Chinese-made
vehicles to the U.S. have created a political problem for the automaker
and the White House.
The reports, which GM will neither confirm nor deny, could mean trouble
because GM is supported by $15.4 billion in U.S. government loans,
largely due to the Obama administration's desire to preserve the
company's 90,000 U.S. jobs.
The United Auto Workers charged last week that the Detroit automaker
intends to almost double over the next five years the number of
vehicles it imports to the U.S. from Mexico, South Korea, China and
Japan.
"GM should not be taking taxpayers' money simply to finance the
outsourcing of jobs to other countries," Alan Reuther, the union's
Washington lobbyist, wrote in a letter to U.S. lawmakers.
It's rare that I agree so much with a union lobbyist. But if you take that last sentence and put a period after "money" and change "taking" to "receiving" we're in perfect harmony.
And of course, the government saved GM for the benefit of the American people—you know, all those spillover effects we were told would happen if they went bankrupt or even out of business. So I'm sure that the government will make sure these kind of decisions about where to produce the cars get made for the benefit of the American people. There's no way that some Americans might count more than others, is there?
