Tag: made in america
Distractor In Chief: Trump Assails GM Over Car Production In Mexico

Distractor In Chief: Trump Assails GM Over Car Production In Mexico

DETROIT/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened to impose a “big border tax” on General Motors Co for making some of its Chevrolet Cruze compact cars in Mexico, an arrangement the largest U.S. automaker defended as part of its strategy to serve global customers, not sell them in the United States.

Trump’s comments marked his latest broadside aimed at an American company over jobs, imports and costs before he takes office on Jan. 20, signaling an uncommon degree of intervention for an incoming U.S. president into corporate affairs.

“General Motors is sending Mexican made model of Chevy Cruze to U.S. car dealers-tax free across border. Make in U.S.A. or pay big border tax!” Trump said in a post on Twitter.

Trump did not provide further details but previously vowed to hit companies that shift production from America to other countries with a 35 percent tax on their exports into the United States. He also has denounced the North American Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada.

GM, the world’s No. 3 automaker, said it sold about 190,000 Cruze cars in the United States in 2016. All of the sedan versions sold in the United States, or about 185,500, were built at its plant in Lordstown, Ohio. About 4,500 hatchback versions of the Cruze were assembled in Mexico and sold in the United States.

“GM builds the Chevrolet Cruze hatchback for global markets in Mexico, with a small number sold in the U.S.” it said in a statement posed on its website.

The Cruze is one of GM’s best-selling cars, although its sales numbers were down significantly in 2016.

Shares of GM rose 1 percent to $35.19 after falling about 1 percent following Trump’s tweet before the market opened.

Since winning the Nov. 8 presidential election, Trump has targeted GM’s rival Ford Motor Co, United Technologies Inc, Boeing Co, and Lockheed Martin Corp. Trump also has touted decisions by companies to keep some production in the United States, including United’s Carrier unit in Indiana.

Last month, Trump announced the formation of a council to advise him on job creation comprised of leaders from a variety of major U.S. corporations including GM Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra.

GM said in 2015 it would build its next-generation Chevrolet Cruze compact in Mexico as automakers look to expand in the Latin American nation to take advantage of low labor costs and free trade agreements. The company said in 2015 it would invest $350 million to produce the Cruze at its plant in Coahuila as part of the $5 billion investment in its Mexican plants announced in 2014, creating 5,600 jobs.

GM said last year it would import some Cruze cars from Mexico.

Trump, a Republican who will succeed Democratic President Barack Obama, campaigned for president using tough rhetoric on trade and promises to protect American workers, and targeted several companies by name.

His latest comments come as a congressional Republican tax proposal meant to boost U.S. manufacturing faces mounting pressure from industries that rely heavily on imported goods or parts.

‘BORDER ADJUSTABILITY’

Last month, 81 industry groups including several automaker groups rejected the proposal, known as “border adjustability.” The policy would help manufacturers by exempting export revenues from corporate taxes. But it would tax imports, hitting import-dependent industries.

According to Automotive News, GM began producing the Cruze in Mexico last year, making 52,631 cars there. In comparison, it built 319,536 of them in the United States. Previous versions of the Cruze sold in Mexico were made in a GM South Korea plant, it reported.

The shift is part of a larger trend among Detroit’s Big Three automakers to produce more small cars for the North American market in Mexico in an effort to lower labor costs, while using higher-paid U.S. workers to build more profitable trucks, sport utility vehicles and luxury cars.

In November, GM said it planned in early 2017 to lay off 2,000 employees at two U.S. auto plants, including the one in Lordstown. U.S. small car sales have been hurt by lagging consumer demand and low gas prices. GM’s U.S. Cruze sales were down 18 percent through November.

GM will halt the third shift at the Lordstown plant on Jan. 23, cutting 1,250 jobs.

Representatives for the United Auto Workers union could not be reached immediately for a response to Trump’s comments.

(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Will Dunham)

IMAGE: General Motors introduces the new 2016 Chevy Cruze vehicle at the Filmore Theater in Detroit, Michigan June 24, 2015. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook

A Battle Over American-Made Products Is Looming

A Battle Over American-Made Products Is Looming

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet.

Virtually every time President-elect Donald Trump performs in cities across America on his thank-you tour, he mentions, to grand applause, his preference for Made in America. He describes his plan to create jobs with a federal infrastructure spending project (improvements to crumbling roads, bridges, waterlines and airports), and then says, “We will have two simple rules when it comes to this massive rebuilding effort: Buy American and hire American.”

That American-job-creating, buy-American thing is supported by 71 percent of the American public. But it is a smack in the face to GOP Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who just made it clear in the Water Resources Development Act that he’s fine with creating slave-wage iron- and steel-making jobs in China with U.S. tax dollars, so long as a few fat-cat iron-and-steel importers make a profit on the deal.

So clearly, there’s a battle brewing between the President-elect and the Speaker of the House. This is the President-elect who has repeatedly promised the working-class men and women who elected him that he’d support Buy American provisions in federal law to create jobs for them. And it’s a GOP Speaker who wants to ship taxpayer-financed work overseas and let the working class wait a couple more decades to just possibly feel a tiny pinch of trickle-down from the largesse of filthy rich iron and steel importers. This, also, is a clash between a New York real estate titan who won the presidency and a Wisconsin lawmaker who lost the vice presidency.

By advocating night after night for American Made, President-elect Trump essentially warned Ryan not to strip the Buy-American provisions out of the Water Resources Development Act. But Ryan did it anyway early in December when he got the act from the Senate.

The act contained strong, permanent Buy America language when the Senate sent it over. These provisions are significant because they use tax dollars to create 33 percent more U.S. factory jobs, something that is, again, important to voters, 68 percent of whom told the Mellman Group & North Star Opinion Research in November in a national survey conducted for the Alliance for American Manufacturing that they were worried that the country had lost too many manufacturing jobs.

In addition—and President-elect Trump knows this from the response he gets at his rallies—Buy American policies are very popular. Seventy-four percent of voters say large infrastructure projects financed by taxpayer money should be constructed with American-made materials and American workers. And those who voted for President-elect Trump agree more strongly – 79 percent of them say American-made should be given preference over the lowest bidder.

This is a very big deal to iron and steel producers and workers in the United States. Far too many mills are closed or partially shuttered because of unfairly traded imports, and more than 16,000 steelworkers across this country have been laid off over the past year.

China is the main culprit, but there are others. China produces so much steel now that it has managed to inundate the world with more steel than anyone needs. It is dumping steel on the world market at such low prices that no one can compete. As a result, producers from places as far flung as Mexico, the U.S., Canada, India, the U.K. and Spain are shutting down and throwing workers out of their jobs.

China props up that excess steelmaking capacity with methods that are illegal under the terms of the agreements it entered into to gain access to the World Trade Organization and Permanent Normalized Trade Relations with the United States. If steel is sold domestically, a country can provide steel firms with subsidies like exemptions from utility payments and taxes, interest-free loans and free land. But those free market-warping subsidies violate international trade agreements when the steel is exported. That’s what China is doing. And it’s killing American steel companies and American jobs.

When Ryan eliminated the permanent Buy American provision in the Water Bill, essentially saying it’s fine to import illegally subsidized Chinese iron and steel for taxpayer-financed water projects, he was also saying it is fine to bankrupt American steel companies and destroy American jobs.

If the United States is reduced to buying steel from China to build its military tanks and armor, that’s okay with Ryan, as long as he maintains a great relationship with the lobbyists for the foreign steelmakers. They pushed him hard to drop the Buy American provision through Squire Patton Boggs, a Washington, D.C. lobby and law firm employing Ryan’s predecessor Speaker John Boehner and numerous former top GOP aides.

He got hit with a tweet storm after he chose Chinese jobs over American jobs, though. Buy American supporters and members of the Congressional Steel Caucus began pointing out on Twitter just how good #BuyAmerica is for American jobs and the economy and cited @realDonaldTrump, the President-elect’s Twitter handle on every Tweet, which means his account was alerted.

This came from Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown:

.@RealDonaldTrump: Tell @SpeakerRyan to put #BuyAmerica back in Water bill. American tax dollars for American jobs.”

And steelworkers wrote protests on Ryan’s Facebook page and hundreds called Ryan and his anti-American-made congressional crew.

Ryan responded. Sort of. He restored one-year Buy American language to the bill. Nothing like the permanent provisions achieved in other federal laws, but it does keep the jobs for 12 months and the issue alive until President-elect Trump can take on Ryan mano-a-mano on Buy American after the inauguration.

Ryan has made clear his anti-American preference, so this will be a royal rumble. But the Speaker should beware. The last time the President-elect stepped into the ring with a heavyweight, it was with the ring’s owner, World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Vince McMahon, a former professional wrestler. And McMahon left bald and defeated.

Leo W. Gerard is president of the United Steelworkers union. President Barack Obama appointed him to the President’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations. Follow him on Twitter @USWBlogger.

IMAGE: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump (L) meets with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., November 10, 2016.  REUTERS/Joshua Roberts