By outsourcing to overseas suppliers,components and services based solely on price, with no regard for the long term consequences of this agenda, companies like General Motors guaranteed that American jobs, including those of their own employees, would be lost. Now having helped through sheer ignorance of, or active disinterest in, any long term consequences of their actions, which have contributed to the destruction of the ability of American workers to be able to buy their cars and trucks, short sighted companies such as GM are asking the US treasury to compound the felony and guarantee GM’s payments to its suppliers regardless of their location and who they employ!
This foolish proposal is an insult to the American taxpayer. No matter what the difference in cost between, for example, a Chinese-made auto part and one made in Ohio, guaranteeing payment to the Chinese supplier simply robs the American taxpayer of any value to be gained by such an undertaking.
It will be far more productive in creating jobs in America, to force all OEM auto makers in the USA to purchase only parts made in America from American-produced raw materials, if they wish to have a US Treasury credit default guarantee extended to the supplier.
This is not about price, it is about jobs for Americans so that they can afford once more to buy cars.
Congress should, at the same time, take a hard look at subsidies in the form of tax credits to be offered to Americans, who buy “green” cars such as hybrids or extended range electric plug-in hybrids made by American companies, who have decided to purchase foreign made batteries rather than American made batteries. These companies still have the unmitigated arrogance and gall to ask the US taxpayer to loan or grant huge amounts of money to foreign companies. to assemble batteries in Michigan from “cells’ made in other countries, which means that the least number of jobs involved in producing and assembling the batteries and the lowest paid jobs to boot will be given to Americans while foreign skilled workers and a foreign value chain literally reap almost all of the benefits and all of the US taxpayer’s money! This is just plain nuts.
If this is the best that GM’s purchasing department is able to do, which gave away tens of billions of dollars of engineering development, in order to get “cheap” prices for parts, then the US Congress, on behalf of the US taxpayer, must fire General Motors and hire a new company that will consider what is in the best interests of all concerned, rather than what is good for General Motors’ overpaid managers.
There is no point to helping other countries, which did not pay one cent for a trillion dollars of American knowhow, to simply continue building their industrial base at the expense of our standard of living.
Please, do not guarantee credit default for any non-American owned and operated automotive supplier, unless the parts or services being sold are made in the USA from American sourced raw materials.
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