Chamber Chief Warns Detroit: "Buy American" is Sofa King Deja Moo
Paraphrasing, of course. Somehow I don’t think Thomas Donohue has been tapping into urbandictionary.com to burnish his street cred. Which is a shame, really. ’Cuz American slang is one of this country’s best, fully domestically-produced products and an extremely popular export. Unlike “domestic” automobiles which are, when you look at it, not so domestic after all, eh Mr. Bond? The Big 2.8’s foreign production and foreign-sourced parts are a DLS—but not to Uncle Tom. The Detroit News reports that the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce knows what’s what. “The domestic auto industry is not a domestic auto industry at all. If you went from bumper to bumper, you would find parts made from all over the world.” True dat. And Tommy’s crew is working furiously to make sure there aren’t any “buy American” provisions in the “stimulus package” (a terrific euphemism for . . . something). “We’ve got 30 lobbyists trying to keep an eye on that language,” Donny declaimed, assuring the Detroit Economic Club that he wasn’t fornicating Fido. Now, how are those guys going to Land it in the Hudson?
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I don’t care what’s on the nameplate if its built in the US by American workers it benefit’s the USA. If its built outside of the US it benefits workers outside the US. If we only care about where the profits go then those people should love Walmart. The profits go to the US but virtually all the products are made in China. Is that what we really want. To me I want to see good paying jobs for average Joes making things here and if the factory has a foreign name so be it. That is still preferable to the keep the profits but the work is outsourced model. More products, parts, and things in general need to be made in the USA but the name of the company that makes it is irrelevant. Would you rather get a good paycheck paid by Toyota or a lousy paycheck with Walmart on it?
Ponch: Regardless when you buy a detroit 2.8 car or truck the profits are staying here and not going to Japan or China, employing our workers and pooling money into our economy. Leaving aside the hilariousness of that statement, considering the enormous unprofitability of US auto companies, it's not a very meaningful sentiment. These guys are all multinationals with subsidiaries based in target markets. The accounting is done so as to conveniently recognize profits in the countries that have the lowest corporate tax rates, so that some foreign subsidiary is the entity paying the taxes. That's why seemingly profitable American companies supposedly pay so little tax in actuality. If we want more profits to be recognized within the borders of the U.S., we need to lower corporate tax rates. Meanwhile, if you are looking for the actual economic and social good to society that arises from profits, American workers in recent years have been far better served by the expanding foreign automakers coming in and hiring everywhere except for poisonous Michigan, than by the Detroit-3 with their layoffs.
Doesn't matter that Congress and Obama dictate buy American. In the end they will be forced to recant. Doesn't matter that Congress and Obama bailout Detroit because in the end Detroit will fail. Excess capacity, shrinking market, and Green demands are more than enough to kill a corporate dinosaur.