No, Jeep Is Not Shifting Production From Toledo To China
Poor reporting by unscrupulous bloggers is nothing new – there’s even a book about it. We try and stay above the fray and simply write accurately the first time around. But a story regarding Jeep and Chinese production has been making the rounds with such speed that TTAC readers have been emailing us for clarification. It got so bad that even Mitt Romney got things wrong.
While the original report by Bloomberg correctly stated that additional capacity for Jeep may be sought out in China, other blogs followed the time honored tradition of spinning the facts to create a new story, in the name of gaining all-important clicks. Chrysler ended up issuing a statement clarifying the matter.
There are times when the reading of a newswire report generates storms originated by a biased or predisposed approach.
On Oct. 22, 2012, at 11:10 a.m. ET, the Bloomberg News report “ Fiat Says Jeep® Output May Return to China as Demand Rises” stated “Chrysler currently builds all Jeep SUV models at plants in Michigan, Illinois and Ohio. Manley (President and CEO of the Jeep brand) referred to adding Jeep production sites rather than shifting output from North America to China.”
Despite clear and accurate reporting, the take has given birth to a number of stories making readers believe that Chrysler plans to shift all Jeep production to China from North America, and therefore idle assembly lines and U.S. workforce. It is a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats.
Let’s set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China. It’s simply reviewing the opportunities to return Jeep output to China for the world’s largest auto market. U.S. Jeep assembly lines will continue to stay in operation. A careful and unbiased reading of the Bloomberg take would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments.
So there you have it folks. Jeep production is not in danger of leaving Toledo any time soon.
More by Derek Kreindler
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Regular folks get sold on the concept of free trade with the theory that if we get our TVs and iPhones from China, that the balance is restored by us selling our goods (like Grand Cherokees and Wranglers) to the Chinese. That's working out great.
TTAC are trying to set the record straight, but in the process they've made matters worse. The rumor within the industry was that production was going to be shifted to China, but the Romney ad makes no such claims. It says Chrysler was sold to the Italian firm FIAT who plan to build Jeeps in China. The statement is factual. The Romney campaign knows that people will jump to the conclusion that jobs are being outsourced, but despite public misconceptions, the Jeep-production-in-China-claim does carry a sting in the tail. If we are producing Jeeps in China, we are not producing extra Jeeps (and new jobs) in Toledo and then exporting them to China (to fix our balance of trade) as many car producing nations still do to the US. The Prius, for instance, is still manufactured in Japan b/c neither the Bush administration nor the Obama administration applied the appropriate political pressure/incentive on Toyota to build the Mississippi Prius factory. They've continuously delayed the Mississippi plant to protect jobs in Japan. The Romney campaign is using public misconception, but if the fact does carry a salient economic point, I don't see how they have gotten anything wrong. By building Jeeps in new facilities in China, we are likely taking potential jobs out of the US. The voters must decide whether the Jeep situation is Obama's fault or if we had better options for Chrysler during the auto-bailout.