Onshoring Auto and Steel Manufacturing

Floor Speech

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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I hail from the manufacturing heart of automotive and truck USA, right at the Ohio-Michigan border. As this new year beckons, Congress must do what it can, as the old saying goes, to reconnect the U.S. head bone to its neck bone.

Specifically, as co-chair of the House Auto Caucus, this means we must reshore ownership here in the USA of the Chrysler Group and its key suppliers. What America makes and grows here in America makes and grows America.

The popular Jeep Wrangler, Ram truck, and the American steel that should go into them create two of the most popular purchased vehicles in our country and world. Just these two vehicles represent a major manufacturing sector for our heartland that was traded away by Wall Street to Europe.

As a result, thousands upon thousands of skilled workers at production platforms in Toledo, Ohio; Sterling Heights, Michigan; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, are now being idled before the holidays.

Why is it always right before the holidays?

Meanwhile, the purveyors of vast wealth actually harm the workers that create the very wealth that benefit those billionaires. The ownership of the production was moved to Europe, and their billionaire enablers and buddies on Wall Street from the world of high finance keep trading away their livelihoods.

America's truck, automobile, steel, and auto parts manufacturing workers have had enough. They deserve respect.

Wouldn't the holiday season be happier if Congress could reassure thousands and thousands of Jeep and Ram workers a better future?

The current Jeep Stellantis CEO, Carlos Tavares, is stepping down. He lives in Europe. After his dreadful 10 years as leader of this lodestar automobile company that was created in this country, he earns a whopping $43 million a year, not counting all his perks and stock options. He just got another million-dollar raise. After his dreadful-- I can't even call it leadership--heading the company, he just got rewarded that additional million dollars. Meanwhile, workers in Toledo and Sterling Heights get pink-slipped and hit the unemployment lines. How cruel. This has to stop.

Production pauses were announced just before Thanksgiving as we head into the holiday season. That is downright un-American.

It is long overdue for America to be American again. Wall Street traders should bring back ownership of Chrysler-Jeep-Dodge to the United States of America. It is overdue to put real car builders in charge, not Wall Street traders nor hapless CEOs from another country.

The outgoing Biden administration and the incoming Trump administration must direct attention to what is occurring right at the Ohio-Michigan border. This region is the heart of the industrial Midwest, where people make and build our real wealth, not just trade it away.

Our people don't live in virtual reality or stock options. We live in places where iron sharpens iron--some might say the agony and the ecstasy of producing America's real wealth. Yet we have seen it traded away time and again, decade after decade as oligarchs and billionaires who could care less about America get richer off the sweat of our people.

This is a wake-up call for the current and future President of the United States. Hear our call. Reshore ownership of our Chrysler-Jeep- Dodge platform, both in the automotive and trucking industry. Lift up the industrial heartland of America.

As we reshore the ownership and production of our Nation's most popular vehicles, we also ensure that those who own the means of production have to live in the same reality as those who build these cars and trucks.

Both Presidents Trump and Biden have said America should stop the sale of U.S. Steel to Japanese Nippon Steel. I agree with that. Americans who are potential buyers wait in the wings. Engage them. Include those that forge quality steel that is a critical component of both our rugged Rams and Jeeps.

American steel in American cars, doesn't that sound good?

My hope for the USA is that we reclaim ownership of what we created in the first place. Our workers know it. They have surely earned it. The future of generations across our industrial heartland and Nation depends on America restoring America again. What America makes and builds makes and builds America. Bring Jeep and Ram back to the United States of America.

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