Americans Are Now In The Car Business

Floor Speech

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, the people of the United States are now in the car business. Our taxpayers own the majority share of Chrysler, and maybe General Motors before long.

Why? Wall Street financial shenanigans and fraud left banks without credit to loan to dealers and to consumers who wanted to buy cars in this very credit-sensitive auto sector.

The result? Car sales started plummeting last year, and this occurred despite the fact that the Big Three had reached an important plateau in the production of the cars of the future.

In 2007 Ford won 102 quality awards, including AutoPacific's Best in Class for three models and Germany's largest auto magazine's Auto 1 of Europe Award for its S-MAX.

In 2008, Forbes awarded the 2008 Chrysler 300 ``the highest-quality car in the near-luxury category'' over the Audi A4, BMW 3 Series, Lexus IS, and Mercedes-Benz C Class.

Of the 15 global finalists for the 2008 Motor Trend Car of the Year Award, the Big Three manufactured nine, the Japanese only four, and the Europeans two. The 2008 winner was GM's Cadillac CTS, which Motor Trend described as ``proof that Detroit can still build a world-class car.''

America cannot afford to let the auto industry vanish any more than we can allow our national economy or defense to vanish. They are inextricably linked.

America needs an auto industry that competes on a level playing field globally. And America needs Presidential advisors who tell the President the truth.

And what is the truth?

Truth 1: The U.S. auto industry was poised to rebuild market share with its new models until the Wall Street-manufactured financial crisis hit. In this situation, Wall Street is the perpetrator and our auto industry and our communities the victim.

Truth 2: The global market in which our auto sector competes has been far from fair for a very long time. Closed markets and tax and trade policies have really crippled our industry.

Truth 3: The unfair marketplace players include Japan, South Korea, and Communist China. Managed markets in Europe, as well, complicate the playing field.

Japan has the third largest economy in the world, but its automobile market is essentially closed to American carmakers. Import penetration in Japan by all foreign firms is less than 3 percent, while Japanese companies just in this country now command more than half of our market share.

Until recent cutbacks, one manufacturer, Chrysler Jeep turned out more vehicles at one factory, the Toledo North Assembly Plant, in a single month than the U.S. auto industry sold in Japan and Korea, combined, in an entire year. Superlative products made by U.S. workers in U.S. factories are still systematically barred entry into the closed markets of Asia: Japan, South Korea, and Communist China.

Truth 4: China and Mexico, whose workers build vehicles the majority of their populations cannot afford to buy, while being paid subhuman wages, export cars anywhere in the world. We are told now China and Mexico are poised, through GM restructuring, to deliver more cars to our country. That's right. To get GM profitable as fast as possible, America must continue to shut plants down and unemploy our own workers? What kind of a solution is that?

Millions of our own people are falling out of gainful employment, so we will use our tax dollars to deep-six U.S. workers while employing more Chinese and Mexican citizens? What sense does this make?

Why would any first-world nation leave its auto sector in shambles?

America's tax policy and our trade policy are seriously out of whack. Germany, through VAT, can export a vehicle here and get a 19 percent credit. Our vehicles there are saddled with a 19 percent tax. What's fair about managed markets all across the world that disadvantage autos from our Nation?

While the former administration and Wall Street placed our auto industry on the operating table, President Obama had best ask his White House advisors from Wall Street for the truth.

Why have the credit lines to the automotive sector been frozen for months, like a tourniquet, cutting off their blood supply?

Why are Japan and South Korea's markets still closed to American vehicles?

Why do nations like Germany employ a VAT tax to their advantage and our detriment?

Let's get real before this White House's Wall Street advisors ask our Nation to take more Chinese and Mexican car imports while thousands upon thousands of Main Street Americans hit the unemployment lines.

Here is the plain, unvarnished truth. The world might be flat in America because our markets are wide open, but tax-and-trade terrain is mountainous across the world for our country, surely in Asia and in Europe, in managed markets, and even on our own continent where tariff and nontariff barriers keep out our products.

What sense does it make for our middle class to prop up companies hitting bottom from this financial crisis only to have more jobs outsourced, resulting in more unemployment here and more citizens expecting care from our government?

It is time for this administration to employ section 201 trade relief in order to get our beleaguered industry back on its feet.

And frankly, it is time for some truth.

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