Posted on 11/27/2018 3:32:57 PM PST by TBP
President Donald Trump threatened on Twitter to end government subsidies for General Motors in retaliation for layoffs the company announced Monday.
What layoffs? General Motors announced that it would be laying off 14,700 workers, including 6,000 factory workers, and closing down four plants in the United States and one in Canada.
While GM, and other car companies, have spoken out against rising production costs caused by the Trump administration’s protectionist tariffs, a spokeswoman for the company told TheBlaze that the layoffs and plant closures “are being made as part of our ongoing transformation and are not related to recent trade or tariff decisions.”
On a conference call, GM CEO Mary Barra said that the company is “taking this action now while the company and the economy are strong to keep ahead of changing market conditions.”
Barra said that the goal was to make the company more efficient. GM’s stock rose 5.5 percent after this announcement.
(Excerpt) Read more at theblaze.com ...
Driverless electric cars.
Yes, and Obama paid for GM to do this.
The Canadian Government did bailout GM and Chrysler with $13.7 billion in 2009. Almost none of the bailout money was spent in Canada. $10 Billion was paid back and the rest was written off earlier this year by the Trudeau government.
> I am conflicted about this.
That’s intended. That’s also why Trump is such a political genius. He just posited something that will make his opponents choose which to oppose him over - union factory workers, or subsidies for toys of the rich elite.
Guess which one they’re going to side with?
Electric cars, workers be damned.
A beautiful position to put the other side on.
My money.
Multi-national corporations make decisions that are in their best interests, and not necessarily in the best interest of their home country. Fair enough. But when the system, through unfair trading practices and regulations in other countries, gives financial incentive for companies to move their operations overseas while still receiving subsidies from the U.S. taxpayer, it’s legitimate for the President to even the playing field and put the company on notice that there will be costs with such a decision.
GM is still free to close these plants, but suddenly the benefit to do so seems a lot less when the money flow from the U.S. taxpayer gets shut off. I like Trump’s approach. The old approach to trying to get a company to keep it’s U.S. plants open would be to promise them more tax payer funded tax breaks and subsidies. Instead, POTUS threatens them with removing subsidies that are already there.
POTUS is not telling GM they have to make a decision that hurts their bottom line. He’s merely encouraging them to find another solution to the weak sales from those plants. When POTUS makes it clear that you can’t have it both ways (i.e benefit from trade rules that encourage producing in China while also benefitting from U.S. taxpayer support) the alternative solution of shifting Chinese production back into the U.S. plants in question makes more economic sense. Problem solved. No subsidies. No forcing a company to maintain a money losing operation. Just readjusting the landscape to turn the calculus into favoring keeping the U.S. plants open.
Common sense conservatism.
These damn CAFE standards force domestic car manufacturers to make stuff nobody wants. EPA administrator Scott Pruitt was spearheading the effort to roll these standards back when he was forced to resign.
END THE SUBSIDIES ANYWAY.
All the government subsidy money should be redirected to developing other jobs for the 14,000 GM workers laid off right before Christmas.
End all ev subsidies.
Or start paying me to buy godam cars.
Trump has some great qualities and some fantastic achievements as president. But he is NOT a Freedom guy. He is a populist with conservative/traditionalist leanings.
I realize Trump has some zealous fans. But this is the Free Republic. It’s OK to acknowledge when Trump is wrong. In fact, it is our responsibility to try to steer the well-meaning prez to a more Freedom-oriented approach to political issues/events.
We like Trump because he has a big mouth and big balls. And is unafraid to use and flaunt them. The proper use right now, from Freedom’s perspective, of that famous nerve would be to point out that this is what we get for making unholy deals between biz and gov’t.
Who the hell are the feds (including Trump) to tell biz what to do. We are not even paying our own damn federal bills.
He should seize this opportunity to move away from the endless list of unconstitutional federal subsidies in general. But he won’t. He likes them. Asinine corn fuel mandates and federal ‘entitlements’ included.
Again, he’s a good man in the sense that he loves our country and people. But he has serious flaws regarding general Freedom vs Tyranny issues.
As much as I love the rallies, the hats and all the liberal fits they cause... MAGA is sorta meaningless and entirely subjective because what is ‘Great’ to liberals is not what is ‘Great’ to us.
All reports are that Trump matured greatly, on a personal/spiritual level, before and during the long pursuit of his well-earned current office. We should not coddle him just because we hated the GM deals from prior admins. Push him to mature on the Freedom scale as well.
Some are silly enough to suggest GM is doing this as a slight to Trump. Nonsense. The linked story is very weak on detail. But the decision is based on sales figures. People simply aren’t buying the cars made at those plants. GM would be happy to make more of them if people wanted to buy them. The move is to SUV / truck / etc. And away from ‘cars’.
If Trump wants to help GM / other makers to continue making cars then he should do Freedom-oriented things like killing the fuel standards which were/are responsible to a significant degree for the trend toward the pseudo-trucks/SUVs which had lower standards.
Giving GM money was and is WRONG.
Giving GM commands is WRONG.
Doing both absolutely does not make anything RIGHT.
Trump’s own Reagan-besting claims fall flat when you recall the Gipper’s rhetoric was less about getting even with specific companies as it was about getting gov’t off ALL their backs in general.
MAFA. Make America Free Again!
They should cut all subsidies for electric vehicles... Period. I don’t care if it’s GM, Ford or Tesla. Subsidizing car manufactures to create electric vehicles needs to come to and end. If the electric vehicle market can’t stand on it’s own feet, then let it fade away into obscurity.
These cars are going to create an enormous amount of ground pollution in the coming years. The batteries aren’t recyclable and their going to end up with the same problem created by mercury filled lights... Pollution poisoning groundwater.
Do you think with the new majority in the Congress, House dems are calling in their marker on G.M.?
General Motors is a FAILED company.
They were bankrupt. They still are bankrupt.
GM is propped up by the State.
GM is lazy, inefficient, ineffective & uneconomical.
Every day that GM survives with Government bailouts,
is another day without better jobs produced by superior small businesses.
LET GM DIE ALREADY!
Cars that do driving for you isn’t a market, and it never will be. It’s a niche market at best and their is no money to made in niche markets. I haven’t talked to one person who drives and owns a car that wants the car to drive for them. Not one. Automated driving has no future with the exception of those who today take cabs and uber vehicles... And even those people would think long and hard before getting in a car without a human driver at the wheel.
Not sure what genius at GM convinced the board of directors that electric and automated driving was the future... But whomever they are will be looking for a new job as soon as GM realizes they’ve made a massive mistake.
The taxpayers should not be paying GM to do anything. Cut it off and let ‘em run with that.
Juan from Pan Am then had JFK shot....
Since GM likes China so much, they should have been sold to the Chinese back when they were bailed out. As it is, the government lost $12 billion saving their bacon in the last crisis. Ford has done a better job of making a decent product, although that is largely due to its trucks.
Why is my tax money (my labor!) going to Leftist GM millionaires and billionaires?
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