Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 11:40 pm
At an event in Defiance, Ohio Thursday evening, Mitt Romney got his Halloween on early by playing the Grim Reaper of jobs when he told a complete falsehood about Chrysler moving Jeep to China and taking Americans job with them. Chrysler said that a “careful and unbiased” understanding “would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments.” That’s our Mitt.
Romney took “a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats” Thursday when he said, “I saw a story today, that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China. I will fight for every good job in America, I’m going to fight to make sure trade is fair, and if it’s fair, America will win.”
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Did you catch that? He saw a “story” alright, and just like Fox, he figured he’d “some people” reality by not bothering with it at all.
The truth is that Chrysler is not moving its Jeep production from America to China. As Chrysler said today, “Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China.”
President Obama has challenged unfair Chinese tariffs on U.S. auto exports to China, including Jeeps. We all know that Romney would have let the American auto industry and a million jobs go under and he’s all for shipping jobs overseas where men like him can get away with paying workers 88 cents a day and no worries about healthcare or being sued for dangerous working conditions.
Here are the facts from the Chrysler Blog Post. They point out, “A careful and unbiased reading of the Bloomberg take would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments.” Ouch.
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….
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.
Business Week backs up Chrysler, “Chrysler currently builds all Jeep SUV models at plants in Michigan, Illinois and Ohio. Manley referred to adding Jeep production sites rather than shifting output from North America to China.”
In case Mitt is still confused, “Chrysler Group announced that it will invest $500 million at the Toledo Assembly Complex (Ohio) for the production of the next generation Jeep® SUV in 2013. As a result, the Company will add a second shift of production or about 1,100 jobs in the third quarter of 2013.”
It looks like Romney was hoping to deflect and distract from Bainport on the evening when Sensata workers were threatening a walkout after being harassed and threatened by managers at the Bain owned plant. The Bain owned Sensata is shipping American jobs overseas to China after forcing the American workers to train their Chinese replacements in spite of being a profitable plant.
“Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” Mitt Romney must feel he has to go Grim Reaper of Death and Fear when faced with the success of Obama’s auto rescue, “Basking in such sentiments echoing across assembly lines of shiny Wranglers, Obama took a victory bow at the Jeep plant, where he was hailed by many of the 1,763 workers as a job-savior for the 2009 federal bailout that kept Chrysler and General Motors alive.”
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