Obama Motors: GM Using Taxpayer Dollars to Outsource

Governments do not belong in private industry.  In France we saw a recent row play out regarding Renault.  The Renault Clio (a cute economy car) was going to be built outside of France, resulting in some job losses domestically.  Renault was going to shift production to Turkey to save money on labor costs and to improve its bottom line in a very tough automotive marketplace.  The idea was nixed after French President Sarkozy had a vache about it all:

Mr Sarkozy had said he had not pumped government money into carmakers for them to move production abroad.

The French state has a 15% shareholding in Renault.

Contrast this story with that from Government Motors:

That’s a question being asked of GM today.  GM is using some of the money floated to them by the US government to bolster its operations overseas.  The upset is that part of the justification for investing tax dollars in GM was to create (or save) jobs here in America.

But Democrat Rep. Anthony Weiner had this to say about using the money to invest in oversees operations:  “I don’t think most Americans believe that when the taxpayer bailouts were happening it was intended for that purpose…it was intended to protect the American economy – not take the money overseas.”

It should be noted that U.S. banks that took U.S. taxpayer monies repaid those loans, with interest (giving the U.S. government a profit) and will be taxed anyway while GM, which hasn’t repaid the loans and is costing the government billions, is not only shipping jobs overseas with American government financial support but also won’t have to pay the taxes on “risky investments” that banks will.

And Obama could do what Sarkozy could… keep jobs in the U.S.

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