General Motors did not put America first: Dobbs
FBN’s Lou Dobbs on General Motor’s announcement that it plans to lay off 15% of its salary workers and halt the production of five of its plants in the U.S. and Canada.
A few thoughts tonight on General Motors surprise announcement today....a moment of incendiary corporate clumsiness and callousness, and maladroit analysis and strategy that reveals far more about the company than its management would like its investors to know…consider the President of the United States has made it clear to American business leaders that jobs had better return to this country.
That moving plants and jobs to foreign cheap labor markets and then exporting their products back to the United States will no longer be tolerated. Labor arbitrage is just a fancy expression for killing jobs.
Management in every industry must do far better by the country and American workers than to simply expand margins by employing cheap foreign labor rather than American workers who are middle class, or aspire to to the middle class.
This is the home of the American dream....and executives like those at GM are trying to return us to the nightmare years of Clinton, Bush, and Obama.
So here's GM going against the President....against the national interest, against American workers and families....and how about GM's tone deaf timing of their announcement....which of the brilliant GM executives decided a few days after Thanksgiving, less than a month before Christmas, would be the absolute perfect moment to announce they've decided to destroy the livelihoods of 15 thousand GM workers.
What did CEO Mary Barra expect....applause and a halelujah chorus...do she and her top managers really believe that GM can keep 15,000 jobs in Mexico while killing jobs in America and still expect Americans to buy their cars and trucks? Do they really believe Americans will buy products from a company that closes four plants in the United States, while maintaining the largest number of factories in Mexico...five of them ...of any U.S. carmaker and with more employees in Mexico than any other carmaker.
Oh yes, and what about that huge tax break that President Trump just gave corporate America....really...you really think you can still tell American workers to go to hell, take advantage of the President's tax breaks for business and not even so much as a faint thank you? Any sign of contrition? Okay, no contrition....how about investing all those millions of dollars in America? Do you not feel any sense of obligation to what U.S. multi-nationals like to call the home market....it's America, not simply the home market....America...and because we have a President who's made it official, and done so without apology.... It's America first.
What GM's management has announced today is obscene and violent to what this country stands for once again...prosperity for all Americans....and thank God President Trump reminded all Americans that he does something that unions haven't done for decades...that neither party has done for decades.....President Trump represents American workers and their families and the American way, he told GM executives, quote “You're playing around with the wrong person end quote.....even the dimm big shots at GM should understand that thieir assault on decency and loyalty will not end well for them.
Perhaps GM should just consider exporting the company's top management to a much cheaper foreign labor market. And keep the rest of GM's jobs in America. Just a thought we can only hope their board of directors will take up.....and soon.