Is Mitt Romney ad on Jeep jobs misleading?
Is Jeep moving US manufacturing jobs to China? That鈥檚 the implication in a 鈥檚 presidential campaign that鈥檚 running in the key battleground state of Ohio.
Auto manufacturing is a big part of the Buckeye State economy, and Mr. Romney鈥檚 chances there may have been damaged by President Obama鈥檚 assertion that Romney opposed the federal bailout of the auto industry. The new Jeep spot is likely Romney鈥檚 attempt to reclaim some votes on this issue.
First, let鈥檚 look at the ad itself. Titled 鈥淲ho Will Do More?,鈥� the 30-second spot opens with the general charge that Barack Obama won鈥檛 do as much as Romney will to help car firms in the future. It says Romney has a plan for this, though it doesn鈥檛 go into specifics, and then notes that the former Massachusetts governor is backed by ex-Chrysler chief Lee Iacocca and the editorial page of The Detroit News.
Then it reaches the crux of the matter. 鈥淥bama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job.鈥�
Here鈥檚 the clever aspect of this: Taken apart, each clause in those two sentences is true, or at least defensible. But put together, they鈥檙e implying that Mr. Obama鈥檚 actions have led to Jeep jobs jumping to Beijing. That鈥檚 not true. It鈥檚 an assertion that the says 鈥渢hrows reality into reverse.鈥�
We鈥檒l run through the paragraph piece by piece. Yes, Obama did take GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy in early 2009, as Romney had earlier suggested in an opinion piece in The New York Times. But the Obama administration arranged for government debtor-in-place financing to take the firms through bankruptcy court, while Romney envisioned the private marketplace providing that money. Given the extent the world鈥檚 financial woes at the time, Romney鈥檚 expectation might have been unrealistic.
Yes, Italians did buy Chrysler. Cerberus Capital, Chrysler鈥檚 previous owner, had been talking to Fiat about a deal; the Obama administration鈥檚 auto task force quickly told the parties they had to reach a merger agreement or Chrysler would lose the government loans keeping it afloat.聽After Chrysler's bankruptcy, Fiat emerged with a 20 percent stake in the firm and operational control.
It鈥檚 also possible that the Italians who own Chrysler are going to build Jeeps 鈥� perhaps Chrysler鈥檚 most valuable auto brand 鈥� in China. In an e-mail to employees Tuesday, Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne repeated a previous announcement that the firm is thinking of restarting a Jeep assembly line in China closed in 2009 to supply the local market.
In the e-mail, Mr. Marchionne adds that the Chinese market would be inaccessible otherwise. Beijing keeps tight control of the nation鈥檚 car marketplace; tariffs and other regulations render it off limits to foreign-made mass market models.
鈥淚 feel obliged to unambiguously restate our position. Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China. North American production is critical to achieving our goal of selling 800,000 Jeep vehicles by 2014. In fact, US production of our Jeep models has nearly tripled ... since 2009 in order to keep up with global demand,鈥� , posted online by the Detroit Free Press.
Last Thursday during a campaign stop in Defiance, Ohio, he鈥檇 seen a story indicating that 鈥淛eep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China.鈥�
As notes, 鈥淭his was completely wrong.鈥� A Bloomberg story had reported accurately on Jeep鈥檚 China intentions. Some conservative blogs then misinterpreted the story to mean that the departure of Jeep jobs was imminent. Romney may have received his false information from them.
The Romney ad drops the part about 鈥渕oving all production to China.鈥� But it鈥檚 implying the same thing 鈥� otherwise, why mention 鈥淛eep鈥� and 鈥淐hina鈥� in the same sentence at all?
鈥淭he series of statements in the ad individually may be technically correct, but the overall message of the ad is clearly misleading 鈥� especially since it appears to have been designed to piggyback off of Romney鈥檚 gross misstatement that Chrysler was moving Ohio factory jobs to China,鈥� concludes Mr. Kessler.
