Romney is Right About Chrysler / Jeep China Outsourcing

There is nothing like having unbiased media coverage of the all-important presidential campaign leading up to next week’s election. And the media is nothing like unbiased. We see this playing out again as Mitt Romney, is now being accused of misrepresenting a story that Bloomberg.com reported on Chrysler’s potential outsourcing of Jeep manufacturing to China. A look at the original comments from the article gives evidence as to how unfair the criticism is and just how right Romney was for pointing out the likely future outsourcing of Jeep manufacturing.

According to the Detroit Free Press, Romney stated during an Ohio rally, “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.” Governor Romney was referring to the Bloomberg (hardly a right-wing organization) piece which stated, “Fiat SpA (F), majority owner of Chrysler Group LLC, plans to return Jeep output to China and may eventually make all of its models in that country, according to the head of both automakers’ operations in the region.” This inference was taken from comments that a Chrysler / Fiat executive made when he questioned whether the automaker should, “… be localizing the entire Jeep portfolio or some of the Jeep portfolio” by manufacturing Jeeps in China. The facts seem very clear that Romney made an understandable assessment of the story. The Bloomberg statement that Chrysler / Fiat may eventually make all Jeeps in China led to Romneys claim that a news story reported that Jeep was thinking of moving all production to China. Sure sounds logical to me.

The biased media and the Obama team are claiming Romney was wrong as Chrysler recently flip-flopped and attempted to clarify its comments by now saying that it may only move SOME of the Jeep manufacturing to China. Fair enough. The fact remains, a bailed out auto company (Chrysler) that was given to the Italians (Fiat) by the Obama Administration is likely to move at least some, if not eventually all, production of Jeeps to China. Taxpayers paid billions of dollars for the bailout and now it appears jobs will be lost to China just as Obama accuses Romney of being the outsourcer. And there is absolutely no justification to accuse Romney of being wrong, as he accurately interpreted the original story.

Planned outsourcing has also been evidenced at the other bailed out automaker, General Motors, which earlier announced that it would be moving its electric vehicle platform to China. As expected, no media coverage was given to the story. And now when a story is run by Bloomberg, a reputable news organization, on possible outsourcing by Chrysler, the news is twisted to criticize the Republican presidential candidate. If the media wants to find clear evidence of misrepresentation, they need not look further than their much-favored incumbent.

Individuals who read or view news stories on the political events leading up to election time will have to judge for themselves just who is telling the truth. “Conservative bloggers” often are referred to by media sources that try to discredit viewpoints that differ from the mainstream media. These are the same media sources that would have had Americans believe that the heavily subsidized Chevy Volt was a great success and supply could not keep up with the overwhelming demand for the vehicle with huge waiting lists of buyers for the vehicle, despite all evidence to the contrary. The auto bailouts are treated as a great success by the elite media who ignore the billions of taxpayer dollars lost or the unfair treatment of classes that were not as politically popular as the UAW. The wisdom of giving away an American automaker, Chrysler, to the Italians only to see the possibility of lost manufacturing jobs here, is not questioned. If this is what the quality of “journalism” has sunk to in America, I would much rather be referred to as a “blogger,” conservative or otherwise.

Related:

Will Fiat/Chrysler Need Another Bailout?

Mark Modica is an NLPC Associate Fellow.