Every time I hear a politician say he’s going to end tax breaks for companies that export jobs overseas, I just laugh. It’s transparent pandering to the UAW and other labor unions and a great talking point, but the Democrats have just never gotten around to enacting it. President Obama trotted out that old horse again in Wednesday’s State of the Union speech:
We should put more Americans to work building clean energy facilities and give rebates to Americans who make their homes more energy efficient, which supports clean energy jobs. And to encourage these and other businesses to stay within our borders, it’s time to finally slash the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas and give those tax breaks to companies that create jobs in the United States of America.
But as a Michigander, it’s even more humorous knowing that the federal government has bailed out a Michigan-based company, General Motors, that has increasingly been “shipping jobs overseas.” According to a May 2009 Washington Post article, GM has been doing that with a vengeance.
The U.S. government is pouring billions into General Motors in hopes of reviving the domestic economy, but when the automaker completes its restructuring plan, many of the company’s new jobs will be filled by workers overseas.
According to an outline the company has been sharing privately with Washington legislators, the number of cars that GM sells in the United States and builds in Mexico, China and South Korea will roughly double.
The proportion of GM cars sold domestically and manufactured in those low-wage countries will rise from 15 percent to 23 percent over the next five years, according to the figures contained in a 12-page presentation offered to lawmakers in response to their questions about overseas production.
Believe it or not, former labor secretary Robert Reich, who has never been accused of being conservative, may be on to something:
“GM is a global company — so for that matter is AIG and the biggest Wall Street banks. That means that bailing them out doesn’t necessarily redound to the benefit of the U.S. or American workers.
“More significantly, it raises fundamental questions about the purpose of bailing out these big companies. If GM is going to do more of its production overseas, then why exactly are we saving GM?”
But silly me. Why am I complaining? After all, a bail out is totally different than a tax break. Isn’t it?
So like parsing President Obama’s other pledges of not hiring lobbyists for his administration, or opposing spending freezes before proposing sham ones, maybe I’m just making too much out of the fact that the government is heavily invested in an auto company that by all appearances is increasing its production in foreign counties.
But President Obama, just gut their tax breaks and everything will be cool.
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