Aren’t they just so cool when they believe their own press?
The AFL-CIO (certainly encouraged by the USW) posted this beauty on its AFL-CIO Now Blog yesterday:
Tire Industry Jobs Returning After Obama Enforces Trade Laws
Less than three months after President Obama enforced U.S. trade law and provided relief to the domestic tire industry in response to surging exports of tires from China, there are signs the tire industry is rebounding.
Writing on the Campaign for America’s Future Web site, Dave Johnson reports that Cooper Tires is adding 100 new jobs to its plant in Findlay, Ohio, where unemployment is 9.1%. He quotes Findlay’s Mayor Pete Sehnert who told Toledo on the Move.com:
“That’s 100 more people working. That’s 100 more people spending their money in our community, paying their bills, paying their taxes so it means a lot.”
In September, Obama imposed increased duties on tires from China for three years after the U.S. International Trade Commission found that tariff relief was needed to urgently reduce the negative impact of those tire imports. For eight years, President George W. Bush refused to invoke trade laws to help U.S. workers.
As Johnson says:
“President Bush refused to enforce trade agreements and we suffered eight years of job loss and factory closings, but President Obama enforced it, and we are already seeing jobs return.”
Feel for you guys, but here’s a few simple facts:
• Cooper’s action had NOTHING to do with the increased tariffs. Nothing. So trying to tie these two independent things together is fibbing.
• Cooper does NOT produce low-margin broadline tires – like the ones from China that are getting smacked with an additional 35% tariff – at that plant, or any of its domestic plants. It was making them in China, but you guys effectively killed that, and created cost turmoil with Cooper and some of its customers.
• Cooper DOES produce higher margin tires at its Findlay plant. Not at all impacted by the tariff action.
• True, that $100 million investment will mean 100 or so new jobs. That’s good. But a lot of that money is also going into AUTOMATION. Also good…for Cooper. Not so much for the union.
• The only tangible – that means “real” – things the added tariff accomplished are higher consumer tire prices (bad for America), serious tire shortages for consumers needing lower priced tires (also bad for America), severely reduced fill rates for tire retailers (ditto), serious damage to an already fragile private brand market (ditto, ditto), and not a single brick has been laid to build new plants/expand plants to fulfill these shortfalls (which means no new union jobs). In fact, tiremakers in other parts of the world – not the U.S. – are gearing up to fill some of those low price broadline tire needs.
