Stephen Spruiell: More NAFTA Nonsense from Obama
Follow the link for more infor, but here is the teaser:
In the days leading up to the March 4 Ohio primary, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign aired a TV ad that featured a man named Steven Schuyler standing in front of a Delphi Packard Electric plant in Warren, Ohio. In the ad, Schuyler says he worked for Delphi, an automotive supplier, for 13 years until NAFTA enabled the company to ship his job to Mexico. “Barack Obama was against NAFTA,” Schuyler says, adding, “We need a president that will bring work into this country.”
The Delphi ad might qualify as the most deceptive of the 2008 race. First, Delphi did not exist as an independent company when Congress passed NAFTA in 1993. It was part of General Motors until it was spun off as an independent supplier in 1999. Second, foreign competition did not drive the company to eliminate American jobs. It declared bankruptcy in 2005 because the legacy labor costs it inherited from GM made it impossible to compete against other U.S.-based suppliers. Third, workers at the Warren, Ohio plant were offered generous buyouts and early-retirement packages. Its employees were not just kicked to the street. [...]
If all ex–Delphi Packard workers were offered buyouts or early-retirement packages, it stands to reason that Steven Schuyler, the man in the Obama TV ad, took a similar deal. The Obama campaign ignored National Review Online’s repeated requests for more information about Schuyler, but a Delphi retiree told the [Youngstown] Vindicator, “Schuyler took the buyout and got a good cash sum to quit his job.” When I spoke to Vindicator editor Todd Franko, he said he still hadn’t been able to contact Schuyler to confirm this.
Ted offered a list of companies that supposedly lost manufacturing jobs because of NAFTA, one in particular caught my eye, John Deere. Back in 1989, the company I worked for was offered the opportunity to bid on the manufacturing of approximately 70 different components that John Deere was producing in-house. They were looking to outsourse the jobs because they couldn’t manufacture them in-house at a competitive price. This was 4 years prior to NAFTA. John Deere’s job loss was another manufacturers gain.
March 27, 2008 - 10:23 AM on March 27th, 2008
“Ted offered a list of companies that supposedly lost manufacturing jobs because of NAFTA, one in particular caught my eye, John Deere. Back in 1989, the company I worked for was offered the opportunity to bid on the manufacturing of approximately 70 different components that John Deere was producing in-house. They were looking to outsourse the jobs because they couldn’t manufacture them in-house at a competitive price. This was 4 years prior to NAFTA. John Deere’s job loss was another manufacturers gain. ”
OOC Pam did your company win that bid, and if not do you know where those jobs went to? Are they still in America, or were they lost to an overseas manufacturerer? Oh, and do you know if the jobs on the list I provided are the jobs you are referring to?
One last question: was Stephen Spruiell the chap you quoted in the last article that was using the specious figures regarding the economy? I can seem to locate the original thread.
Thank you.
March 27, 2008 - 10:51 AM on March 27th, 2008
We didn’t bid because of the low volume. We turned them over to our local competitor that did get some of the work. Most of the outsourcing of componenets stays in the states. It is the assembly of certain parts that goes to Mexico and Canada, they are then returned to the US for futher manufacturing..
Your list was just the names of manufacturers that Dorgan claims were hurt because of NAFTA.
Here is the link where Rich Lowry discussed Obama and NAFTA
March 28, 2008 - 07:48 AM on March 28th, 2008
Its way past time to repeal NAFTA and end this stuff we must quit wrecking this nation to appeal to the liberal gook heads