Signs Of The Time, Part 22

Posted In: Auto Sector, Economy, Signs Of The Time

Oh boy. Remember this debate back in the eighties and early nineties as the Japanese threat loomed large over Detroit? AOL Autos’ Kevin Ransom wrote on September 8:

A directive recently handed down by a Detroit-area suburban mayor has ignited the latest round of a seemingly endless debate — one that always burns with more intensity in the home of the Big Three than anywhere else.

It’s the debate that relates to cars goes something like this: “Buy American!” vs. “I’ll buy what I want!”…

This latest round of the discussion was inspired by a decision made by Jim Fouts, the mayor of Warren, Mich., a large Detroit suburb and Michigan’s third-largest city, and where a good portion of the residents are (or were) autoworkers.

In mid-August, Fouts told his department heads, which amount to 40 or 50 of the city’s more than 700 employees that he “expects” the next car they buy will be an American model. More to the point, he expects them to drive General Motors or Chrysler vehicles, since both companies have various manufacturing or assembly plants in Warren — not to mention GM’s sprawling Tech Center — and therefore are the city’s two highest taxpayers.

Fouts, who drives a 2001 Chrysler Concorde himself, isn’t being draconian about it. That is, he hasn’t ordered his appointees to run right out and dump their Hondas, Toyotas, Saabs or Audis immediately. “But I strongly suggested that the next car they buy should be an American one, and that I had an equally strong expectation that they will do so,” Fouts said. “Legally, since they are ‘at-will’ employees, I have the right to mandate, and an expectation that they will meet that mandate.”…

“I think of it as ‘economic patriotism.’”

Betty Boop Poster
Source: AllPosters.com

Source:

“Buy American or Get Out?”
Kevin Ransom
AOL Autos, September 8, 2008

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