I need to bring this up.
A lot of attention has been given to Obama's rescue of the domestic auto industry. And as you may know, I'm a HUGE FAN of that. HUGE FAN.
But too little attention has been given to what happened before that. The event that happened before that put me at ease. The event that happened before that made me think "YES! YES! This President GETS IT."
Before the domestic auto rescue, President Obama made$5 billion in Federal loans available to small auto parts suppliers:
The Treasury Department announced a $5 billion program to aid struggling auto-parts suppliers, raising the likelihood the government will extend more aid to General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC.
What a lot of folks, including politicians, don't seem to realize is that GM and Chrysler merely ASSEMBLE cars. They don't make the parts.
GM assembles the cars. But there are THOUSANDS of parts manufactured from small parts manufacturers all over America. For example, some company may make nothing but springs. SPRINGS. That's all they make. And they supply GM with X number of springs. And if GM is making this whole car and they have everything BUT THE SPRING.....no car.
See?
Thousands of other suppliers deliver but ONE supplier does not = NO CAR.
And it's the tiny, seemingly small supplier in BFE Nowhere that makes X part. And X part for GM is 75% of the small manufacturer's business. And they're able to make other one-off parts for other companies BECAUSE the entire machine shop is held up because it makes X part for GM....
....So let's pretend GM is in limbo. GM is now in a structured bankruptcy that may last six months. Guess what? Tiny Company that makes X part for GM can't pay its workers and worse, it can't make that One Off Part for the company that designs and creates bread baking machines and now the bread machine designer can't get their bread machine built and now the bread company in Nebraska can't get the machine it needs to manufacture bread.
GET IT?
Yeah....
Obama rescued the Domestic Auto Industry.
But BEFORE that. BEFORE that. BEFORE he sent the domestic auto industry into structuered bankruptcy, he made sure the LITTLE GUYS....the SMALL manufacturing companies that make SPRINGS or BOLTS or LATCHES or TINY WIDGETS were able to stay afloat so that when GM got back on its feet again it didn't have to look to CHINA or MEXICO to make those parts because the previous suppliers had gone belly up.
GET IT?
Obama did.
And it can't be overstated.
I'm a user manual writer. I write user manuals. And I have personally visited these small parts manufacturers. They're ALL OVER THE PLACE. And they're not the behemoth CORPORATIONS many people think they are. They're small, mom and pop operations employing regular everyday folkes that have the job because they DELIVER. They deliver on time EVERY TIME. And they're not huge. They're small shops that one would never think of as a big time corporate manufacturer.
Obama came in and helped these companies. And THAT is what saved American manufacturing.