Escalating trade tensions between the United States and China may be slowing auto sales there, but they’re also exposing the vulnerabilities of Detroit’s automakers in the world’s largest auto market. The net effect could be a reassessment of their collective footprint there, especially as domestic automaker’s claim ever larger chunks of the Chinese market at the expense of foreign players.
This week, Daniel Howes says the “goods news” of General Motors Co. finding a potential buyer for its Lordstown Assembly Plant in northeast Ohio is drawing mixed reactions because the potential results could be mixed. Replacing the scale, jobs and payroll of a modern auto plant is next to impossible in an increasingly lean – and non-union – private economy. And the wrenching experience is exacerbated by the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years and economic growth running north of 3 percent.
This week, Daniel Howes says bipartisan opposition to the rewrite of the North American Free Trade Agreement is forcing President Donald Trump and his trade team to scramble for votes. The problem: House Democrats led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi have precisely zero motivation to give Trump a win on trade amid escalating fights over access to White House documents and witnesses.
This week, Daniel Howes says the Ilitch family’s billion-dollar investment in its District Detroit, anchored by Little Caesars Arena, is being dogged by broken promises. Critics, including a new HBO segment, say the owners of Detroit’s Tigers and Red Wings have failed to deliver the residential, retail and restaurant investments promised in exchange for an infusion of taxpayer money. That’s a problem for other current and would-be investors pursuing landmark projects in other parts of town – a p...
This week, Daniel Howes says signs are growing that Ford Motor Co. is no longer the Rodney Dangerfield of the auto industry – the company that gets no respect. But investor sentiment is changing because reality is changing. The Blue Oval’s global restructuring is taking shape with cutbacks in Europe and South America, greater reliance on its partner in India, salaried workforce reductions in North America. And Ford shares? They’re performing better so far this year than their American peers, inc...
This week, Daniel Howes says President Donald Trump’s whipsawing on trade and tariffs is exhausting the very people it’s intended to help. Threats to close the U.S.-Mexico border are withdrawn … only to be replaced by the promise of new tariffs on cars, trucks and SUVs built in Mexico for the U.S. market. This is what "Art of the Deal" leverage looks like. It’s a blunderbuss of scattershot intimidation whose practical effect would be to impose acute economic pain on the industrial Midwest – the ...
This week, Daniel Howes says federal authorities investigating alleged corruption inside the United Auto Workers are asking some of the same questions a U.S. Senate committee asked 60-plus years ago: are staff donations to their so-called “flower funds” voluntary? And have ranking union officials who control the funds pocketed some of the cash for their own use? If they did, it would confirm one of the worst suspicions on the factory floor: namely, that union leaders are more interested in enric...
This week, Daniel Howes says Detroit’s automakers are using investment decisions in a union contract year to politick President Donald Trump. The reason: General Motors Co.’s plans to close four U.S. plants as part of a restructuring moved the president to repeatedly lambaste the automaker on Twitter and in public appearances. In the forming battle for the hearts and minds of the work-a-day Midwest, Detroit's automakers are proxies personally selected by POTUS. And Michigan and Ohio are the prin...
This week, Daniel Howes says Gretchen Whitmer’s budget address helped answer whether Michigan business still has a friend in the governor’s office: not so much. The net effect of her business tax proposals — most of which are unlikely to survive the Republican-controlled Legislature — would be a tap on the economic brakes just as the hometown auto industry’s blistering sales and profit pace is beginning to slow. Credit Whitmer with proving yet again an enduring truth of Michigan politics: it's c...
This week, Daniel Howes says Fiat Chrysler’s plans to invest $4.5 billion and create 6,500 tax-paying jobs to build a new Jeep plant in Detroit vindicates late-CEO Sergio Marchionne’s call three years ago to abandon small cars in the United States and weight the lineup more heavily to trucks and SUVs. A company controlled by Italians and run by a Briton insists that authentic Jeeps come from the industrial Midwest. It’s hard to overstate the reality and symbolism here: Detroit just landed a priz...
This week, Daniel Howes says Detroit’s auto industry has lost the best friend in Washington it probably ever had. Congressman John Dingell served in the House of Representatives for 60 years, the longest tenure in American history. He died at 92, but he never forgot where he came from, who his people were, or what industry defined his corner of the country. A friend of Detroit’s automakers, their union members? You bet, and left-wing members of his own Democratic party hated him for it.
