FarhvergB—S–: VW USA’s British head Jonathan Browning takes to the Brookings Institituion to tell Americans why they aren’t attracting as much foreign investment as they might:
There are growing concerns around the world about the seeming inability of U.S. political leaders to deal with this country’s fiscal challenges. ….
I have to be frank. This country needs to get its house in order. It needs to restore global confidence in the workings of its political system. It needs to once again show it puts the greater good as its priority, moving beyond the particsanship and the ideology that is causing gridlock today.
1) Someone from the EU is lecturing us about the need to get our “house in order”? Hello? [Browning’s talk does have a to-be-sure sentence that mentions Europe’s “significant problems.” It’s not enough.] 2) Is VW really building new Audis (and its new Golf) in Mexican plants–rather than in the U.S.–because of “gridlock” and the “polarized electorate”? Or are there maybe other more obvious reasons, like wage rates, labor quality, trade pacts, and a certain American union that is desperate to organize the company’s existing Chattanooga, Tennessee factory? Truth About Cars has some thoughts. 3) Does Browning really want to join the cheap, platitudinous ed-board consensus decrying ideological “polarization” and “gridlock,” an underlying purpose of which is to force Republicans to accept tax increases as the price for significant budget cuts? Gridlock–and the ideologically polarized Republicans–may be all that’s standing between VW and the “card-check” like laws that would make its promising Tennessee factory relatively easy prey for UAW organizers. … Browning should thank Mitch McConnell every morning before he goes to work. … 4) VW isnt building three new plants in China because of defects in our political system either. It’s building factories in China because China has a gigantic, growing market for its product. That is a natural and healthy development. It’s obnoxious of Browning to talk as if America’s declining share of foreign investment, the logical result of global prosperity, should somehow be a source of guilt. …