The heads of the United States’s big-three car manu-facturers were granted a long-awaited audience at the White House last week to plead the case for help in overcoming chronic financial problems that have decimated jobs and led to scores of factory closures.
Soaring healthcare costs, unfavourable exchange rates and the search for ways to reduce the US’s reliance on costly oil were on the agenda for a 45-minute meeting between President George W Bush, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the heads of Ford, General Motors and Chrysler.
Ford’s chief executive, Alan Mulally, and General Motors’s Rick Wagoner arrived in Washington in hybrid-fuel vehicles, underlining their demands for government support for a shift from petrol to environmentally superior ethanol and fuel cells. Chrysler’s boss, Tom LaSorda, opted to drive a conventionally powered Sebring.
Tax breaks for research spending were one demand. A Chrysler spokesperson, Mike Aberlich, said other key issues included structural barriers: he said there were few filling stations for alternatively powered vehicles — only 1 000 out of the US’s 176 000 petrol stations offer ethanol fuel.
Critics had suggested the White House was paying too little attention to an industry that has lost 268 000 manufacturing jobs in six years. Ford and GM lost a combined $4,1-billion in the first half of the year.
All three companies stressed they were not looking for handouts but wanted a level playing field to compete with European and Japanese players. — Â