Yesterday, July 30th, 2010, President Obama stopped at the Hamtramck General Motors auto plant in Hamtramck, Michigan to talk about jobs, the economy, and most notably the auto industry and the importance in investing in new auto technologies. It has been a little over a year since the auto industry was given a bailout by the government, and more importantly the U.S. taxpayers. Among those companies bailed out were General Motors and Chrysler.
The President gave a ten minute speech in which he explained the reasoning and validation for the auto bailout, in which he stated, "the auto industry had lost hundreds of thousands of jobs. Sales had gone down by 40 percent. And two of the Big Three, GM and Chrysler, were on the brink of a liquidation bankruptcy, which means they would have been wiped out. And if GM and Chrysler were wiped out, then suppliers would be wiped out and dealerships would have been wiped out, and communities would have been even more devastated. It’s estimated that we would have lost another million jobs if we had not stepped in."
He also announced the growth of GM, Ford, and Chrysler. "And a year later, GM and Chrysler, along with Ford, are all posting a profit. The U.S. auto industry has hired 55,000 workers, the most job growth in a decade. And not only that, but you’re producing the cars of the future right here at this plant, producing cars that are going to reduce our dependence on foreign oil." To this, the crowd of GM auto workers let out a loud cheer.
Before his speech President Obama took a tour of the GM plant, as well as a tour of the new Chevy Volt, which is due to make it's debut later this year. He also spoke of the need for energy independence to drive the clean energy economy.
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