l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 By Greg Autry and Peter Navarro
December 11, 2011
A Los Angeles firm has quietly assembled a Trojan horse electric car
designed to carry the Chinese military-industrial complex deep into America'
s auto market. Detroit should be afraid, very afraid. And anyone in the U.S.
unemployment line — along with American taxpayers, who are subsidizing
this sham — should be outraged.
The car is branded Coda and debuted at the L.A. Auto Show. While Coda
Automotive salespeople were eager to portray it as "All American" — we got
one of them bragging about it on camera — its entire chassis and battery
system and most of the metal (apparently 65% of the car) come from China's
factory floors, which are not known for their high labor standards.
From a jobs perspective, the Coda's arrival means this: American electric
carmakers such as California-based Fisker Automotive and Tesla Motors, along
with the GM Volt and Ford's Focus Electric, will compete on home soil with
a company benefiting from all of the unfair trade practices China has used
to bury so many other American industries — from toys, textiles and machine
tools to electronic assemblers and, most recently, solar panels. These
practices range from currency manipulation to reported illegal export
subsidies, counterfeiting, pollution and widespread worker abuses.
Taxpayers should be outraged because the Coda is eligible for the combined
federal and state tax rebates on electric vehicles of $10,000 a vehicle,
while China blatantly blocked the Volt from its Chinese green subsidy unless
GM manufactured it in Shanghai and turned over design secrets.
These economic considerations notwithstanding, a closer look at Coda's
supply chain reveals a darker truth. The "new" Coda is actually an updated
variation on the 6-year-old Saibao from China's state-owned Hafei Motor Co.
Hafei is a division of Changan Automobile Group, which in turn is controlled
by China Weaponry Equipment Group. This state-owned enterprise supplies
China's aggressively expanding military, and its parent, China South
Industries Group, owns half of arms dealer Norinco, which reportedly tried
to smuggle guns to Libya during the last days of the Kadafi regime.
Norinco's other bloody trade has included transferring missile technology to
Iran, attempting to sell AK-47s to U.S. street gangs and selling nearly $70
million in arms to Zimbabwe's Mugabe regime. So, before considering a Coda
as a means of going green, remember all the red blood shed by Coda's real
backers.
And speaking of backers, it is disquieting and disgusting that the Chinese
government has been able to put so many prominent American faces on such a
job-killing venture. Coda CEO Phil Murtaugh is the former head of GM's China
division, and the company has raised more than $300 million from banks such
as Morgan Stanley and well-connected private investors that include former
Clinton White House Chief of Staff Mack McLarty and former Goldman Sachs CEO
Henry Paulson.
Paulson's role in saddling up the Coda Trojan horse is particularly galling.
As Treasury secretary under President George W. Bush, he repeatedly refused
to brand China a currency manipulator; this inaction contributed to the
loss of tens of thousands of American factories and millions of American
jobs. According to Nobel economist Paul Krugman, China's currency
manipulation alone costs America up to 1.5% of its GDP every year, and
Economic Policy Institute economist Robert Scott suggests this kills as many
as 3 million U.S. jobs. Now, Paulson stands to personally profit from China
's currency manipulation and other unfair trade practices as an investor in
a venture that would worsen the U.S. trade deficit and swell U.S.
unemployment lines.
Finally, another Coda enterprise adds insult to injury: a planned Ohio
battery factory to be built with more than half a billion in U.S. taxpayer
stimulus bucks, including an Energy Department loan and incentives from the
state of Ohio and the city of Columbus. Great, except that a Chinese-
dominated joint venture with Tianjin Lishen Battery will really own it. That
's an enormously expensive way to create "up to" 1,000 jobs, with potential
millions in profits shipped back to China.
When more than 20 million Americans can't find a decent job and millions
more don't earn a decent wage, the last thing we need is China invading the
U.S. auto market and getting U.S. subsidies under the false pretenses of
helping Americans "go green and buy American."
Greg Autry and Peter Navarro are the authors of "Death By China: Confronting
the Dragon — A Global Call to Action." They teach at UC Irvine's Paul
Merage School of Business and blog on the Huffington Post.
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times |
|
