Pants on Fire # 23: Jeeps and China

The Lie: Candidate Mitt Romney said on Oct. 25, "I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China. I will fight for every good job in America, I’m going to fight to make sure trade is fair."

The Truth: As Chrysler, the company that makes Jeeps, responded, “Despite clear and accurate reporting, the take has given birth to a number of stories making readers believe that Chrysler plans to shift all Jeep production to China from North America, and therefore idle assembly lines and U.S. workforce.

Senior vice president for corporate communications Gaulbert Ranieri wrote later that day, “It is a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats... A careful and unbiased reading of the Bloomberg take would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments.” 

Auto workers in Ohio and Detroit are outraged. According to Bloomberg, "The United Auto Workers, in press statements and in an Obama-campaign media call yesterday, condemned Romney’s Defiance comments and the subsequent ad

    “'Anyone with an ounce of knowledge about the auto industry and Chrysler’s production plans would know what Mitt Romney said wasn’t true,' UAW Vice President General Holiefield, who directs the union’s Chrysler Department, said in an Oct. 27 press release. 

     "Ken Lortz, UAW director of the region that includes Ohio and Indiana, said in an Obama campaign conference call with reporters yesterday that the Romney ad represents 'the lowest form of political tactics.' The spot features 'clever word- smithing' to avoid outright falsehoods, he said, 'but the intent of the ad is completely dishonest.'” 

Chrysler has been ADDING American workers to its Jeep plants in Ohio and Michigan since earlier this year and intends to keep adding them. 

The Romney campaign has also tried to turn around Pres. Obama's bailout of the auto industry into some kind of bankruptcy, even though Romney himself said in 2008 that the country should let the industry go into bankruptcy and all those workers lose their jobs.