Obama attacks the Car companies

It is a strange twist that Obama is now taking an action that will hurt American car companies even while the government owns much of the industry. The news today is that the adminstration will release tomorrow new regulations that require trucks to improve their gas mileage by 20% over the next three years. Of course, trucks are the main area where the Big Three have a lead over the foreign manufacturers. These new regulations will require major design changes for all trucks so that the existing American advantage will be lost. Worse still, the new regulations will require enormous costs to redesign and retool for the modified trucks. The changes will force the american companies to lose much of their investment in the current equipment used to make trucks. In short, these new regulations will hurt the Big Three, reduce jobs in american plants, increase the costs of trucks made in the US so as to render them less competative in other markets and, in general, to be anti business like much of Obama's other agenda.

Just imagine if Obama had used a little imagination to move in a direction that could help American companies and increase American jobs while achieving the same benefits. The government could have announced that it was going to buy trucks and buses powered by natural gas starting in a few years. First, this would have shifted energy usage from imported oil to domestic natural gas. This change would mean a boost to American jobs and growth, since the natural gas industry is adding workers to allow it to produce more output already. Second, natural gas vehicles already exist (like the buses used in new York city) and they produce only about 25% of the emissions of the comparable oil powered vehicles. In other words, these nat gas vehicles would reduce emissions and greenhouse gases by much more than the change ordered by Obama. Third, the government's switch to nat gas vehicles would promote the installation of a national infrastructure that would allow others to buy nat gas vehicles. If that could lead to even one-tenth of our vehicles using nat gas, the savings would be something like 100 billion dollars that would stay in the USA rather than going to Iran, Venezuela and other enemies abroad. There would also be a significant reduction in air pollution. Most important, such a switch could possibly produce 1,000,000 new jobs right here in the USA. Finally, if the Big Three were able to get the jump on foreign competitors with regard to the nat gas vehicles, these could be sold world wide with major benefits for the US economy.

Of course, were Obama to move the US towards natural gas vehicles, that would be a solution that relies on market forces to help achieve the required goals. Obama, instead, went for the plan that uses government control as the only means to achieve the end desired. It is a sad thing for the US that no one among the Obamacrats understands how the economy actually works.