Lee Iacocca: Mitt Will Make It Easier for Auto Companies to Evade Taxes on Cars Built in China

As part of its effort to pretend that Mitt would be good for the auto industry, the campaign had Lee Iacocca sum up why Mitt would be good for the auto industry.

The first paragraph of specifics reads:

When Mitt Romney is president, he will reduce our nation’s corporate tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent – currently the highest combined tax rate in the industrial world – so that American car companies can compete on a level playing field at home and abroad. He will also stop the extra tax automakers are forced to pay when they want to bring home their profits to reinvest in the United States.  President Obama could have done this the day he took office since his party controlled both houses of Congress, but he chose not to. [my emphasis]

Obama, of course, has a tax credit specifically for manufacturing companies, meaning under Obama the auto companies would pay less than under Mitt.

But the other part–particularly against Mitt’s egregious claims that the auto bailout has helped Chrysler and GM move production overseas–is even more ridiculous.

Iacocca says Mitt would be better for the auto companies because he’d allow the auto companies to repatriate profits from overseas without paying taxes.

But that assumes, of course, they’re making profits overseas. It would mean they were doing precisely the thing Mitt is attacking–moving into new markets, like China.

So on the same day Mitt attacks Chrysler and GM for making and selling cars in China, generating greater profit it can use to support workers here, his campaign sends out a post boasting that Mitt would require Chrysler and GM to contribute less domestically on the profits they made by making and selling cars in China.

 

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10 replies
  1. Citizen92 says:

    Profit means the inability to lard that company up with debt and then take it to bankruptcy and stiff your creditors. The Bain way.

    I half bet that Bain was in the running to take over Chrysler till the govt stepped to the head of the line.

  2. bmaz says:

    GM doesn’t take kindly to Romney’s duplicity either:

    Detroit News reporter David Sherpardson reported some more choice words from GM over the ad, quoting a representative who said “At this stage, we’re looking at a Hubble telescope-length distances between campaign ads and reality….GM’s creating jobs in the US and repatriating profits back to this country should be a source of bipartisan pride.”

    Oooh, more from David Shephardson of Detroit News:

    GM is clearly frustrated with Romney ad: “We’ve clearly entered some parallel universe during these last few days,” spokesman Greg Martin

    “No amount of campaign politics at its cynical worst will diminish our record of creating jobs in the US”

  3. Citizen92 says:

    Oh just “let Mitt be Mitt.”. He can’t succeed unless he swoops in to fix something that is broken.

    It’s probably a Mommy thing. Mitt’s Mom last a Michigan Senate race, a race where party bosses wanted his dad (golden daddy) to run instead. She lost, badly and I doubt Mitt ever forgave her for the besmirchment. That’s why women remain in binders, an afterthought.

    Probably a stretch but I’m recalling that AMC (Mitt’s Dad’s first success) was bought by Renault and then by Chrysler. Maybe some lingering animosity there too. Certainly is cannot be a coincedence that Mitt’s in-house well compensated media advisor titled his company “American Rambler” (Mitt’s Dad’s shining moment). Brown nose much?

    Lastly, Dean Barnett (now deceased) penned an op-Ed about the “misunderstood Mitt” in 2008. It blamed the campaign for masking the true Mitt. He was not the position switching opportunist, no he was the real deal.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/opinion/15barnett.html?_r=0

    Oddly enough, the same position switching opportunist has again re-emerged in the 2012 campaign. Who will Mitt blame this time? Still misunderstood?

  4. bmaz says:

    @Citizen92: Heh heh. Well, close! AMC “partnered” with Renault as a result of a severe crisis in the the late 70s. It was truly a partnership between two companies that made consummately shitty cars.

    Seriously though, AMC may not have survived but for the “Alliance” (pun intended there) with Renault. But that was not a new story in the least. In fact, Mitt’s father George fended off several critical points where AMC would have died from market forces. Like Chrysler, AMC would have easily been put to death long ago if Ford and GM had not been terribly afraid of anti-trust law implications.

  5. Citizen92 says:

    @bmaz

    A friend’s family had two Alliances in the late 80’s, a sedan and a hatchback. Those things were so rigged together (I’m recalling a toggle switch replaced a faulty ignition) it was amazing. Almost as bad as my family’s Fiat Strada, but not quite.

  6. bmaz says:

    @Citizen92: Oh good god. I am not sure you could have damned with fainter praise than comparison to a Fiat of the time period of the Alliance; though the Strada, which came a little later, was not even among the worst of the Fiats.

  7. Eric Hodgdon says:

    Capitalism will die, because it’s unsustainable. External inputs are required, and with Globalization nearing 100 years old, the fire is a waning sorely so. The last gasp grasp of African land grabs points to bankruptcy.

    Humans ejaculated in an orgy these past 100 years. Our numbers rise beyond the capacities of the Earth. To the Heavens! the shouts echoed in the empty silos of what were once boom times, of labor unions, and honest work.

    Today the low-wage cheap-import breakable-product robber-punk-ceo guts growth here to say there is growth there. Smoke and mirrors work better when the lights dim from massive pointless government induced poverty. Too stupid to understand basic economics, Congresses and Executives both bought and sold the store they did not create. Faintly it could be heard, “Oh well, what’s a few ten’s of millions of poor scum Americans anyway. We can always import a new batch for when we rebuild.”

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