You are here: Home » News » Business & Economics » Chrysler, GM Showing Sales Growth

Chrysler, GM Showing Sales Growth

Posted by: Linda Carbonell on November 1, 2011.

The fastest way to get the right wing media to stick their collective heads in a barf bag is tell them they really should report something positive to come out of an Obama policy or program. They must be choking on their bile today.

The two American auto manufacturers who were saved by loans instituted by the Obama administration have both reported increases in domestic sales, Chrysler a very pleasing 27% and GM a modest 4% for trucks and 2% for cars. For Chrysler, last month was its best since 2007. The increase for GM was in comparison to 2010 sales figures. For individual models, Jeep Compass sales increased six-fold, Chevy Cruze sales tripled and the Dodge Ram truck rose 40%.

Chrysler's Dodge Ram

Both J.D.Power and Associates and Edmunds.com are expecting auto sales to be their best in two years, since the Cash for Clunkers program.

Sales figures for foreign-made cars will be released today and are expected to be higher than the American-made auto companies, but a lot of that increase is due to the lack of imports because of the March earthquake/tsunami/nuclear plant disaster in Japan. Though companies like Toyota and Honda assemble their cars in plants in America, parts are manufactured in Japan and the shipment of parts came to a halt in March. The October sales figures for these manufacturers and Hyundai, which also receives parts from Japan, reflect waiting lists for cars that range back to last spring.

When President Obama took office, Chrysler and GM were on the brink of folding, so far beyond what a normal bankruptcy could accomplish that it looked like the only American car company that would still be standing in 2010 was Ford. Obama arranged for loans, secured with stock in Chrysler and GM, and supervision of their restructuring. Both companies have paid off most of the loan money (about $14 billion will not be repaid because of technicalities in the restructuring), the stock that we – our government – held is being sold back to the private sector and hundreds of thousands of jobs in the auto industry and all the subsidiary industries that supply it have been saved.

It hasn’t been a total, Pollyanna success, but it certainly isn’t what the right wing insists on calling it – a failed “bailout.” In a reality that wrenches Republican guts, the TARP bailout wasn’t a classical bailout either. Both programs involved repayment of the money expended by the Federal government and both were repaid much more quickly than originally agreed or anticipated. The auto manufacturer bailout will cost us $14 billion. That is the number the right wing will keep harping on, because they cannot and will not look at how much that $14 billion will generate revenue….income taxes from the workers who didn’t lose their jobs, payroll taxes from them, sales taxes from parts and cars, business taxes, property taxes from auto dealerships that didn’t close, and on and on spreading across all fifty states, generating revenues that will easily exceed that $14 billion.

Now, if the Obama administration and the Democratic Party can just figure out how to make the American electorate see that side of the auto manufacturing rescue….