In his last White House White Board, CEA Chairman Austan Goolsbee told the story of GM and the comeback of the American auto industry. It's an inspiring story even told through charts and graphs, but today both the Vice President and the President visited Kokomo, Indiana to see a town that's part of that story up close. As the Vice President explained in his remarks there, it was personal for him already:
Look, I’m the son of an automobile man, and I want to tell you he managed automobile facilities for my entire life. And Kokomo, anybody in the automobile business has already known, was one of the great auto towns in America — not only making Chrysler automobiles but Delphi, supplying parts and so many other suppliers, and all the related jobs that go with that.
To bring Kokomo back, to bring the automobile industry back, we knew we had to change things. We couldn’t just keep doing the things the way we did. We knew the auto industry had to get leaner, had to get tougher, had to be more competitive. And we insisted that they did. And now you see the result — an old industry adapting to a whole new era, competing again, leading again, and most importantly, hiring again. Hiring again.
In late 2007, Kokomo Sanitation Pottery closed, laying off nearly 100 workers. And when Chrysler laid off over 11,000 workers nationwide in 2007, Kokomo lost even more jobs. In mid-2008, hundreds of manufacturing jobs were lost at the local Delphi plant. By the end of 2008, Kokomo had been labeled one of “America’s Fastest Dying Towns.” Now the town is turning around, in no small part because of the Recovery Act and the President's tough decisions on the auto industry. "So here’s the lesson," the President said to enthusiastic applause, "Don't bet against America. Don't bet against the American auto industry. Don't bet against American ingenuity. Don't bet against the American worker. Don't bet against us."
Fonte: White House