Barack Obama, Auto Industry | featured news

Barack Obama will use a visit to a Chicago-area lab on Friday to call on Congress to set aside $2bn over the next decade to fund research into a next generation of electric cars. The White House said the Energy Security Trust, which Obama first proposed in his state of the union address, would use royalties from offshore oil and gas drilling in public waters and would not add to the deficit.

President Obama ripped Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Friday for running a misleading TV ad implying that U.S. auto workers are going to lose their jobs because Chrysler is moving the production of Jeeps for Chinese consumers to China.

"If he [Obama] didn't come through and give that vote and say, 'Yes we have got to save Chrysler. We have to save GM. We've got to do this,' all this Sterling Heights would have been gone, would have been dead."

In seeking support in Michigan, Obama speaks frequently about how the federal bailout of General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group led to GM's resurgence as the world's No. 1 automaker and 32,000 more auto-related jobs in the state since the companies emerged from their 2009 managed bankruptcies. Romney opposed the move, even writing a New York Times opinion piece in 2008 that carried the headline "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."

President Barack Obama told more than 1600 current and hourly autoworkers on Tuesday that if Republicans had been in charge they would have left the auto industry "out to dry."

The super PAC behind President Obama is on the air in Michigan today with an ad slamming Mitt Romney and his opposition to the auto industry ...

President Obama’s former top adviser on manufacturing has been tapped by the nation's letter carriers to develop new business ideas for the U.S. Postal Service. Ron Bloom, who helped restructure the automotive industry and has negotiated several large labor deals over the course of his career, served until August as Obama’s top manufacturing policy adviser. He announced Sunday that he will advise the National Letter Carriers Association as the 280,000-member union attempts to strike a new multi-year deal with the cash-strapped Postal Service.

Pedal to the metal, Congress sent President Barack Obama legislation Thursday night with an additional $2 billion for "cash for clunkers," the economy-boosting rebate program that caught the fancy of car buyers and instantly increased sales for an auto industry long mired in recession.

The goal of getting the US solidly back into the race to become the leader in the production of electric cars gets a boost today. President Obama is headed for Indiana this morning where he will announce $2.4 billion in funding for electric vehicle ...

Steven Rattner, who has faced recent questions about his firm’s role in a pension scandal, will be succeeded by Ron Bloom.