TPT May 2009

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May 2009 72 ›
From the Americas
Automotive
Washington moves Detroit’s auto parts
makers from the radar screen into
the receiving line
In a 9 March column (‘There’s no time to waste in saving the auto
industry’), an exasperated Tom Walsh wrote in the Detroit Free
Press:
“Sorry to be abrupt with you, exalted members of President Barack
Obama’s auto task force, but there’s no time for small talk.
“You people need to act quickly – like yesterday, if not sooner – to
put forward a clear-cut plan.
“Just get on with it, so all the suppliers, dealers, engineers, welders,
bond holders, and accountants whose fates are at stake can plan
accordingly.
“This industry, the Detroit region, and the people in it are so
spooked right now that they are almost past caring about exactly
what you plan to do – whether it’s to keep federal loans flowing,
force General Motors and Chrysler into bankruptcy, merge them, or
even nationalize the auto industry.
“Just get on with it.”
Days later, they did. On 19 March the Obama administration
announced that it would offer as much as $5 billion in assistance to
the parts manufacturers that supply the US auto industry.
For companies like Visteon Corp, Lear Corp, Dana Corp, and
American Axle & Manufacturing Inc – all of whose fortunes are tied
to those of the producers they serve – this was good news, if long
overdue. To some, it came as a last-minute reprieve.
With US government efforts to aid the domestic auto industry
centred on General Motors Corp and Chrysler LLC, parts
makers captured the attention of Washington only comparatively
recently. Even then, the interest expressed was sympathetic but
somewhat academic in tone, any public discussion brief and
imprecise.
Only on 16 March did a top-level adviser to President Barack
Obama’s automotive task force appear to take the suppliers fully
into account.
In an interview with the Detroit Free Press, Steven Rattner said
the panel acknowledged that the suppliers had been left to fend for
themselves and that their financial stress was a ‘very, very urgent’
issue.
Mr Rattner was a leading candidate for ‘car czar’ in the new
administration until Mr Obama decided instead to create the task
force, under the Treasury secretary and a White House economic
aide, to review $17.4 billion in federal loans to GM and Chrysler and
their requests for billions more in aid. Suppliers had sought their
own $18 billion in federal assistance through a variety of measures
designed to boost short-term liquidity.
The $5 billion pledged by the administration is well short of
the amount requested. But it is no less welcome for that. And
the suppliers can know – at least, and at last – that someone in
Washington takes notice of them.
› The argument for aid to the suppliers had been made often and
forcibly. A week before the Freep interview with Mr Rattner,
Joann Muller wrote in Forbes that a collapse of its supplier network
would be just as devastating to the domestic auto industry as the
failure of General Motors. She asserted outright that funnelling
more money to GM and Chrysler to help them through the current
downturn would be wasted unless the government also found a
way to help these producers’ parts suppliers (‘Detroit’s other crisis,’
9 March).
As noted by Forbes, without help to the suppliers there could be a
collapse of the US auto industry from the bottom, rather than from
the top down. With credit markets all but frozen, bankrupt suppliers
would find it hard to obtain debtor-in-possession financing to stay in
business during bankruptcy reorganization. Many would be forced
to liquidate.
Ms Muller wrote, “That would put the car makers in a jam, because
they can’t easily get the missing parts from other suppliers. It can
take up to a year to shift tooling and re-certify critical components.
The result, analysts say: US vehicle production would grind to a
halt. Even foreign-based manufacturers operating here, like Toyota,
Honda, and BMW, would be stuck, because they use many of the
same US suppliers.”
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