Confounded by Contextual Complications

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Zebra Fact-check, January 7, 2013

 

Fact checkers should emphasize such contextual elements, not bury them.

Sublime Bloviations "Grading PolitiFact", August, 2012

 

(For the second damn time, practice what you preach!)

 

 

Right wingers feel vindicated that Fiat/Chrysler has announced it will be building Jeeps in China, especially at those websites critical of PolitiFact. Instead of beating the same dead horse again and again, I'm going to take another look at this in the terms of the right-wing argument: that if any (even a very small) percentage of production at the Jeep plants in the United States is replaced by production in China, then Mr. Romney's statement (see above graphic) is true in all respects, and needs no further explanation.

 

The right-wing website Zebra Factcheck (ZFC) uses the word "context" in almost every one of its "fact-checks." It seems to feel that it's so important that  they even have a tile symbol for it. For example, in one of its more recent posts on Marco Rubio, it claims that " In effect, PolitiFact takes Rubio’s tweet out of context."

Zebra Factcheck's littered graphics has a white tile symbol for "Out of Context"

 On his review of Romney's "Jeeps to China" comment, anti-PolitiFact website(s) PolitiFact Bias and Zebra Factcheck writer Bryan White duly notes the "context" he feels is crucially important to Romney's claims.

That’s right. PolitiFact takes a preferred Obama campaign claim about its rescue of the auto industry and states it matter-of-factly in a fact check of Romney. No additional context needed, apparently.

The media treatment of the dispute between the campaigns misses the context while focusing on the particulars. Romney is not simply making statements about Obama’s role in the auto bailout. His campaign is answering the Obama campaign’s messaging and pointing out missing parts of its story.

The only context I can see that was missed (according to Zebra Factcheck) appears to be what was presented by one of Romney's spokespeople to the New York Times in response to Romney's ad:

The facts are clear: despite his false and misleading attacks, President Obama took the auto companies into bankruptcy,” said a spokeswoman, Amanda Henneberg. “His mismanagement of the process has exposed taxpayers to a $25 billion loss.”

Romney had proposed "letting Detroit go bankrupt" in opposition to what President George Bush decided to initiate with a bridge loan to GM and Chrysler in 2008. He said the government "should provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing." But even Michigan's future (Republican) Governor Rick Snyder and (Republican) Congressman Fred Upton, acknowledged that "there was no one that could have picked up those pieces other than the federal government." The respected, not really liberal Economist had this to say:

Free-marketeers that we are, The Economist agreed with Mr Romney at the time. But we later apologised for that position. "Had the government not stepped in, GM might have restructured under normal bankruptcy procedures, without putting public money at risk", we said. But "given the panic that gripped private purse-strings...it is more likely that GM would have been liquidated, sending a cascade of destruction through the supply chain on which its rivals, too, depended." Even Ford, which avoided bankruptcy, feared the industry would collapse if GM went down. At the time that seemed like a real possibility. The credit markets were bone-dry, making the privately financed bankruptcy that Mr Romney favoured improbable. He conveniently ignores this bit of history in claiming to have been right all along.

In May of 2012, Romney actually stated that he deserved "to take a lot of credit" for Detroit's successful turn-around, and continued to claim that "the auto companies needed to go through bankruptcy before government help" even when it was demonstrably untrue and would have had catastrophic results for the auto companies and their suppliers as the Economist confirms above. I should also note here that many of those auto company suppliers supplied foreign car makers  as well; not only would Ford not been able to build cars, but Toyota, Honda, Nissan, etc. So even Japan had a compelling interest in GM and Chrysler not collapsing, because if any supplier went down in the long logistical chain of manufacture, they would not be able to produce any cars and lose much revenue until an alternate source was found.

 

So, when one looks at these statements of Romney's proclaimed true, the obvious question is....what's the point?   Obama forced Chrysler into bankruptcy, sold it to the Italians, and will now build Jeeps in China...but Romney will fight for every American job......why did Romney say this as the "missing part of the story" of Obama's auto rescue? What is its significance? The first two statements aren't really that bad for Obama, but all of them taken together, what do they mean?  The why, the premise, is the context that is missing in Romney's argument, that is conveniently overlooked by  right-wing critics such as ZFC, which claims to revel in finding such meaningful context.

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones uses a 3-part test in judging how deceptive a statement is, and describes very simply that Romney's statement was factual, but dishonest:

1.What was the speaker trying to imply?

2.What would it take to state things accurately?

3.How much would accuracy damage the speaker's point?

On this scale, Romney's ad rates about 9 out of 10 on the deceptiveness scale. He's obviously trying to imply that American jobs will be shipped overseas; stating things accurately would require wholesale revisions; and doing so would completely destroy Romney's point.

"Stating things accurately would require wholesale revisions"--so, what would that be? Romney might have said "Obama made Chrysler go into bankruptcy and the company was sold to the Italian car company Fiat. I wouldn't have done it that way, but it appears they have turned around successfully and are even expanding their markets to China and Russia. My policies will keep them economically healthy so there will always be good jobs like this." Even "expanding markets" has its implications, so you can see why Drum said "wholesale revisions."  And we cannot expect Romney to make such admissions.   Instead, it was a cynically stated "building Jeeps in China" and along with "fighting for every job" made it the killer that became PolitiFact's 2012 Lie of the Year.  

Even if I granted that up to 10 percent of Jeep production could be off-shored to China, does this make Obama's bail-out a failure? Does it nullify the expansion in production already taking place due to increased demand? Will it actually ship jobs overseas, and does that take away from Obama's claims of working to protect American jobs?

I say "10 percent" of Jeep production could be offshored, although there really is no evidence for this. For example, one of the most popular brands in China is the Buick. Long after the Buick Park Avenue was replaced with the Lucerne here in the U.S., Park Avenues were still being built, for several years, for the Chinese market. They built no Lucernes, which would  have been exported there from the U.S. In other words, a single Jeep model will be built for the Chinese market. It may not be any of the Jeeps we build here, but one built based on consumer preferences in China; vehicles will continue to be exported to meet that niche of the market. One does not replace another as Fiat/Chrysler is attempting to expand its "customer base" in China, not just serve the existing one. That is the assumption that is made by the right-wing sites--one must therefore replace the other--that from an auto manufacturing/marketing point of view, is not so clear cut.

It is common practice for auto companies to build vehicles where the market is located. Japanese automaker Honda, for example, builds most of its models in the United States. It has mostly to do with the expense of tariffs and shipping, as well as Intellectual Property, outside suppliers and logistics. But expansion in China should be regarded as a good thing overall for Fiat/Chrysler because it brings brand recognition (in expanding the customer base).

 

"Requiring" or pressuring the auto companies to export to China, which is what those vindicated seem to think Romney would do as president, would clearly make the government a regulator, which seems to be just the opposite of what Romney advocated during his campaign.

 

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Since then we have learned, as noted in one of the links above, one model will be built in China. I don't know what the mix is of models in that 50,000 that are now exported. We don't know the inter-company business decisions of Fiat/Chrysler. So for that reason the anti-PolitiFact websites can exploit the comeback of the auto industry via the bailout because we cannot completely verify that "off shoring" appears to be taking place for those models exported. We cannot verify if it will reduce jobs as a result, even though the company has steadfastly denied any workers would be affected. This same off-shore practice would have been followed pre-bailout or if there were no financial collapse. In another PolitiFact ruling on GM, a right-wing PAC is making a similar assertion, but it was found that while 70 percent of GM vehicles are sold overseas, 70 percent are also built overseas.

A strikingly obtuse comment came out at the PolitiFact Facebook page (on a post of PolitiFact's article standing by its ruling) when a commenter stated that high tariffs are the reason auto companies build plants in China. The comment in response was that the government could simply pressure China to lower its tariffs. So....do they not think that something like this has been tried already? Perhaps this commenter should write their congressperson or senator and give them this brilliant advice. Easier said than done.

Postscript:  On Friday, January 25, the Washington Post re-visited and re-affirmed its 4-Pinnochio rating (as close as one can get to PolitiFact's Pants on Fire) of the Romney Jeeps to China chain of events.  As writer Glenn Kessler states in his conclusion:

Then the ad said: “Obama sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job.” This is a smarmy way of restating the previous incorrect statements with an air of plausible deniability.

There is no evidence that any American jobs will be lost as a result of the Chrysler deal in China. In fact, greater success in China might well strengthen the overall company.

With all due respect to Stevens [Romney's spokesperson defending the ad], the claim that Romney turned out to be right is simply not accurate. We fail to see how the argument used to defend Romney against charges of outsourcing — which this column often argued was mostly bogus — can be turned on its head in this particular situation.

Meanwhile, the ad has other serious problems — such as mischaracterizing the PolitiFact column, ignoring the context of the Detroit News endorsement and miscasting Obama’s role in the sale to Fiat. We reaffirm our earlier ruling of Four Pinocchios.