Daniel Howes' Weekly Essay

This week, Howes says this may be a progressive moment for the Democratic Party aiming to oust President Trump from the White House, but their preferred policy preferences and reliably anti-business tone aren’t reassuring to voters in the industrial heartland. Did the Dems in Detroit this week speak to their anxieties? Not really. Did the few who bothered to mention General Motors’ looming plant closings portray the move as anything other than Donald Trump’s fault? Of course not. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Howes says, the Democrats vying to replace President Donald Trump might want to get a little savvier about the real economic issues facing the electorally vital industrial Midwest. Around here, so many of the issues that matter to everyday folks can be expressed in a four-letter word: jobs. Love him or hate him, Trump turned blue real estate red because he spoke to the frustration, dislocation and plant closings driving anxieties higher in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. And 2020 is shaping up to deliver more of the same. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

They’re waiting for the end at Lordstown, the giant auto plant General Motors says it no longer needs. And for the closure of the Vindicator, for the past 150 years Youngstown’s daily newspaper. They’re the latest casualties in a downward spiral gripping a politically important region trying to reinvent itself with advanced manufacturing and its home in the heart of the industrial Midwest. Their struggles are the stuff of a Springsteen song … of dated Rust Belt stereotypes … of tiresome coastal condescension trafficking in local misery. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Howes says that not since the dark days of bankruptcy a decade ago are contract talks between the United Auto Workers and Detroit’s automakers likely to be as tough as the round beginning next week. It’s not because times are bad. It’s because times are good – a run of profitability and strong sales not seen since the 1960s. Yet change is coming faster than four-year contracts can manage. And that’s an ominous sign for both sides, especially union members seeking certainty. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Daniel Howes says global automakers face a “profit desert” in coming years as spending for the Auto 2.0 spaces of mobility, autonomy and electrification consume vast amounts of capital. But returns on those investments are showing unmistakable signs of declining even as sales in major markets soften and break-even points rise. The trend could have profound implications for Detroit’s automakers, their place in the next-gen automotive hierarchy and future profit-sharing payouts to members of the United Auto Workers. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Daniel Howes says that Not since two Detroit automakers emerged from bankruptcy a decade ago has the hometown industry faced as much uncertainty as they do now in President Donald Trump's Washington. Chaos on tariffs and trade, emissions standards and self-driving vehicle legislation, conjures an F-word that hasn’t been used much in recent years to describe the revived industry. And that word is “fragile.” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Daniel Howes says the year-end closure of Marygrove College after 92 years in Detroit doesn’t mean the end of education on its Gothic campus. No, two years of planning now ensure the 53-acre site will once again educate Detroiters, as “The School @ Marygrove” enrolls 120 ninth graders this fall and the University of Michigan launches a teacher residency program patterned after U.S. medical schools. The upshot: Marygrove the place is getting a second act, even as the financial rescue of the school itself failed. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Daniel Howes says parochial French politicking effectively killed Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV’s proposed merger with Renault SA of France. Increasing French demands to benefit French interests signaled to FCA’s leadership the likely shape of things to come as they considered the scale of the merger they proposed to execute. What did they expect from politicians controlling a 15% stake in Renault, evidently believed to be a license to call the shots and set the rules? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Daniel Howes says public education in Michigan is facing a crisis every bit as threatening to its future as the bankruptcies of Detroit and two of its automakers. And remedies to fix the deepening problems may prove even more difficult. More than fixing “the damn roads” -- or cutting auto insurance rates -- reforming K-12 education is perhaps the most critical, long-term policy challenge facing Republicans and Democrats, labor and business, parents and students who may think Michigan is keeping pace. It is not. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Howes says Detroit’s first new auto plant in nearly 30 years is a go, but not without the usual complaining about process and untrustworthy business people. The city’s deal with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV gives city residents first crack at the nearly 5,000 jobs to be created there – and offers yet more evidence that the Motor City is turning a real corner. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Escalating trade tensions between the United States and China may be slowing auto sales there, but they’re also exposing the vulnerabilities of Detroit’s automakers in the world’s largest auto market. The net effect could be a reassessment of their collective footprint there, especially as domestic automaker’s claim ever larger chunks of the Chinese market at the expense of foreign players. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Daniel Howes says the “goods news” of General Motors Co. finding a potential buyer for its Lordstown Assembly Plant in northeast Ohio is drawing mixed reactions because the potential results could be mixed. Replacing the scale, jobs and payroll of a modern auto plant is next to impossible in an increasingly lean – and non-union – private economy. And the wrenching experience is exacerbated by the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years and economic growth running north of 3 percent. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Daniel Howes says bipartisan opposition to the rewrite of the North American Free Trade Agreement is forcing President Donald Trump and his trade team to scramble for votes. The problem: House Democrats led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi have precisely zero motivation to give Trump a win on trade amid escalating fights over access to White House documents and witnesses. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Daniel Howes says the Ilitch family’s billion-dollar investment in its District Detroit, anchored by Little Caesars Arena, is being dogged by broken promises. Critics, including a new HBO segment, say the owners of Detroit’s Tigers and Red Wings have failed to deliver the residential, retail and restaurant investments promised in exchange for an infusion of taxpayer money. That’s a problem for other current and would-be investors pursuing landmark projects in other parts of town – a problem only the Ilitches can fix. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Daniel Howes says signs are growing that Ford Motor Co. is no longer the Rodney Dangerfield of the auto industry – the company that gets no respect. But investor sentiment is changing because reality is changing. The Blue Oval’s global restructuring is taking shape with cutbacks in Europe and South America, greater reliance on its partner in India, salaried workforce reductions in North America. And Ford shares? They’re performing better so far this year than their American peers, including Elon Musk’s Tesla. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Daniel Howes says President Donald Trump’s whipsawing on trade and tariffs is exhausting the very people it’s intended to help. Threats to close the U.S.-Mexico border are withdrawn … only to be replaced by the promise of new tariffs on cars, trucks and SUVs built in Mexico for the U.S. market. This is what "Art of the Deal" leverage looks like. It’s a blunderbuss of scattershot intimidation whose practical effect would be to impose acute economic pain on the industrial Midwest – the very region whose voters delivered Trump to the White House. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Daniel Howes says federal authorities investigating alleged corruption inside the United Auto Workers are asking some of the same questions a U.S. Senate committee asked 60-plus years ago: are staff donations to their so-called “flower funds” voluntary? And have ranking union officials who control the funds pocketed some of the cash for their own use? If they did, it would confirm one of the worst suspicions on the factory floor: namely, that union leaders are more interested in enriching themselves than enriching members they purport to represent. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Daniel Howes says Detroit’s automakers are using investment decisions in a union contract year to politick President Donald Trump. The reason: General Motors Co.’s plans to close four U.S. plants as part of a restructuring moved the president to repeatedly lambaste the automaker on Twitter and in public appearances. In the forming battle for the hearts and minds of the work-a-day Midwest, Detroit's automakers are proxies personally selected by POTUS. And Michigan and Ohio are the principal battlegrounds. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Daniel Howes says Gretchen Whitmer’s budget address helped answer whether Michigan business still has a friend in the governor’s office: not so much. The net effect of her business tax proposals — most of which are unlikely to survive the Republican-controlled Legislature — would be a tap on the economic brakes just as the hometown auto industry’s blistering sales and profit pace is beginning to slow. Credit Whitmer with proving yet again an enduring truth of Michigan politics: it's consistently inconsistent, swinging from one partisan worldview to the other as predictably as crumbling roadways in the freeze-thaw cycle of late-winter Michigan. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Daniel Howes says Fiat Chrysler’s plans to invest $4.5 billion and create 6,500 tax-paying jobs to build a new Jeep plant in Detroit vindicates late-CEO Sergio Marchionne’s call three years ago to abandon small cars in the United States and weight the lineup more heavily to trucks and SUVs. A company controlled by Italians and run by a Briton insists that authentic Jeeps come from the industrial Midwest. It’s hard to overstate the reality and symbolism here: Detroit just landed a prize like it hasn’t in a long time. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.