A strong domestic auto industry isn’t just important to Michigan; it’s crucial to rebuilding the U.S. economy. Manufacturing, and especially auto manufacturing, generates jobs with good pay and benefits, and the economic spin-offs from those jobs are vital to other sectors of the economy.

The steps taken in 2008 and 2009 to preserve the domestic auto industry were essential. The companies involved have come through a painful restructuring, and they and their workers have sacrificed much. But the improved health and brighter prospects of the domestic auto industry demonstrate the wisdom of these decisions.

U.S. automakers aren’t just competing against foreign companies, but against foreign governments who support their companies. That means our government must continue to work in partnership with the auto industry; American jobs, the strength of our economy and our national security depend on it. We must speed the transition away from fossil fuels in transportation, both to combat the damage of climate change and to reduce our dependence on oil imported from unstable and hostile nations. Government support for next-generation electric vehicles and other advanced technologies is critical, including targeted tax credits to help build that market. In addition, our military’s need for efficient, alternative-energy vehicles makes federal support for such technology vital for our national security.

Government and industry should consider innovative mechanisms and incentives to speed the transition away from oil and toward electric drive and other advanced and alternative vehicle technologies.  We have a regulatory regime that favors slower, step-by-step improvements in fuel economy and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that potentially stands in the way of more revolutionary investments in technology. One possible step to encourage such a transition would be to require that some segments of the new vehicle market be composed entirely of alternative technologies such as electric drive.

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