In a first-of-its-kind Internet town hall meeting today, President Obama said that he would announce in the next few days plans to restructure Detroit’s struggling automotive industry. Any aid would have to include sacrifices from all parties involved, from labor to management to suppliers.
Obama said:
I think it is appropriate for us to say are there ways for us to provide help to the U.S. auto industry to get through this very difficult time, but the price is you’ve got to finally restructure to deal with these long-standing problems. That means that everybody’s going to have to give a little bit – shareholders, workers, creditors, suppliers, dealers – everybody is going to have to recognize that the current model economic model of the auto industry is unsustainable.
The president said that even though additional federal aid for automakers might be unpopular, letting them fold would lead the struggling economy down even further.
Gov. Jennifer Granholm traveled to Washington on Tuesday to lobby administration officials to aid the automakers.
