Bill Slater, a Delaware constituent of Joe Biden’s for 30 years, said it bugs him to see Biden glad handing autoworkers in his campaign ads because “Biden’s trade policies have destroyed their jobs.”
As senator, Biden voted for the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which many critics say led to Chrysler shuttering its Newark, Delaware plant in 2007. Two years later, General Motors closed its Boxwood plant in Wilmington.
Slater on Oct. 15 recorded a video of the ongoing demolition of the Boxwood plant, declaring, “With Biden as President, this is what you’ll get.”
“I think Joe Biden has reigned over the greatest job loss in modern Delaware history and to see him in these campaign ads is total hypocrisy,” said Slater, a retired sales and customer service representative.
A recent Biden campaign ad features him prominently surrounding himself with autoworkers. He also spoke earlier this week to autoworkers in Toledo, Ohio, promising that his green energy policies would create a million new auto industry jobs.
But Slater isn’t buying it. “I remember when he and President Obama came to Delaware [after the 2008-2009 recession] and they stood on the site of the closed Boxwood plant and said promised they were going to bring a Fisker car plant.”
On Oct. 27, 2009, Biden announced that the plant was being reopened, calling the closure a “difficult journey that today we’re beginning and hopefully going to end.” But that Fisker Automotive plant never materialized. The green energy car company went bankrupt after receiving more than half-a-billion dollars in taxpayer loans from the 2009 Recovery Act.
“I remember both of them standing there with egg on their face because they knew a second plant had closed,” recalled Slater.
In total, taxpayers lost more than three-quarters of a billion dollars in loans to green energy startups including Fisker and Solyndra.
Newark’s Chrysler plant reached its peak with 5400 workers before Biden voted for NAFTA. A Chicago Federal Reserve article by Thomas Klier reports that while Joe’s beloved Delaware auto workers were eliminated in the first fourteen years of the agreement, Mexico’s auto industry has more than tripled as of 2018.
According to Klier, “… in anticipation of NAFTA, three full-scale assembly plants were opened [in Mexico] during the early 1990s (one each by Chrysler, GM, and Nissan).” Additionally, Chrysler chose to manufacture the PT Cruiser exclusively in Mexico during its nine-year run, while at the same time shutting the Newark plant.
Americans for Limited Government president Rick Manning said, “Joe Biden was senator for the entirety of the decline and death of the Delaware auto industry, he effectively loaded the gun through his support for NAFTA and the Permanent Normalized Trade Relations agreement with China. Biden is either completely unaware of the connection between his Mexico/Canada first trade policy and the export of U.S. auto jobs from Delaware, or he is one of the most audacious liars in the history of politics.”
At this week’s Ohio campaign rally, Biden also promised autoworkers he would “stand up to China’s trade abuses.”
This is curious, because not only did Biden fail to stand up to China as Vice President, he actually orchestrated the 2013 sweetheart deal which gave Chinese companies access to U.S. capital markets without having to comply with strict disclosure regulations required of U.S. companies. The lack of transparency into Chinese investments has puts the retirement accounts of millions of Americans at risk. That same year his son, Hunter Biden, became a board member at BHR Equity Investment Fund Management Company, a Chinese state-backed private equity firm, according to the New York Times and the South China Morning Post. In 2017, Hunter Biden bought 10 percent of the company for about $420,000, The Times reported.
“Joe does not have the back of the American worker,” warned Slater. “If there is a better deal from Canada or Mexico, that’s where he’ll go.”
In his closing words at his campaign stop this week in Ohio, Biden told the audience, that American workers are “just asking for a fair shot.”Biden is right about that. But his trade and energy policies have put American workers at a disadvantage and given countries like Mexico and China the upper hand.
“If he can’t look after the people in his own state, he certainly can’t look after the people of the entire country,” concluded Slater.
Catherine Mortensen is the Vice President of Communications at Americans for Limited Government.
