Daniel Howes' Weekend 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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?

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.

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.