Skip to main content

'Buy American' campaign revs up to tout domestic automakers' impact

Date Posted: May 26 2006

U.S. automakers have a new "lobbying" group that began an ad campaign this month, explaining why buying American-made vehicles helps America.

The "Level Field Institute" was founded by retirees of GM, Ford, Daimler-Chrysler and the companies that supply them. Their first television ads hit the airwaves this month, under the theme that made in America still matters.

"Our campaign seeks to educate consumers and public officials about how what we drive, drives America," said Level Field Institute President Jim Doyle, a former U.S. Department of Commerce official and the son of two former autoworkers.

"Ford and GM each employ more Americans than all foreign automakers combined," he said. "After this year's cuts, they will still employ more Americans. While foreign automakers own more than 40% of the market, they employ only 20% of the workers - and purchase about 20% of U.S. parts. The result? Each foreign auto purchase supports half the jobs buying a Ford, GM or Chrysler does."

The national paid media campaign will consist of TV, print and Internet ads, and published reports say the Big 3 automakers are contributing to their efforts. Domestic automakers have been mulling the use of a similar campaign with their own ads. Level Field's stated goal is to raise awareness about why made in America "still matters to our economy and our future competitiveness - and to give consumers and public officials information that helps them make their own choices."

The Reuters News Agency said "With Asian automakers shipping about $65 billion worth of autos and auto parts to the United States last year and U.S. automakers shedding tens of thousands of jobs, ad campaigns by Toyota and Hyundai touting the number of Americans they employ have hit a raw nerve."

To tout the U.S. perspective, The Level Field Institute came up with numerous facts and figures for U.S. consumers to consider when it comes time to purchase a new car:

  • A Center for Automotive Research study sponsored by foreign automakers found that 8 out of 10 foreign automaker jobs based here are in sales - not assembly lines, research labs and headquarters. "Dealer jobs can pay well, but America cannot compete in a global economy by selling cars," Doyle said. "It must compete by designing and building the next generation of them."
  • In 2004, GM employed about 5 times as many Americans as Toyota. In a year or two, even with a further downsized company, GM could still employ 4 times more Americans.
  • Deciding between a Honda and a Ford? Ford employs about four times more Americans than Honda. GM operates 23 plants to Honda's eight.
  • What's the jobs difference between a Honda and a Hyundai? Honda employs about seven times more Americans than Hyundai, and operates eight U.S. assembly plants to Hyundai's one.
  • The Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association reports that the 14 Japanese automakers doing business in the U.S. employ 3,100 workers at 33 R&D facilities nationwide. U.S. automakers invest more in research and development than any other U.S. industry. Approximately 65,000 workers in more than 200 facilities and dozens of companies across Michigan perform $10 billion in new research each year.
  • If Ford, GM and Chrysler shrink to about 320,000 workers, and drop to the market share projected by Auto News last June, they will still employ about twice as many workers on a per car basis as Toyota. (About 33 cars per employee.) You can argue that some of this is due to comparative efficiencies, but a great deal of it has to do with where a company houses its researchers, its accountants, its engineers and designers.
  • One way to judge degrees of "made in America" is to look at "domestic content" - the percentage of a car's parts that were produced in the U.S. and Canada. Automakers report this information to the U.S. government each year. Domestic content varies from brand to brand and vehicle to vehicle.

Level Field said it believes a more reliable way to judge how much an automaker contributes to the U.S. economy is to look at how many jobs it produces here. Since so many Americans work for parts suppliers (about 2 to 3 times as many as work for the automakers themselves), domestic content can have a big impact on jobs.

For 2004 cars, domestic automakers' (DCX's Chrysler division, Ford and GM) automobiles contained 80 percent domestic content, while Japanese, European and Korean carmakers used 31, 5 and 3 percent domestic content, respectively.

Data for 2005 remains incomplete. However, the group pointed to a recent Detroit Free Press article found that the average content of GM, Ford and Chrysler were 81, 82 and 75 percent, respectively. Toyota, Honda and Nissan automobiles contained, on average, 49.9, 58.5 and 48 percent domestic content.

Level Field's national media campaign said it is responding to new PR and lobbying campaigns by foreign automakers. "While Level Field welcomes foreign investment by foreign automakers," Doyle said, "it believes those who care about how automakers contribute to our economy should have all the facts. With one foreign company spending approximately $18 million on print and TV ads on its first U.S. assembly plant, many Americans are not aware that GM, Ford and Chrysler operate more than 150 major facilities nationwide."

Doyle continued: "We believe that many reporters and public officials have stopped focusing on these issues because they believe that consumers do not care, that losing manufacturing jobs is inevitable, and because they simply don't appreciate the scale of jobs at stake.

"The fact that foreign automakers are spending so much energy promoting their job footprints suggests that consumers do care. And so does today's interest in hybrids. For millions of Americans, buying a car is clearly a principled decision.

"Level Field does not expect every consumer to respond to our campaign, and we believe the answer to 'What is an American automobile?' is up to you. But we believe that many consumers care - and they will care more if they have all the facts."