On the recordNovember 15, 2017
On his recent trip to Asia, President Trump reminded us and our international trading partners that our commercial agreements must be honest, fair, and reciprocal. With this admonition, he called on our Asian friends to build automobile plants that would employ American workers. Three cheers for him for doing that. The United States already has experienced the benefits and the liabilities of foreign-controlled multinational automobile companies manufacturing in our country. These companies have provided good jobs for America's working people, but having these foreign companies here hasn't always worked. A few years ago, we discovered that one of the world's preeminent car manufacturers, Volkswagen Group of America, had engaged in an illegal and clandestine strategy to circumvent U.S. emissions laws. Volkswagen has a longstanding relationship with the American people. Like so many young people in my generation, my first car was a Volkswagen Beetle, so Volkswagen enjoyed an enormous goodwill in our country. Despite that, Volkswagen Group of America intentionally did us wrong. Volkswagen intentionally violated our emissions regulations and, by many accounts, they even engineered their systems to falsely indicate that they were complying with the emissions standards. This was nothing more than pure arrogance and a hostile intent and an egregious violation of our best legislative efforts to regulate our way to clean air.…
