Word: auto
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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However Canada's willingness to offer as much as it has to GM Canada comes in the face of strong public opposition to the bailout, even in dyed-in-the-wool auto towns like Oshawa and Windsor. "Across Canada opposition to bailing out the car companies is something like 4 to 1," says analyst DesRosiers, who has more than 30 years of auto-industry experience. For $9 billion, he adds, the Canadian government could have asked any of the solvent Japanese or European automakers to build five new car plants in Ontario...
...rate of contraction was slowing and that China might be on the road to recovery. Power-generation and transportation statistics, key indicators of the economy's direction, registered modest increases in March after months of decline. Banks lent money at record levels, investment showed signs of recovery, and auto sales grew nearly 3.9% in the first quarter compared with the same period last year, thanks to subsidies for new-car buyers and lower sales taxes. The results led Wen to conclude that "Chinese government policy has been timely, correct and decisive...
...stood in the rose garden on May 19 with state governors and auto executives to announce a new deal that tightens automobile fuel-efficiency standards, Barack Obama took note of the glorious weather. "The sun is out because good things are happening," he said...
...major players - California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, GM CEO Fritz Henderson, Michigan Representative John Dingell - some of whom are still locked in lawsuits over California's earlier attempts to pass its own stricter fuel-efficiency standards. (Under the Clean Air Act, the state has the right to implement auto-pollution regulations that are tougher than national laws, provided that the Environmental Protection Agency issues a waiver, which was denied under George W. Bush.) For Obama, the simple fact that these habitually warring parties were willing to come together on the new requirements was as important as the 1.8 billion...
That said, it's easier to forge a historic consensus when the obstacle to change - the U.S. auto industry - is now basically a subsidiary of the Federal Government. And though the new regulations are long overdue - even if U.S. cars in 2016 will be only about as efficient as European autos are now - they're just a start. Despite the positive early signs from the White House, some greens still fret about the future and wonder whether Obama's preference for cooperation over confrontation means he will back away from the truly radical action needed to combat climate change...