Last year, president Obama visited GE’s 106-year-old Waukesha, Wisconsin plant.

At the plant, GE builds large piston engines for power and oilfield use that run on natural gas or methane from landfills.

President Obama called the plant “a model for the country.”  

This week, GE announced that it will move production to Canada. The move will cost the US 350 manufacturing jobs. 

Is Obama’s “model” the correct one for the US?

Placing the Blame
Some place the blame for the Manufacturing Move on export financing. 

 In its latest salvo aimed at persuading Congress to renew the U.S. Export-Import Bank’s charter which expired in June, GE will invest $265 million in a new state-of-the-art manufacturing plant at a Canadian location yet to be determined.

In exchange for moving the production from Waukesha, Wisconsin, Export Development Canada will provide financing support for a range of future products, including some still made in the United States.

The announcement stands in sharp contrast to a 2014 visit to the site by President Barack Obama, in which he touted its worker training program as “a model for the country.”

“I’d say the workers at Waukesha are the real world casualties in the right-wing fight to close the EXIM Bank,” said Frank Larkin, a spokesman for the International Association of Machinists, which represents plant workers.

In recent weeks, GE has announced several deals to locate thousands of new jobs out of the United States following EXIM’s closure and to access government export credit from the United Kingdom, France, Hungary and China.

GE Vice Chairman John Rice told Reuters that foreign export credit agencies are “rolling out the red carpet” for the industrial conglomerate, more than tripling the export financing capacity it received under EXIM.

GE Debunks EXIM Theory

GE says those engines are not typically sold with EXIM financing, so let’s look elsewhere for the reason. What about the dollar?

Canadian Dollar 2003-2015 Round Trip