Ohio -- With the Lordstown plant - and other General Motors' locations - now in jeopardy, Ohio's U.S. Senators are asking GM to reconsider.

“And they have said, ‘Well, we’re not selling small cars.’ Well, you know what? They’ve got 20 electric vehicles now that they have announced they’re going to produce in the next five years — two in the next 18 months — so that would be a great opportunity for us at Lordstown,” said Senator Rob Portman (R-OH).

“I met with the CEO of GM several months ago and have been in touch with the company since, asking them to retool if they were going to shutdown production in Lordstown — asking them to retool to use some of the huge tax breaks they got a year ago and investing it in Lordstown,” said Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH). “We’ve seen no real response.”

Senators Brown and Portman said Congress, and the White House, can put pressure on GM to not abandon the employees in question.

President Trump said Monday that he spoke with the company’s CEO and told her he was unhappy.

“And I said, ‘You know, this country’s done a lot for General Motors. You better get back in there soon — that’s Ohio. And you better get back in there soon,” Trump said.

He then tweeted on Tuesday that he was considering “cutting all GM subsidies, including for electric cars.”

 

 

But the president’s words were not enough for Congressman Tim Ryan (D-OH13), whose district includes the Lordstown plant.

“This president did not lift one finger,” Ryan said in an interview with CNN. “He’s got executive time all day, he spends time on Twitter. He does nothing but try to divide the country and start culture wars. And behind the scenes, the American worker’s getting screwed by a company that got one of his huge tax cuts.”

Brown also blamed the Republican tax plan, saying it cut the corporate tax rate but didn’t require that companies reinvest newfound money into America.

Portman didn’t go that far, but both agreed the next step in finding a solution is working together to encourage GM to bring a new product to Lordstown.

“I think that’s a very logical next step, is for us to all work together on a bipartisan basis, with the administration, to ensure that the Lordstown plant is at the top of the list, as General Motors looks to where they’re going to put their next product,” Portman said.

“It’s not a lost cause if Congress and the president step up in the way they should,” Brown said.

Brown and Portman are asking General Motors to document how many workers, beyond the Lordstown plant itself, will be affected by this closure.

And Brown is asking for a bill he recently introduced to be passed. It would revoke part of the Republican tax plan and give people a discount if they buy a car made in America.