GOP pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Mitt Rom­ney, son of an Amer­i­can Motors CEO, nat­u­ral­ly says he loves Amer­i­can cars. His wife, as he put it, ​“dri­ves a cou­ple of Cadil­lacs.” He’s installing an ele­va­tor in his beach man­sion just for his cars. Though a mil­lion­aire, he reject­ed fly­ing his five sons to a vaca­tion des­ti­na­tion, instead pack­ing them into a car, then strap­ping their dog Sea­mus’ car­ri­er to the car roof for a ride that, shall we say, chal­lenged the canine’s intesti­nal fortitude.

Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma, by con­trast, has giv­en some love to Amer­i­can car com­pa­nies and Amer­i­can car work­ers. He res­cued Chrysler and Gen­er­al Motors, pre­serv­ing the Amer­i­can icon com­pa­nies and hun­dreds of thou­sands of Amer­i­can car man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs. He imposed sanc­tions on Chi­nese tires that received improp­er export sub­si­dies, a move that saved thou­sands of U.S. tire-build­ing jobs. And now he’s chal­leng­ing ille­gal­ly sub­si­dized Chi­nese auto parts to sus­tain Amer­i­can com­pa­nies and workers.

Rom­ney has blast­ed Oba­ma every auto-man­u­fac­tur­ing-job-pre­serv­ing step of the way. On the auto bailout, Rom­ney admon­ished, ​“Let Detroit go bank­rupt.” He con­demned the tar­iffs on Chi­nese tires. Rom­ney claims he loves Amer­i­can cars. But the actions of his pri­vate equi­ty firm, Bain Cap­i­tal, in buy­ing com­pa­nies that were ​“pio­neers” in off­shoring Amer­i­can jobs, sug­gest he’s fine with Amer­i­can firms mak­ing cars and car parts over­seas. Oba­ma, by con­trast, took the action nec­es­sary to ensure Amer­i­can cars are made in Amer­i­ca by Amer­i­can com­pa­nies employ­ing Amer­i­can workers.

Here’s what Rom­ney actu­al­ly said about his ado­ra­tion for cars:

​“I love cars. I love Amer­i­can cars. And long may they rule the world.”

When it came to help­ing them con­tin­ue to rule the world, how­ev­er, Rom­ney dissed Detroit.

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma embraced Detroit. He took mon­ey from the Wall Street bailout fund and used it to help GM and Chrysler con­tin­ue to rule the world. GM regained the title of world’s largest car com­pa­ny in Jan­u­ary and hun­dreds of thou­sands of auto and auto part man­u­fac­tur­ing work­ers retained their jobs.

Sim­i­lar­ly, in Sep­tem­ber of 2009, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma imposed duties on unfair­ly trad­ed Chi­nese tires. My union, the Unit­ed Steel­work­ers (USW), filed the trade case that led to those duties. The sanc­tions saved thou­sands of tire-mak­ing jobs in the Unit­ed States and con­tributed to cre­ation of 1,000 more.

Ear­li­er this year, the USW, the Alliance for Amer­i­can Man­u­fac­tur­ing and 189 mem­bers of Con­gress urged Oba­ma to take yet anoth­er trade action, this one to pro­tect Amer­i­can auto parts man­u­fac­tur­ers and their work­ers. The request fol­lowed pub­li­ca­tion of four reports detail­ing China’s ille­gal export sub­si­dies to its auto parts sec­tor. Nations may sub­si­dize man­u­fac­tur­ing for inter­nal con­sump­tion, but inter­na­tion­al law pro­hibits sub­si­diz­ing prod­ucts to be export­ed because it dis­torts the mar­ket, caus­ing the bank­rupt­cy of man­u­fac­tur­ers in coun­tries where the arti­fi­cial­ly cheap prod­ucts are sold.

The auto parts com­plaint says that for­bid­den export sub­si­dies, includ­ing cash grants, pref­er­en­tial tax treat­ment and oth­er perks val­ued at $1 bil­lion over the past three years enabled Chi­na to jump from 16thlargest pro­duc­er of auto parts in 2002, when it export­ed $7 bil­lion in parts, to 5th largest last year when it export­ed $70 billion.

The upshot is that imports of auto parts from Chi­na increased sev­en fold, con­tribut­ing to the loss of near­ly half of all U.S. auto parts jobs – 400,000 – since 2000. An exam­ple is Olym­co, Inc. a Can­ton, Ohio, met­al-plat­ing com­pa­ny where 100 work­ers, mem­bers of the USW, once made auto parts. Now, main­ly as a result of sub­si­dized Chi­nese com­pe­ti­tion, only 11 work­ers remain.

The preda­to­ry Chi­nese prac­tices encour­age U.S. auto parts mak­ers to off­shore man­u­fac­tur­ing, and now some of the largest U.S. auto parts com­pa­nies pro­duce in Chi­na.

Sen­sa­ta, a car parts man­u­fac­tur­er in Freeport, Ill. is among those on the way to Chi­na. The 145 work­ers in Freeport, who make sen­sors and con­trols, are train­ing their Chi­nese replacements.

These work­ers may return to Chi­na to join many there who are packed into dor­mi­to­ries that rival turn of the 20th Cen­tu­ry U.S. ten­e­ments for slum con­di­tions. Rom­ney described work­ers in a Chi­nese appli­ance fac­to­ry he visited:

​“work­ing, work­ing, work­ing as hard as they could, at rates of rough­ly 50 cents an hour. They cared about their jobs; they wouldn’t even look up as we walked by.”

That’s right. These exploit­ed work­ers kept their heads down. These 50-cent-an-hour labor­ers feared they’d be fired for the audac­i­ty of look­ing at a quar­ter bil­lion­aire Amer­i­can visitor.

Sen­sa­ta is owned by Bain Cap­i­tal, the com­pa­ny Rom­ney found­ed in 1984, the pri­vate equi­ty firm that Rom­ney claims he left in 1999, even though it con­tin­ued to pay him mil­lions for a decade after­ward. The work­ers at Sen­sa­ta have pub­li­cal­ly begged Rom­ney to inter­vene with Bain on their behalf to keep the fac­to­ry in the Unit­ed States. They’ve col­lect­ed 35,000 sig­na­tures sup­port­ing their cause. They’ve got the back­ing of the Freeport City Coun­cil, U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky and Illi­nois Gov. Pat Quinn. They’re camp­ing out­side the fac­to­ry in a tent city called Bain­port. But Rom­ney hasn’t respond­ed. No word from the can­di­date who claims to love Amer­i­can cars.

He loves own­ing ​‘em. He rel­ish­es rid­ing them up and down on ele­va­tors. But when it comes to show­ing a lit­tle love for car busi­ness­es and car work­ers, Romney’s frigid. Just ask the work­ers cool­ing their heels at Bainport.

The auto parts case is Obama’s ninth trade action against Chi­na. The Wash­ing­ton Post wrote:

​“The Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion has steadi­ly amped up its enforce­ment actions against Chi­na at the WTO.”

Oba­ma has repeat­ed­ly con­front­ed coun­tries whose ille­gal trade prac­tices threat­en Amer­i­can com­pa­nies and work­ers, fil­ing twice as many cas­es in one term as Bush did in two. He has tan­gi­bly demon­strat­ed his love for Amer­i­can cars and Amer­i­can car workers.

Full dis­clo­sure: The Unit­ed Steel­work­ers union is a spon­sor of In These Times.