Column: Obama's non-union, right-to-work manufacturing model?

Excerpt from my Tuesday Detroit News column over in the Opinion section:

President Obama made a non-union, diesel power-train plant in right-to-work North Carolina the first stop in his post-State of the Union tour touting American manufacturing. Not surprisingly, the White House made no mention of these inconvenient facts. Indeed, the Canadian-owned Linamar facility outside of Asheville contradicts the entire industrial policy that Obama has made the cornerstone of his second term.

“I believe we attract new jobs to America by investing in new sources of energy and new infrastructure and the next generation of high-wage, high-tech American manufacturing,” said the president, echoing his State of the Union themes to 160 workers. “And that’s why I wanted to come down here to Asheville, because there’s a good story to tell here.”

But Linamar didn’t open in an abandoned Volvo plant two years ago because of Obama’s policies. It opened here because North Carolina is a right-to-work state with low energy costs driven by traditional fuels like coal, nuclear, and natural gas.