Fox's Cavuto Prefers His Auto Expertise To Ford CEO's

Fox News' Neil Cavuto trotted out well-worn falsehoods about the successful auto rescue, casting doubt on claims made by Ford CEO Alan Mulally on Cavuto's own show a year earlier.

On September 20, President Obama delivered a speech on the economy at a Ford Motors plant in Liberty, Missouri. During the speech, he noted that while Ford did not accept a bailout in the wake of the financial crisis, if General Motors (GM) and Chrysler had not accepted federal funds, it “would have had a profound impact on Ford.”

Discussing the president's speech on Fox News' Your World, host Neil Cavuto was joined by Fox Business contributor Charles Payne and Wall Street Journal editorial board member Stephen Moore. Cavuto criticized the President's remarks about Ford being affected by GM and Chrysler's decision to accept federal funds. Cavuto acknowledged that Obama's remarks were similar to Mulally's, who credited the auto rescue for preserving the  industry, but dismissed the statement, asking “how do you know that? It was my question then, it remains my question now.”

While Cavuto cast doubt over whether or not Ford would have gone under, the fact that Ford would have been imperiled by the disintegration of the other “Big Three” automakers is not only well-established, Cavuto was told as much by Mr. Mulally himself on an edition of Your World taped one year previously

During their interview, Mulally stated, “if GM and Chrysler, who were completely bankrupt, went into free fall they could have taken down the industry and the U.S. economy from a recession into a depression.” He went on to state that all of the remaining automakers “would have been in real trouble.”

In addition to downplaying the necessity of the auto rescue, the panelists hypothesized that private capital could have been raised to shore up teetering automakers. This opinion, voiced by Charles Payne stating, “I honestly believe that the private sector would have stepped up and funded General Motors the way that bankruptcies have been funded in the past,” also does not comport with the facts.

When the auto rescues were first designed in late-2008 the financial industry was in the midst of a free fall of its own, which Fox has also recently downplayed. There was very little private capital available in the United States for any large-scale bankruptcy and American automakers, unlike the subsidiaries of Toyota, Honda, and other auto transplants, could not draw credit from foreign governments or headquarters.

The auto bailouts, which were initially extremely unpopular, are now widely lauded as successful government responses to the myriad crises facing the economy in 2008 and 2009. Despite Fox's attempts to undermine the administration's handling of the auto industry, the rescues are popular in areas heavily reliant on the auto-industry and often credited for swinging key states toward Obama in the 2012 Election.