Mitt Romney’s misleading auto bailout ads that hit Ohio this week touted his plan to help the auto industry, even though no specific plan was mentioned, no plan exists on his web site, and his presidential campaign did not respond to requests from reporters when asked about the plan.

Writing on Romney’s campaign web site, ex-Chrysler chairman and Romney endorser Lee Iacocca has now laid out Romney’s plan to help the auto industry: it’s a massive corporate tax break that will make it easier for businesses to offshore their profits.

When Mitt Romney is president, he will reduce our nation’s corporate tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent – currently the highest combined tax rate in the industrial world – so that American car companies can compete on a level playing field at home and abroad. He will also stop the extra tax automakers are forced to pay when they want to bring home their profits to reinvest in the United States. President Obama could have done this the day he took office since his party controlled both houses of Congress, but he chose not to. [my emphasis]

Steven Rattner, Treasury’s lead adviser during the auto rescue, said on a conference call today that he would “take issue” with the idea that auto companies need tax breaks. “I’m not sure what Lee Iacocca is talking about,” Rattner said. “The least of the industry’s problems has been taxes. When you lose as much money as they lost, you don’t pay taxes and you often don’t pay them for a very long time. That’s not the industry’s problem.”

Romney’s plan, at a cost of more than $1 trillion, wouldn’t help the American economy or auto workers if history is any guide. The amount the U.S. actually collects from corporations is among the lowest in the developed world. And if the U.S. is failing to remain competitive with the rest of the world, its auto companies haven’t noticed: American auto companies are thriving at home.

The plan to eliminate the tax on repatriated profits — those earned overseas and returned to the U.S. — surely won’t help auto workers. George W. Bush’s repatriation tax failed to spark economic and job growth, and many of the companies that lobbied for it ended up cutting jobs and stashing even more money overseas in its wake.

While Romney is falsely attacking Chrysler and General Motors for moving auto jobs to China, his plan for the corporate tax system would make it even easier for them to do so. Romney’s shift to a territorial tax system would add incentives for corporations to outsource jobs and offshore profits, and one study estimates that it would lead to the creation of 800,000 overseas jobs at the expense of American workers.

Mitt Romney’s misleading new advertisement is causing auto workers to fear they’re losing their jobs.

The ad falsely claims car company Chrysler is moving its Jeep production to China, when in fact the company is opening up additional production there, not shifting American jobs overseas. But some auto workers have been calling their union, worried that they’re about to be out of work:

Bruce Baumhower, the president of the United Auto Workers local that oversees the major Jeep plant here, said Mr. Romney’s initial comments on moving production to China drew a rash of calls from members concerned about their jobs. When he informed them Chrysler was, in fact, is expanding its Jeep operation here, he said in an interview, “The response has been, ‘That’s pretty pitiful.’ ”

The Romney campaign has repeatedly insisted that they are “not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers,” and this ad seems to be an example with consequences. It has been widely panned as a blatant falsehood thrown out in the final days before the election.

But the ad is clearly part of the candidate’s attempt — no matter the facts — to recover his reputation in the auto industry, which is still suffering after Romney published his now-infamous op-ed titled, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”

As Mitt Romney struggles to gain ground with voters in Ohio, he has attempted to redefine his position on the federal auto rescue that saved as many as 1.3 million jobs. Romney released a highly misleading ad in Ohio this week that criticizes President Obama’s handling of the bailout and touts his own apparently unreleased plan to help the auto industry.

Romney’s actual plan was to oppose federal financing of the auto companies’ bankruptcy; instead, he wanted the private sector to finance the rescue while the government guaranteed post-bankruptcy loans. But private sector financing was “pure fantasy” at the time, according to industry insiders, because credit markets were “bone-dry” in the middle of the financial crisis.

Reporters and auto insiders aren’t alone in their criticism of Romney’s stance on the auto rescue, though. Here are six Romney supporters who have also contradicted his view of the auto bailout or criticized his plan:

1. Michigan Rep. Fred Upton: In February, Upton told Western Michigan University’s WMUK radio that only the government could have saved the auto industry. “There was no one that was willing to come up not only with the cash to keep them afloat but also to serve the warranties of everyone, you and I that drive all these cars,” Upton said. “There was no one that could have picked up those pieces other than the federal government.” He also contradicted Romney’s claim that the rescue was a bailout of auto unions, saying it was “bi-partisan from the get-go.” Without the bailout, Upton said, Michigan “would have hit 40 percent unemployment rates.”

2. Michigan Rep. Thad McCotter: “There was no choice” but to use government funds to save the auto industry, McCotter told MSNBC in February. “So to my fellow Republicans I’ll simply remind them, if you were in Congress at the point in time or if you were President Bush, you could leave all $700 billion of taxpayers hard-earned money with the Wall Street people, or you could take some back to Main Street to keep America a balanced, vibrant economy,” McCotter said. “To me there was no choice.”

3. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder: In November 2011, Snyder urged Republicans to stop second-guessing the auto rescue, even if they disagreed with how it was done, because it had delivered incredible results for Michigan and the auto industry. “I would have had some differences on how they did it, but I’m not going to second-guess it,” Snyder told the New York Times. “The more important thing is the results. And the auto industry is doing very well today.”

4. Auto Industry Task Force member Harry Wilson: Wilson, a member of Obama’s Auto Industry Task Force who has run for office as a Republican in New York, criticized Romney’s view of the bailout last week. “I’m, as you know, a Republican who supports the governor. But I think on this issue, I think he’s really mishandled it,” Wilson told Bloomberg. “He came out both in 2008 and earlier in 2012, in a piece in one of the Detroit newspapers, and said he wouldn’t have supported any government capital because private capital was available. That’s simply not true.”

5. The Detroit News editorial board: A self-described “conservative newspaper,” the Detroit News endorsed Romney for president last week. But in its endorsement editorial, the paper blasted Romney for his “wrong-headedness on the auto bailout.” Romney “was wrong in suggesting the automakers could have found operating capital in the private markets,” the editors wrote. “Romney suggested government-backed loans to keep the companies afloat post bankruptcy. But what GM and Chrysler needed were bridge loans to get them through the process, and the private credit markets were unwilling to provide them.”

6. Ex-Chrysler CEO Lee Iaccoca: Iaccoca has endorsed Romney, but he also has praised the auto bailout for its rescue of the industry. “Two years ago, it looked like Detroit and Michigan and the car business was in the toilet,” Iacocca told the Detroit News this month. But after the bailout, he said, “things have turned out pretty well.” And even if Iaccoca has criticisms of pieces of the bailout, the paper said he “praised the government actions over the past two years that gave two of Detroit’s Big Three automakers another chance.”

A Republican congresswoman accused the Obama administration of promulgating regulations that are undermining job creation at an auto manufacturer that has been defunct since 1988. She was responding to a question on Monday about Mitt Romney’s dishonest claims regarding Jeep moving its production overseas.

During an appearance on MSNBC, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) dodged a question about Romney’s debunked Jeep claims and instead attacked the Obama administration for issuing regulations that are harming workers at American Motors Corporation, a company once headed by George Romney. AMC was sold to Chrysler during the Ronald Reagan administration and its brands were then discontinued:

CHIRS JENSING (HOST): Let me ask you about some of the things going on on the campaign trail, and there’s a controversy about Mitt Romney telling voters that jeep is going to move production to China. According to the company that’s entirely false. Is he lying about that?

BLACKBURN: Oh, well, I don’t know. I haven’t talked with with the campaign staff about that. I will say this. For workers in the auto industry, across the board, whether it is GM, whether it’s Nissan, whether it’s American Motors, individuals are very concerned about the impact of regulation that the EPA and OSHA and other federal agencies are heaping on our manufacturers.

Watch it:

Since the auto rescue, GM, Ford, and Chrysler are experiencing increases in sales of 10, 13, and 14 percent, respectively. Obama’s approach, which Romney vehemently opposed, helped save as many as 1.3 million jobs and the administration’s new fuel efficiency standards and incentives included in the 2009 stimulus are driving American-made cars to be become more competitive in an international market.

As Mitt Romney continues to struggle to explain his various positions on the auto rescue that saved General Motors and Chrysler, his presidential campaign has released an ad about the bailout that is littered with falsehoods and misdirections.

Watch it:

The 30-second ad is running in Ohio, a state where Romney is trailing in the polls and has been battered by the Obama campaign for his opposition to the auto rescue. Here is a breakdown of the ad’s misleading, and sometimes false, claims:

1. “Mitt Romney has a plan to help the auto industry.” No specific plan is referenced in the ad, and Romney’s campaign web site does not include a plan to “help the auto industry.” In 2008, Romney wrote a New York Times editorial titled, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” and he re-upped his call against the auto rescue during the Republican primaries this year.

2. “[Romney] is supported by Lee Iaccoca and the Detroit News.” Chrysler Chairman Lee Iaccoca has indeed endorsed Romney. The Detroit News, a self-described “conservative newspaper,” endorsed him last week. But in that endorsement, the paper slammed Romney’s “wrong-headedness on the auto bailout.”

3. “Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy.” Obama did take both companies into a managed bankruptcy, the path Romney says was originally his idea. Romney, however, supported private sector financing of the bankruptcy, a plan that was “pure fantasy” at the time since no private lenders could lend to the companies in the middle of the financial crisis. Without federal intervention, the companies would have almost assuredly collapsed, costing 1.3 million jobs, according to industry estimates.

4. “[Obama] sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China.” This week, Romney claimed he read a news story that said Chrysler was planning to “moving all production to China.” The Bloomberg News piece he referenced, though, made it clear that Fiat, the Italian company that now owns Chrysler, was opening new factories in China to make Jeeps for Chinese consumers. No American plants will be closed, and no American jobs will be lost. The ad’s claim may not be as false as Romney’s previous statement, but it is certainly misleading.

Mitt Romney, attempting to bolster his case to Ohio voters, misinterpreted a story and passed on an outright lie at a rally in the swing state yesterday. Reacting to a Bloomberg News story about auto manufacturer Chrysler’s plans to open a plant in China, Romney said at a rally in Defiance, Ohio that the company was “thinking of moving all production to China,” and that he would prevent such action by fighting for “every good job in America”:

“I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep — now owned by the Italians — is thinking of moving all production to China,” Romney said at a rally in Defiance, Ohio, home to a General Motors powertrain plant. “I will fight for every good job in America. I’m going to fight to make sure trade is fair, and if it’s fair America will win.”

The Bloomberg News story, however, doesn’t say that Chrysler plans to move “all production to China.” Instead, it says that Fiat, which now owns Chrysler, is planning to open Chinese factories where it will make one of its most popular lines, Jeep, for Chinese consumers. Chrysler isn’t planning to shift production away from the United States. Instead, it will add factories in China to keep up with the nation’s growing demand for automobiles:

Chrysler currently builds all Jeep SUV models at plants in Michigan, Illinois and Ohio. Manley referred to adding Jeep production sites rather than shifting output from North America to China.

“That he would take an article that just described a global expansion and not a shift in jobs and use it to try to get Ohio votes, or to scare people into voting for him, is just another example of why you can’t trust this man,” former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm said on a conference call today.

Romney has often struggled with facts about the auto industry. Though he now claims the auto bailout was his idea, his plan to let the private sector finance the bankruptcies of Chrysler and General Motors was “reckless” and “pure fantasy,” according to auto industry insiders. By some estimates, it could have cost more than 1 million American jobs.

The rescue of American auto giants Chrysler and General Motors has become a major issue in Ohio, the second-largest auto state in the country. And with the election just two weeks away, Mitt Romney and his surrogates are again trying to convince voters that the auto rescue he opposed was originally his idea.

Ohio voters will be “really surprised” to learn that President Obama ultimately followed the bailout plan outlined by Romney, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman (R) told MSNBC this morning:

PORTMAN: Hey look, we’re really happy in Ohio that the auto industry has made a comeback, but the fact is the Ohio voter is going to be really surprised when they learn it was Barack Obama who took them through bankruptcy because these ads in Ohio are saying, “Mitt Romney wanted to take the auto companies through bankruptcy.” Well, you know what, that’s what Barack Obama did. It was a structured bankruptcy as Mitt Romney suggested. Mitt Romney said there ought to be federal guarantees and federal government involvement.

Watch it:

Though Chrysler and GM did eventually enter a managed bankruptcy, the crucial difference between what Romney outlined and the path Obama followed happened prior to the bankruptcy. GM and Chrysler needed a “bridge loan” just to finance their entrance into bankruptcy. The government ultimately provided that loan.

But Romney pushed the government to stay out of it. Instead, he supported private sector financing of the bankruptcy. Private sector companies willing to finance the bankruptcy were nonexistent, however, making it necessary for the government to step in. “The credit markets were bone-dry,” The Economist remembered this year, “making the privately financed bankruptcy that Mr Romney favoured improbable.”

Though Romney and his surrogates continue to claim that the entire rescue was his idea, the auto industry doesn’t share that belief. Auto insiders and reporters who covered the rescue, in fact, have said Romney’s plan was “reckless,” “dishonest,” and “pure fantasy.”

Ohio Republican Senate candidate Josh Mandel, who is running to unseat Sen. Sherrod Brown (D), couldn’t name his position on the auto bailout during an interview with the Youngstown Vindicator, despite being asked half a dozen times in a number of ways.

In the interview with the paper’s editorial board, Mandel continually said he would have “had trouble” supporting the rescue plan because workers at Delphi, a local factory, lost some of their pension and health benefits as part of the package. But Mandel struggled to ever enumerate an actual position on the vote when asked for a yes or no answer.

“As the grandson of a UAW worker, I will do everything I can in the United States Senate to protect auto jobs,” Mandel said. “But it needs to done under the umbrella of the free enterprise system, without the federal government picking winners and losers. And it needs to be done in a way without stripping these hardworking workers of their pensions.”

Watch Mandel’s full answer:

Mandel also struggled to answer the question in an interview with the Columbus Dispatch, though he did manage to call Brown’s support for the rescue “un-American.” Those comments drew fire from the United Auto Workers, whose president said Mandel’s comments were “out of a cartoon or something.”

And though Mandel, like Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, may wish the free enterprise system could have saved the auto industry, the facts belie the argument. The private sector was unwilling to provide General Motors and Chrysler with the loans they needed to enter a managed bankruptcy, leaving government intervention as the only path available. According to at least one auto industry estimate, the auto industry’s rescue saved at least one million American jobs.