Susan J. Demas: Commerce Secretary Locke: Rail Can Revive Auto Industry

During last year's Michigan presidential primary, John McCain made the mistake of saying that the hundreds of thousands of lost auto jobs weren't coming back . Mitt Romney then blathered something about the triumph of the American spirit and promptly pulled off a 9-point win . A little more than a year later, with Chrysler and GM in bankruptcy , no one could credibly claim that jobs will be flooding back to the industry. So what now for the Rust Belt? On Wednesday, U.S. Commerce Gary Locke was at a town hall in Holt, Michigan . That day, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Vice President Joe Biden were busy meeting with Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm in Washington about a Detroit-Pontiac-Chicago high-speed rail line. So I asked Locke if rail was an area for the auto industry to expand into. He gave his enthusiastic endorsement. "Oh, yeah," he told me. "As you see more construction of rail cars, high-speed cars, it's going to require new engineering, new products and services ... (link)