Bredesen to Lead Trade Mission to Germany

Governor Phil Bredesen announced today that he will lead a trade mission to Germany next month to lure Volkswagen suppliers to the state.

“What we’re doing is taking some people over, and with Volkswagen’s help, beginning to talk to some of those suppliers in the same way a year ago we were there talking to Volkswagen.”

The state won over Volkswagen last year. The German automaker is planning its ***first U-S assembly plant in Chattanooga. The state offered some 500-million dollars of incentives. 230-million of that money is cash from state coffers that will be used to build a training facility and infrastructure improvements. The rest is a combination of state and local tax breaks.

The state has offered to extend equally-attractive tax breaks for suppliers to relocate to the state, with 30-thousand dollars in credits for every job created. Industry analysts expect VW will look to build a power train facility somewhere nearby. That plant along with other suppliers could create nearly 10-thousand additional jobs outside the main plant.

***Correction*** While state officials have dubbed this the first time for VW to produce cars in the U.S., they may be forgetting 1978, when VW began assembling the Rabbit in Pennsylvania. It was the first time a European automaker assembled cars in the U.S. Production, however, ceased in 1984.