Obama Owns Shares in Chinese Company

After Mitt Romney promised to aggressively crackdown against Chinese companies that cheat American businesses, the New York Times, along with other mainstream media organizations, have tried to paint Mitt Romney as a hypocrite by digging up companies in which Bain Capital has a stake. They conveniently ignoring that President Barack Obama also has investments in some of the exact same Chinese companies.

One company the Times highlights to try to paint Romney as a hypocrite on China is Sensata Technologies, a company that makes car sensors.

Except that is the same company in which Obama is invested, which is a rather inconvenient fact for the Times:

President Obama, a former Illinois state senator, has as much as $100,000 in a state retirement plan that contains shares of Sensata Technologies, the same auto parts company controlled by Bain that is closing its Illinois factory.

The Times still barrels ahead with its narrative by reporting Sensata bought a car sensor manufacturer in Illinois and is relocating the equipment and jobs to China. The narrative the Times is trying to advance is clear: Romney still has money invested in Bain, Bain has investments with Sensata, so Romney is responsible for the plant closing in Illinois:

Mr. Romney also has millions invested in a series of Bain funds that have a controlling stake in Sensata Technologies, a manufacturer of sensors and controls for vehicles, aircraft and electric motors that employs 4,000 workers in China. Since Bain took over the operation in 2006, its investment has quadrupled in value. Bain continues to own $2.6 billion worth of Sensata’s shares.

The Times even interviews a worker at the plant who is asking Romney to stop the pending plant closing.

“This goes to show the unbelievable hypocrisy of this man,” the worker tells the Times. “He talks about how we need to get tough on China and stop China from taking our jobs, and then he is making money off shipping our jobs there.”

Many of the companies in the article — like Sensata — have been owned by Bain since 2010, long after Romney’s tenure at the private equity firm. By this standard, Obama, of course, would be as liable as Romney in the “outsourcing” game for having a stake in the company. But the Times absolves Obama of all blame in the article.