Big 3 Execs to Talk Trade With Bush

DETROIT - Leaders of the Big Three domestic automakers will bring up currency exchange rates and health care costs when they speak with President Bush on Tuesday, Ford's top executive said Friday.

"Clearly, having a level playing field is very important," Ford Chief Executive Alan Mulally said in an interview with the editorial board of the Detroit Free Press.

The leaders of Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp. and DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group tentatively were scheduled to meet with Bush in May, but the meeting was pushed back until after the election. The White House set the date this week.

Mulally, hired recently from Boeing Co., also said he will talk to the president about other free-trade issues that give foreign products advantages over U.S.-made ones.

"It's all of them. It's steel. It's tariffs. There's all kinds of elements to competitiveness. Exchange rates are important, commodity prices," he said.

American manufacturers, including the Big Three, say China is keeping its currency artificially low against the dollar to make Chinese goods cheaper in the U.S. and American-made products more expensive in China.

"It's just so important that the governments around the world ensure that the market sets exchange rates," Mulally said.

He also said his new company is not competitive in the auto business.

"It's been getting worse year after year," Mulally said. "The most important thing we can do is recognize our reality and deal with it."

Last month, Ford posted a $5.8 billion third-quarter loss due to sagging North American sales and huge costs associated with a massive restructuring plan. It was the largest quarterly loss in more than 14 years for the nation's second-biggest automaker. The company lost $7.24 billion in the first nine months of this year, although it has said it will restate five years of recent results because of accounting errors that involved interest-rate hedging at its financial arm.

Mulally said his biggest surprise since taking the job in September was the opportunity to make improvements. He plans to improve the company by making it more efficient through use of its worldwide resources.

Ford must have a "more robust plan across the product line," to reduce its dependence on sales of big pickups and sport utility vehicles, Mulally said.

The company's top priority is to reduce its production capacity to match lower sales numbers, he said.

Ford already has offered buyouts and early retirement packages to all 75,000 U.S. production workers, with a goal of reducing its hourly work force by 25,000 to 30,000. The deadline for them to decide whether to take the packages is Nov. 27.

Ford has said it will shutter 16 plants, but it has yet to identify nine of them.

Ford shares rose 2 cents Friday to close at $8.58 on the New York Stock Exchange.