
The Passat marked Volkswagen’s return to assembling vehicles in America, after the Westmoreland facility in Pennsylvania closed in 1987.
Volkswagen has achieved a production milestone at its Chattanooga, Tennessee assembly plant with the completion of its one-millionth vehicle, an Aurora Red Metallic 2020 Volkswagen Passat R-Line. The plant has been producing Passat vehicles since 2011. Ground was broken in 2009 for what was to become the world’s first LEED-Platinum certified manufacturing facility.
Since then, Volkswagen Chattanooga has grown to employ approximately 3,800 people, produced more than 700,000 Passat vehicles, 100,000 Atlas vehicles, and recently started production of the 2020 Atlas Cross Sport and the facelifted 2021 Atlas. In that time, Chattanooga-assembled vehicles have been exported to Canada, Mexico, Russia, South Korea, and the Middle East.
Continue reading













COVID-nomics – Plague Meets the Dreary Science
US Budgetary Effects of the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic: Revenues collected since late March have been much weaker than those collected during the same period last year and much weaker than CBO projected earlier this year. The lower revenues result in part from the economic disruption caused by the pandemic, which has reduced wages and other taxable income, and in part from the government’s actions to address that disruption.
The federal government’s response included a variety of changes to tax rules. Some of them reduce the amount of taxes that businesses and individuals owe; others just allow taxpayers to defer paying taxes. CBO anticipates that most of the revenues affected by those deferrals will be collected in July, some will be collected in later years, and some will be permanently lost. CBO does not have an estimate of the amounts that fall in each of those categories.
Continue reading →