U.S. Motor Vehicle Export Milestones

1. General Motors' first-half of the year sales in China, the world's biggest auto market, exceeded sales in its home U.S. market for the first time.

2. After 15 years of building cars and SUVs in Spartanburg, South Carolina, BMW has now shipped over one million cars to overseas markets. That's nearly two-thirds of all of the production from the plant.

Update: Unfortunately, President Obama doesn't seem to fully understand yet the benefits of free trade (or appreciate the fact that 95% of the world's consumers are in export markets outside the U.S.?), and has failed to put the Colombia Free Trade Agreement (signed in 2006 by President Bush) up for a vote in Congress, despite claiming that he supports its "rapid ratification," despite this recent June 2 letter from 39 members of Congress (including 20 Democrats) urging Obama to sign the Colombia FTA, and despite this joint letter in 2008 from GM, Ford and Chrysler supporting Congressional approval of the Colombia FTA (along with more than 1,200 other U.S. companies, business organizations, farm and ranch groups, and chambers of commerce that also support the Colombia FTA).