Leaked: GM planning to sell Chinese-built cars in America

General Motors already has plants in China, where Buick is wildly popular, but so far the American firm has only sold their Chinese-built rebadge jobs in China itself. Now there is a leaked planning document that supposedly shows the automakers planss to ship 17,000 cars from China for sale in the U.S. in 2011. If GM succeeds in importing vehicles to the U.S. from China, it would be the first automaker to do so successfully.

The document doesn’t show which vehicles would be brought over, but it does expose GM’s plans till 2014. By that time, GM plans to triple its Chinese imports for America to 51,546 units. That only represents 1.6% of the planned 3.1 million (perhaps optimistic) sales the General is expecting five years from now.

Regardless of the quantity of vehicles coming in from China, UAW leaders are none too pleased with the development, says Automotive News. The 12-page document also showed increased production in Mexico and South Korea, which will likely make new vehicles like the Chevrolet Spark. In an open letter, UAW legislative director Alan Reuther went on record saying that GM “should not be taking taxpayers’ money simply to finance the outsourcing of jobs to other countries.”

While it would appear that American jobs are being lost to outsourcing, the document claims that U.S. production would continue to represent two thirds of the overall sales volume for the next five years, while Canada is slated to lose 101,000 units.

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