Saturday, November 22, 2008

How to solve the automotive industry crisis without spending a $ of public monies

How to solve the Automotive Industry Dilemma (without spending one public cent)
It is actually quite easy and allows the private market to function.
America still buys and will continue to buy a large number of cars/trucks per year. The actual number might vary between 15-20 million but they still must be purchased and serviced. If they are all made domestically, then why should we care who makes them? My proposal:
a) Mandate that starting in 2009, domestic production will be emphasized. For foreign manufacturers, one import will be allowed for every 2 produced within the borders of the USA. And value added of the cars produced domestically will be highly monitored and kept at the 90-95% level. This means that the auto supplier marketplace with tier one, two, and three, will be as strong as ever.
b) Therefore Japan can sell all 15 million cars as long as they make 10 million in the US. Or China can sell as many cars as they want as long as 2/3 are produced in the US. Korea, Germany, Poland, we do not care who as long as they are produced domestically. I would prefer some local companies to survive (Ford, GM, Chrysler) but in this scenario it matters little.
c) The Big 3’s assets would become valuable and salable as auto plants must be available to produce the cars domestically. Perhaps China would buy one of the big 3 or all. Who cares? Domestic production with all the jobs would remain. Domestic sourcing would be required and remain. The dealer network would be a requirement and would still exist in one form or another.
d) Sure there would be some disruption but the market would function , the government would not need to hand out billions of bucks, and labor would still be employed.
e) Perhaps the result would have not quite as handsome of labor deals as the UAW are used to (no more job banks) and considerable labor concessions must be made (but they are going to be made anyway). At least the jobs would be here.
Or course, it is very likely that the powers to be in government want to give billions and billions of taxpayer moneys to the auto industry. After all , there is plenty more where it comes from, they are behooven to the unions, and the power would provide them with lots of sticks to make the auto industry basically a nationalized entity. But why not look at the other ways to solve this problem?

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