alt Hacker News> I wish we could have them in the US but my patriotism also tells me that would be the death of almost all US auto companies.
As an American it is not clear to me that I should care about US auto companies. I care about US auto workers but if they are working at a factory in the US owned by a non-US company making that company's cars that seems like it can take care of the workers.
Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Kia, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Nissan, Subaru, and Mazda all build cars in the US with US workers. Why not add some Chinese companies?
If there is a good reason to keep the big American companies around pass a law that makes any new non-US auto plants here be a joint venture with a big American company, with the American company having a minority ownership and getting a license to make their own version in their own factories of the cars made in the joint venture factory.
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The profits of auto manufacturing are distributed to US stock holders. The same won’t be true for foreign companies. For very large industries, this is a large amount of capital either staying or leaving the US.
Also, it’s unlikely that the low prices could be maintained while also paying US labor and US safety standards. If they can then it means we’ve lost our competitive edge completely in the manufacturing sector. At that point we’d be reliant on foreign companies to operate locally here.
They will scream national security.
While kidnapping foreign head of states, threatening allies and launching wars in the middle east.
My Japanese Toyota has a greater US/Canada parts content percentage than an American Chevrolet, and the former is assembled in the US while the latter is assembled in Mexico. The only advantage US companies seem to have is nostalgia.
The only way the US is going to get better at manufacturing is to learn/steal from the best - which is China now. It was Japan a few decades ago and we made a GM/Toyota joint factory (NUMMI).