Detroit was 'bombed' *LONG* before NAFTA.

I'm amazed that in a crowd of people dominated by those with life experience, the obvious isn't mentioned more often.

Why was Detroit so rich? Why were the unions be able to get so much? It's only hinted at when the discussion turns to Detroit having their heads handed to them by Japan.

Why were they able to get that way in the first place?

...because the rest of the world had their industrial capacity bombed back to the stone age in WWII. We held a monopoly on manufacturing.

The Japanese will tell you that they brought in American quality experts when it was time to rebuild their factories. Because they had nothing in place and could re-start from scratch, they were able to do better and build on the experience of others with being saddled with the legacies of those histories.

Now Japan faces the same thing from the South Koreans. Someday, if CHina's quality improves, it'll happen again.