A Prediction For The Auto Industry...And A Question

When one is dealing with natural resources (which ar in a fixed location), it is easier to monopolize and control. The problem with manufacturing is that, unless the product requires a natural resource you control within its manufacture, it is easily copied anywhere you can set up a production line, patent law be darned.

Again, there is more here than the economy. Unless a nation maintains the manufacturing prowess to supply its defense forces, the nation is easily strangled from the outside via boycott. History is filled with such examples where nations have been defeated via stranglehold, and where nations have weathered all kinds of attacks based on the nation's capacity to euphenistically turn plowshares into swords.

The Bloated Three bailout without a Chapter 11 reorganization to turn those companies into businesses with a future is utter lunacy, mainly because we need a successful auto manufacturing capacity as a part of the national critical infrastructure. I hate throwing money away for nothing, and just throwing money at the Bloated Three so they have time to sell off their assets to foreign entities weakens the nation.

Like it or not, the US market really needs to look at raising tariffs, despite the threats of trade wars from those nations who enjoy a balance-of-payments advantage with us. We cannot buy our future freedom and national security with stimulus dollars - that takes muscle, and we are fast losing ours.