The Big Three - PPS

Two other things I've read over the last day concerning the Automotive Bailout

* Maryscott :

Just ask yourself... why are all these Republicans so eager for the Big 3 to fail?

One word: Unions.

Sure, there's more to it than that. There's ALWAYS more to it than that. But, BOY, won't it be GREAT to kill off the UAW?

. . They're going to let the Big 3 go into bankruptcy to let the "Right to Work" states take over auto production.
(edited for clarity)

As one commenter notes, those speaking the loudest in resistance to an auto bailout have the most to gain in their states: Alabama -- Sen. Richard Shelby, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Daimler-Mercedes), South Carolina - Sen. Jim DeMint, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-BMW), Tennessee - Sen. Lamar Alexander, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Nissan).

Also, Toyota has plants in Kentucky (Jim Bunning-R & Mitch McConnell-R), Texas (John Cornyn-R & Kay Bailey Hutchison-R), West Virginia (Byrd & Rockefeller, both D's), Alabama, Indiana (Richard Lugar-R, Evan Bayh-D) and is building another in Mississippi (Wicker-R, Cochran-R). My family drives Toyotas, BTW.

* Stirling Newberry:

China wants a car company. The right wing, blinded by a hatred of unions, wants to give it to them. China is already looking at what that would mean: gaining a decade on having a car culture, and the ability to produce it's own automobiles.

Up until now, it has acted as an assembly point, and source for parts, for some time, in the hopes of learning the secrets of what is one of the crown jewels of the industrial system. Its attempts to penetrate the core automotive markets have been fraught with problems. For China, automobiles provide the key to opening their own interior, expanding their compact cities, turning vast stretches of marginal economic land into developments, and at the end, an export engine with a high value add.

It's the equivalent of a science-fiction trope: having a time traveler from the future appear & use his his far superior knowledge to dramatically alter the world political landscape 10 or 20 years later.

China is serious about automotive technology. It is also considering using its currency reserves to bail out its own troubled automotive sector, which has over built low quality production in an era of 25% market growth, and is facing an era of significantly slower growth, with higher bar to market. That's why They've propose buying key assets from Chrysler and GM. That's what the right wing noise machine, and Senator Shelby, are pushing in essence: selling Detroit to Shanghai. Such a move would not vault China into the top ranks over night, but it would create a vacuum in the US, and mean that the US auto industry would be on circling the drain. Even the hard right realizes that nationalization would be the only other solution.