Pat Buchanan: The Toyota Republicans

Human Events ^ | December 16, 2008 | Patrick J. Buchanan

[2ndDivisionVet]

"GOP to Detroit: Drop Dead!"

So may have read the headline Friday, had not President Bush stepped in to save GM, Ford and Chrysler, which Senate Republicans had just voted to send to the knacker's yard.

What are Republicans thinking of, pulling the plug, at Christmas, on GM, risking swift death for the greatest manufacturing company in American history, a strategic asset and pillar of the U.S. economy.

The $14 billion loan to the Big Three that Republican senators filibustered to death is just 2 percent of the $700 billion the Senate voted to bail out Wall Street. Having gone along with bailouts of Bear Stearns, AIG, Fannie, Freddie and CitiGroup, why refuse a reprieve to an industry upon which millions of the best blue-collar jobs in America depend?

In a good year, Americans buy 17 million cars. A more populous EU probably buys as many. Three billion people in India, Southeast Asia and China, four times as many people as there are in the EU and United States, are moving toward the middle class. They, too, will be wanting cars. And millions of them love American cars.

Is the Republican Party so fanatic in its ideology that, rather than sin against a commandment of Milton Friedman, it is willing to see America written forever out of this fantastic market, let millions of jobs vanish and write off the industrial Midwest?

So it would seem. "Companies fail every day, and others take their place," said Sen. Richard Shelby on "Face the Nation."

Presumably, the companies that will "take their place," when GM, Ford and Chrysler die, are German, Japanese or Korean, like the ones lured into Shelby's state of Alabama, with the bait of subsidies free-market Republicans are supposed to abhor.

In 1993, Alabama put together a $258 million package to bring a Mercedes plant in. In 1999, Honda was offered $158 million to build a plant there. In 2002, Alabama won a Hyundai plant by offering a $252 million subsidy.

"We have a number of profitable automakers in America, and they should not be disadvantaged for making wise business decisions while failure is rewarded," says Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina.

DeMint is referring to "profitable automakers" like BMW, which sited a plant in Spartanburg, after South Carolina offered the Germans a $150 million subsidy and $80 million to expand.

Be it BMW, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Mitsubishi or Hyundai, the South has become a sanctuary for foreign assembly plants, for which Southern states have been paying subsidies.

Fine. But why this "Let-them-eat-cake!" coldness toward U.S. auto companies? General Motors employs more workers than all these foreign plants combined. And, unlike Mitsubishi, General Motors didn't bomb Pearl Harbor.

Do these Southern senators understand why the foreign automakers suddenly up and decided to build plants in the United States?

It was the economic nationalism of Ronald Reagan.

When an icon of American industry, Harley-Davidson, was being run out of business by cutthroat Japanese dumping of big bikes to kill the "Harley Hog," Reagan slapped 50 percent tariffs on their motorcycles and imposed quotas on imported Japanese cars. Message to Tokyo. If you folks want to keep selling cars here, start building them here.

Fear of Reaganism brought those foreign automakers, lickety-split, to America's shores, not any love of Southern cooking.

Do the Republicans not yet understand how they lost the New Majority coalition that gave them three landslides and five victories in six presidential races from 1968 to 1988? Do they not know why the Reagan Democrats in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan are going home?

The Republican Party gave their jobs away!

How? By telling U.S. manufacturers they could shut plants here, get rid of their U.S. workers, build factories in Mexico, Asia or China, and ship their products back, free of charge.

Republican globalists gave U.S. manufacturers every incentive to go abroad and take their jobs with them, the jobs of Middle America.

And, for 30 years, that is what U.S. manufacturers have done, have been forced to do, as their competitors closed down and moved their plants abroad in search of low-wage Third World labor.

It's Herbert Hoover time in here, Vice President Cheney is said to have told the Senate Republicans -- as they prepared to march out onto the floor and turn thumbs down on any reprieve for General Motors.

In today's world, America faces nationalistic trade rivals who manipulate currencies, employ nontariff barriers, subsidize their manufacturers, rebate value-added taxes on exports to us and impose value-added taxes on imports from us, all to capture our markets and kill our great companies. And we have a Republican Party blissfully ignorant that we live in a world of us or them. It doesn't even know who "us" is.

We need a new team on the field and a new coach who believes with Vince Lombardi that "winning isn't everything. It's the only thing."

[omega4179]

Boycott Fiat because of the christian persecution in Roman Times.

[dragnet2]

I should have said were on the verge of a depression, our government is so corrupted they now OWN banking and ALL of our major industries. There, fixed.

The global economy is good for you, and your government is here to help you adjust.

[Seruzawa]

Hey Pat! Is your Mercedes-Benz still holdin’ up?

[ex-snook]

No Manufacturing = No Recovery.

No GOP till there is Recovery.

No more Reagan Democrats for an election win. The GOP Alamo is down to Southern Confederates and diminishing WASPS.

[cyberslave]

Once again Pat Buchannan is proving to be a know nothing. Pat incorrectly states that it was Reagan's protectionism that forced the Japanese to manufacturer automobiles here in the US. Not true. I worked for a VW, Honda, and Chevrolet dealer in the 1970s. It was the lack of manufacturing capability in Japan that made Honda, Toyota, and then Nissan to come to the US. That's why the German's have returned to the US also. They simply can't produce and ship large bulky items like automobiles to the US in sufficient numbers to make themselves profitable. And to them profitability is the key. When Peugeot and Alfa Romeo found the US market unprofitable they simply left. Ditto for Daewoo. The market controls and all government can do is stand in the way of the working person from buying a less costly item of equal or better quality to its US counterpart. Also, Pat forgets that Rice burners don't compete against Hogs. Hogs were being bought because the company lacked soul under AFC. When Harley went back to being independently owned and operated it stopped being a joke mechanically. No longer did you have to go to a Harley showroom and watch the oil drip from brand new bikes onto the floor. The Japanese provided higher quality motorcycles at less cost. When Harley undertook a quality campaign it came back in the market.

When GM and Chrysler get back in touch with the buying public they too will become profitable. Until then, their doomed.

Let not forget that GM had a viable electric car that it was leasing ten years ago in California and Arizona. They built two a day at very high quality standards. The vehicle could go 100 miles before recharging and was fast. It also had air conditioning and every other refinement you'd want. GM killed the EV-1 instead of building an EV-2 and developing the technology to its other brands. The tax incentive in 1996 for leasing an EV-1 was only $4000, but the tax incentive for buying a Hummer was $100,000. GM and the government spelled its own demise. In 2010, GM will have the VOLT. Hopefully it will work as well if not better than the EV-1. GM may recover from its folly, but banning the Japs from our shores will not do that.

EV-1 GM Electric Vehicle

In fact, GM and Toyota have run an assembly operation in California called NUMMI for the last thirty years. The plant doesn't operate under the same UAW rules as the other GM plants. It is the highest productive plant in GM and has produced quality products. Currently it build the Vibe. Back in the 1980s it produced the Chevy Nova and Toyota Corolla FX.

I still have a running 1987 Toyota Corolla FX. Fewer American vehicles from that era still exist on the streets. I guess that makes me a Toyota Republican, however, since it certainly makes dollars it therefore makes sense!

[do the dhue]

Hey Gator, long time no see.

Where in the Bible is it mandated that cars have to be made in Detroit?

Check Caravan 3:11. No, I am kiddin'. It is not in the Bible, but it might be in the Koran. ;-)

[Tublecane]

“No GOP till there is Recovery.”

Was there a recovery before Reagan? No.

[Cronos]

In the '50s? You mean when America was great, and respected in every corner of the globe, and feared by all enemies, or what was left of them at that point.

But what were the circumstances that led to that? WWII sapped all the energy out of Europe, Russia and developing Japan while China, India, South-East Asia were recovering from 100 to 150 years of rigious colonialism.

At that time, the US was the ONLY power around, the ONLY industrialised nation that could still manufacture.

Hence American workers were the best paid in the world and the companies could give in to the unions for great benefits.

However, by the 70s Germany and Japan had recovered and by the 90s the tiny nations of South-East Asia had worken up. When the two slumbering giants of India and China woke up, everyone KNEW there would be changes and a lot of impact. The thing no-one knew was that when they woke up they would run, growing at 8 to 11%. This momentum will keep up both due to demographic strength and to a growing knowledge in both nations that they need to recapture their rightful places in the world (up until 1810, they together accounted for 50%+ of the world's GDP, but that had fallen to <1% by 1945

The US will no longer be the absolute, overwhelming power of the 50s, but it will still be the #1 power.

[Ann Archy]

Hey Pat.....the Big 3 are DEMOCRAT RUN COMPANIES....why WOULDN”T Republicans be for Toyata and others who like FREEDOM at work?? You are sooooooo right, you are now left.

[ex-snook]

"Was there a recovery before Reagan? No."

Where were you in the great 50's when manufacturing was strong?

[Ann Archy]

Mr. Hypocrite...when you were running for Pres. the first time, you drove a MERCEDES!!!!

[Vigilanteman]

Tariff’s have their places and, in a saner time, they were used to reward friendly trading partners (like Japan, UK) and put those less than friendly (China, Venezuela) at a disadvantage. The Civil War was an example of the tariff monster gone too far in one direction. The open markets monster of the present where things like friendliness of a trading partner are an example of the other extreme. Reagan at least tried to make a distinction. Pat Buchanan, on the other hand, seem ignorant of the big difference between Japan, who is knee-jerk supportive of us on most foreign policy issues, and China, which is even more knee-jerk opposed.

[UCFRoadWarrior]

Thank you for sharing.

Most troubling thing brought up in that article is that most countries subsidize their own domestic automakers and manufacturers

They have figured out that free trade doesnt work

[xzins]

In today's world, America faces nationalistic trade rivals who manipulate currencies, employ nontariff barriers, subsidize their manufacturers, rebate value-added taxes on exports to us and impose value-added taxes on imports from us, all to capture our markets and kill our great companies. And we have a Republican Party blissfully ignorant that we live in a world of us or them. It doesn't even know who "us" is.

To the extent that the above is happening, then it does distort the "free" market. We should also retaliate when it does happen. That's just common sense.

We should not defend bogus free markets and bogus free trade, and for national security reasons, no matter the free trade issues, we should keep a reasonable portion of our own heavy, aviation, shipbuilding, and auto industries at home.

It is also the doctrine of Duncan Hunter

[ex-snook]

"Mr. Hypocrite...when you were running for Pres. the first time, you drove a MERCEDES!!!"

Pat changed to American cars when he saw how harmful foreign imports were to our economy. Look elsewhere for the hypocrites.

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

Pat Buchanan is dead wrong.

The $14 billion dollar "loan" to GM is a drop in the bucket alright. It's nothing compared to what the taxpayers will have to add to it until the end of time to prop up that corpse of a company.

Republicans are killing GM at Christmas time?

Bullshit!

GM has been in the process of committing suicide for many years.

[Monterrosa-24]

“...No FR “discussion” is complete without a Luv-it-or-leave-it flip-off, eh?”

That’s right Mr. Skin Color Obsession.

[Tublecane]

“Reagan at least tried to make a distinction”

You mean Reagan tried to pick winners and losers. If he had done that within our own counrty, you’d have probably (and rightly) scolded him. To me, the international game is no different. If you want to lob bombs at somebody as punushment, fine. But why should we trust our president to have the wisdom to balance efficiency with, I don’t know what to call it, honor? Efficiency is fine enough with me.

By the way, there is no “open market monster.” That is a figment of your imagination. We cannot control the world with our markets, and should not want to. It’s not about morality. It’s about efficiency. And if it’s not about efficiency, then its just another part of politics, and stops being a matter of economics. Then, before you know it, we’re a merchantilist state again.

[UCFRoadWarrior]

Where in the Bible is it mandated that cars have to be made in Detroit?

---

I dont know....but I do know there is nothing in the Bible that says the US must sign bad Free Trade deals that ship American jobs to Communist China

[smallbiz]

“Pat just doesnt seem to bipartison in his castigations.”

Pat works for MSNBC and is an honored guest on their most popular shows... not because he agrees with them, but because he’s willing to destroy the right.