Yes they did! Now something interesting happened in Tupelo, Mississippi yesterday. Toyota announced they were suspending construction of a taxpayer subsidized assembly plant to build gas efficient cars. Will they pay the subsidies back? Don't really know, but with the Yen rising against the dollar they are going to have to raise prices substantially for their American built vehicles or shut down and go home!! If gas stays cheap, Ford F150 sales and SUV sales will begin to recover market share. The irony in all this is that the Dems are supporting the loans to the Big 3, which will help them survive to sell full sized vehicles again, and the Repubs are opposing the loans, which will help the imports change Americas buying habits forever, in the direction of “Green environmentally friendly compact cars”. How convoluted this whole mess has become. Freepers oppose the loans and thereby support the environmental wackos goal of driving cute little tin cans that will save us from global warming. Al Gore must love these Repubs!!
Yes they did! Now something interesting happened in Tupelo, Mississippi yesterday. Toyota announced they were suspending construction of a taxpayer subsidized assembly plant to build gas efficient cars. Will they pay the subsidies back? Don’t really know, but with the Yen rising against the dollar they are going to have to raise prices substantially for their American built vehicles or shut down and go home!! If gas stays cheap, Ford F150 sales and SUV sales will begin to recover market share. The irony in all this is that the Dems are supporting the loans to the Big 3, which will help them survive to sell full sized vehicles again, and the Repubs are opposing the loans, which will help the imports change Americas buying habits forever, in the direction of “Green environmentally friendly compact cars”. How convoluted this whole mess has become. Freepers oppose the loans and thereby support the environmental wackos goal of driving cute little tin cans that will save us from global warming. Al Gore must love these Repubs!!
Wonder how the liberal Free Traders spin this one
Yes, you are right. If the Big Three go under, look for the Japanese to start slowly pulling out of the US. The Japanese plants were built here for political reasons--as a hedge against American protectionism--and once the threat of American protectionism is gone, because the Big Three are gone, the Japanese will shift production back to Japan, or to a low-wage country like Mexico. And we won't be able to do anything about it, because they will control our auto market.
Well, no. With the yen rising against the dollar, it makes more sense than ever before for a Japanese company to manufacture in the U.S.
I suspect the suspension/delay of that plant in Mississippi has been driven entirely by the fact that Toyota was planning to build the Prius there, starting in 2010. Toyota has probably done some serious thinking about this, and now realizes that they aren't going to be selling enough hybrid cars here in the U.S. to make the plant profitable. For one thing, fuel costs are way down . . . and secondly, the hybrid technology is relatively untested and there may be long-term flaws in it anyway.