You missed the critical point my friend.....the TAX breaks & credits were BIGGER than the annual losses from produce and were provided FOR SEVERAL YEARS.
The transaction had NOTHING to do with the volume. Whether or not the company made a profit off products, they received the “free” gubmint money whose ultimate source was more than likely US Taxpayers. The gubmint handout was sufficient to (a) build the plant there and (b) run it at an operating loss of $20 per unit shipped.
Them are the facts - like it or not, and it’s rampant throughout bigbiz today.
How else do you explain the massive staffs responsible for manipulating corporate tax liabilities (eg GE’s “Pay No Taxes” strategy), mergers, acquisitions, deconstruction/liquidation, risk management and offshoring?
I’m pretty confident that if one were to analyze the relative expenditures for and by those groups it would tend to dwarf design, manufacturing, sales and support in most bigbiz entities today.
Unless the credits amounted to actually getting paid by the host government, there is no way they could keep living on a negative cash flow. Maybe the product was simply a loss leader and that’s not all they made?