Trouble is, there are all sorts of other very costly regulations, aside from Unions, we have saddled manufacturing with...not to mention the taxes.
One word answers: Lawyers.
US is so laden with regulations, lawsuits, bureaucratic red tape, etc. A company has to worry about the legal costs to build, hire, fire, speak, write, repair, and so on. All for our “protection”. Granted, some regs are necessary. But enough is enough and too much is too much.
Basically, government has figured out how to get it’s piece of the pie, and keeps wanting more.
Ford and GM are both making money overseas where they’ve got to compete more directly with the foreign makers. The foreign makers are losing money in the US, just like the American makers. The primary difference is that the foreign makers don’t have as big a stake in the US relative to their overall operations, and so they still make a profit while the US makers do not.
So how can this be? Because the US makers must pay the union scale here in the US, while they don’t have that disadvantage overseas.
Like I’ve said from the beginning, all of this is the fault of Congress. Congress wrote the labor laws. Blaming it on the automakers just diverts attention from the real problem.