I offer a friendly reminder to all of those Obama bashers out there who are furiously indignant at his efforts to save American auto makers by hook or by crook.
Do you know how we went from zero to sixty in production of weapons when we entered World War Two? Look at some military antiques for a history lesson. Among the versions of model 1911 pistols that I have studied, you will find receivers stamped with everything from 'Singer Sewing Machine' to 'General Motors.'
But it wasn't just handguns. GM produced torpedo bombers for the Navy, deuce-and-a-half trucks for the Army and Churchill tanks for the British army. I say this not in praise of GM (which also profited from supplying the Nazis early on), but rather in support of having the domestic means of rapid, short-notice production of large quantities of war material in the event of an emergency.
You'll find similar stories behind the other American auto makers. At peak production, Ford was completing 1 B-24 bomber per hour, 24 hours a day. Literally, pilots slept on cots at the factory, waiting for their new planes to be ready. Ford also built massive numbers of military jeeps during this period. Chrysler made Sherman M-4 tanks, air raid sirens, ambulances and sundry other goods.
We can only manage this type of production if we already have thriving industries in coke, steel, railways and automobiles. You can't switch factories over to making tanks if they've been shuttered for years and the machinery has all been shipped off to China. Nor can you do much of anything with those factories if all of your skilled workers and machinists and engineers have scattered to the 4 winds and been forced to take up other trades.
Barack Obama understands this. Do you?
4 comments:
During 1942 and 1943, many of Detroit's finest trucks were being built, filled with military supplies, shipped to Iran, and then driven over the mountains to the USSR to supply Stalin's armies struggling to hold or recapture the Ukraine and Stalingrad.
I am a little surprised that there has been no discussion of the need to maintain industrial capacity for reasons of national defense. Even if we are not planning to get into another World War, we will need some kind of automotive capacity (and I mean that to include trucks, motorcycles, and every other form of vehicle that propels itself) to get supplies to the troops in the field.
But this raises an interesting point. Perhaps this is intentional -- perhaps the Republicans who are fussing would rather we DIDN'T have the ability to fight in a foreign land. Surely we wouldn't commit to a war without giving our troops the equipment to fight it! (We wouldn't, would we?)
That's it! We have just exposed the Republicans as closet pacifists!
If there's a demand for X cars every year, then there will be X cars made every year, regardless of who makes them. There are obvious advantages to making them here (or else why would almost every car maker in the world have plants here?) so people will make them here. If GM were to suddenly disappear, other companies like Chrysler, Toyota, Ford, Nissan, etc, etc will simply build more plants in the US to meet the increased demand.
We can just as easily use those plants as we can GMs plants to meet war time demands.
Not to mention that new plants would be much more efficient than the old factories that have been kept going all these years and it would sweep out all the union workers with their union attitudes and work habits.
Did it hurt our national security when AMC went belly up? Granted, that was on a much smaller scale, but the principle is the same.
Yeah well, the euro auto manufacturers are both heavily unionized and still making big profits. They design and sell sensible transportation. And while some people may be excited about the move of employment from heavy manufacturing to selling things like real estate and Amway crap, I'm not so impressed with the outcome.
Great, so when a factory closes or a business ends then noone steps in to fill the hole. That explains why when Henry Ford drove several attempts at auto companies into the ground that he turned to poetry. When he failed the whole auto industry pretty much gave up and moved back to carriages. If GM and Chrysler can't manage their company, then sell it or close it and let someone who can do it step in and take over. Even with the bailout, Hummer went to China which means the Chinese now have a foot in the door to the American Auto market. Say goodbye to our manufacturing unless we start engaging in common sense approaches to international trade.
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