The automotive industry with the current economy and a bailout?
The automotive industry…the cut backs…where the automotive market is going if it doesn’t get help.
President elect Barack Obama isn’t just words. Remember, “Just words?” Well, he is capable of delivering tough words too, as he did during the campaign to the Detroit Economic Club. He asked them whether or not they can move into the modern age with hybrids and gas saving vehicles. “Change.” Just a word. He is asking the automotive industry to change.
And change is what is needed in Detroit. The sad news, if you don’t know it is that foreign manufacturers now sell over half the new cars in the USA. The American automobile industry is losing the battle.
The big question is, “can this be turned around?” And “if so, HOW?”
Opinions vary. “Bailout.” Just a word? The nation is divided on the recent financial bailout of the Wall Street fat cats. “Let ‘em fail and take the hit,” some say, but it’s not that easy. Big Oil is the enemy, but guess who owns Big Oil? YOU do! Your 401 K’s do.
As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
It’s not only US car manufacturing that’s in trouble. A so called “American” car these days is composed more and more of foreign parts. As an example the 2008 Focus has only 65 percent domestic-parts content. When I was in school, that was considered passing, but just barely, with a grade of “D.”
Where is the US automotive industry headed ? Consider this. According to http://economistmom.com/2008/11/detroit-is-hemorrhaging/ “240,000 jobs were lost in October, bringing the year’s total job losses to nearly 1.2 million. And the year isn’t over, of course; we’ve surely got two more months of bad news to go.”
Cauterization needs to be done, and quickly, before the industry bleeds to death. And no one has the answer, save those with common sense. It is time for group action and compromise. Without change, nothing changes, right? Where have we heard that before. Well, now is the time to put it into action.
Bailouts? As anti-entrepreneurial as they sound, if well constructed, we should go for it. Unions have got to be willing to tighten their belts and accept less, face the hard cold fact that foreign workers can often produce more and better and cheaper products.
And finally, we need to revive the “Buy American” campaign that was so popular a few years ago but seems to have waned, and don’t just read the bumper stickers. Do it.
Tags: automotive jobs, economic crisis, politics and your career