Quote:
Originally Posted by merlin803
Henry Ford wasn't competing with other countries that could pay pennies to it's workers and then ship their cars to the U.S. without much penalty, all the while slapping a huge tax on any U.S. cars that we send back.
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I don't think this is entirely the case. Wages in Europe, Japan and the US are all pretty high. Many non-US brands even manufacture here. We have tariffs on vehicles as well.
Also, none of that really helps solve any of the issues I mentioned. Not that there are any great solutions at this point.
Our issues are not as simple as competing with countries with lower wages. It's many factors, like the number of people retiring and the associated social security and medicaid/medicare costs, the overall cost of health care, the cost of education, and more.
For our auto companies, they are responsible for billions in retirement costs and health care that foreign auto companies aren't burdened with. If we were to let them fail, the burden would be on the American taxpayer to take care of them. Maybe this is a reasonable solution, it might be better than having our auto companies completely give up on selling cars?