U.S. Economy.
Driving Off a Cliff.
“They got some basic problems. They’re very expensive and they don't go far.”
—Donald Trump at a campaign event, 2024.
“An unpleasant aberration that would vanish, if there was justice in heaven.”
—General Motors on the small car market, late 1960s.
Auto and auto parts production is globally the second largest manufacturing industry by employment and the highest by value of output. And with Henry Ford’s creation of the assembly line in the 1910s, the industry came to symbolize the United States as a global manufacturing power. Detroit was the “Motor City,” with a cultural impact beyond simply the number of cars produced—remember the “Motown Sound”?
There were competitors, but the U.S. auto industry was dominant well into the 1950s, when two-thirds of all globally manufactured vehicles were made in the United States. The first serious challenge to U.S. dominance came from Japan—small, convenient cars that U.S. auto executives dismissed as low quality and unreliable, insisting that U.S. car buyers really preferred the mammoth, fuel-guzzling, high-profit vehicles with new models produced each year.
By 1967 the United States moved from a net auto exporter to a net auto importer.
Today, the global auto market produces more than 75 million new cars a year. The United States is the second largest producer but only accounts for about 11% of the total. China is the largest, accounting for one-third.
https://www.dollarsandsense.org/driving-off-a-cliff/
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Bill Barclay is a member of the Chicago Political Economy Group and a member of the Ventura County, Calif. chapter of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). He worked for more than two decades in fin
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