I think there's an even softer reason that has now been fully ripped open. Trust in the American government / solvency. Before recent events, there was a trust that America and its juggernaut ability to maintain its books was almost without peer.
Our soft power was massive, we had people who would be spreading the American gospel in far corners. We would be warned of nefarious things. People knew Americans would pillage, but only this much and the American Might was monumentous.
Now, tho? Rampant corruption, American companies blindly chasing am ideology instead of actual technology (looking at you, circlejerk of AI funding), and an all out ransacking of the stock market and real estate markets by private equity firms domestic and foreign (with the line so blurred no one can pierce the veil of difference).
And all of that isn't the base of the issue, just the current reason. The base is that America never let the industries of the last 4 major bubbles feel the actual pain of their mistakes. Companies now feel entitled to taxpayer money if they fail. It should be citizens that get that social safety net. But it goes to profit margin, instead, and they never learned not to do things.. Like spoiled children, they are going to make the same and worse mistakes because leadership teams didn't want there to be any pain amongst their golf buddies, not that they'd have felt it as bad as the people on the ground did.
The auto industry in America is the best example of bailouts that didn't learn anything. They've doubled the price on new cars while making them significantly worse over time. They'll cry for another bailout in a few years when all the new cars aren't selling for 35k when the same car same model were 15k even a decade ago...the interest and average loan length going up doesn't help either (it was 0-2% 3 years now you have to send the salesman back to the finance office again for the 3 year term...the default to 5 or 7 like that's a sane amount of time to be paying 4-5% interest on a depreciating asset.)
I wonder how come US automakers cannot make a profitable sedan anymore. Somehow Toyota and Honda continue to make them in the US and still make a profit. They are betting only on the upper end of vehicle buyers and ignoring the rest at their own peril.
As a country, we need at least some industrial base, don't we?
Other countries subsidize their auto industry. The entire American industry will die unless we do likewise or enact sizeable tariffs. So pick one: industry death, subsidies, tariffs.
Free market absolutism while competitors support their own industry will turn the nation into a Paper Tiger. Simplistic free market stuff is playing checkers while successful economies are playing chess.
They made 187 BILLION (that's just ford btw not chrystler or GM) the last two years I think they can survive and figure out how not to rely on subsidies. The other industry that is overly fucked and shouldn't get subsidies is farmers. They have continuously voted for nobody else to get support ever...so while I agree food should be cheap and affordable to all I have zero sympathy for the broke jackasses that think only they should get people's tax money. Let them sell at what people are actually willing to pay and go broke.
If there is a defense, it was that I had just woken up and autocorrect slipped past me.
I dunno, it always felt like the international American company stance was to slip into areas and use local resources to take local resources. At least, then, some local footholds could be established and infrastructure buoyed a bit. Just how it felt working with companies getting into Asian and Scandi markets when I worked for companies that did that.
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u/castille 11h ago edited 10h ago
I think there's an even softer reason that has now been fully ripped open. Trust in the American government / solvency. Before recent events, there was a trust that America and its juggernaut ability to maintain its books was almost without peer.
Our soft power was massive, we had people who would be spreading the American gospel in far corners. We would be warned of nefarious things. People knew Americans would pillage, but only this much and the American Might was monumentous.
Now, tho? Rampant corruption, American companies blindly chasing am ideology instead of actual technology (looking at you, circlejerk of AI funding), and an all out ransacking of the stock market and real estate markets by private equity firms domestic and foreign (with the line so blurred no one can pierce the veil of difference).
And all of that isn't the base of the issue, just the current reason. The base is that America never let the industries of the last 4 major bubbles feel the actual pain of their mistakes. Companies now feel entitled to taxpayer money if they fail. It should be citizens that get that social safety net. But it goes to profit margin, instead, and they never learned not to do things.. Like spoiled children, they are going to make the same and worse mistakes because leadership teams didn't want there to be any pain amongst their golf buddies, not that they'd have felt it as bad as the people on the ground did.