[CGMthrowaway]

We did perfect their mass production, and it propelled us to the world's largest economy. The only country with better GDP growth over the last 100 years is Japan, and that's in large part because they perfected the manufacture of cars themselves.

[Mawr]

Right, it's not the geopolitical situation, but cars. Natural resources + every potentially powerful hostile country is across entire oceans = success.

[rsynnott]

> We did perfect their mass production

I mean... Toyota would beg to differ (and realistically US car manufacturers today are closer to the Toyota model of car mass production than the traditional US one).