[KingMachiavelli]

The profits of auto manufacturing are distributed to US stock holders. The same won’t be true for foreign companies. For very large industries, this is a large amount of capital either staying or leaving the US.

Also, it’s unlikely that the low prices could be maintained while also paying US labor and US safety standards. If they can then it means we’ve lost our competitive edge completely in the manufacturing sector. At that point we’d be reliant on foreign companies to operate locally here.

[aurareturn]

Yes but quality of life gets better for Americans because they can get a superior product at a cheaper price.

Protectionism is how you end up with a country like North Korea on the extreme end.

[piva00]

Allocating a large amount of capital to losing/less competitive companies is quite the antithesis of what the USA's capitalism was about. Protecting the big ones comes at the cost of unfair competition to new competitors that could take over them. Tesla is the only auto company from the US who managed it, and in a short amount of time is also falling into the same complacency trap.

Why is it ok nowadays to artificially prop up these companies? It has only led to the stagnation of US auto manufacturers, as it's expected when competition is curtailed.

The same can be seen happening in Germany and its auto manufacturers, they are on the same trend albeit slower, in my opinion they have one last shot to turn it around before being out-competed and requiring the state to continuously protect and sustain them as the USA has done.

[Tostino]

I'm extremely unsympathetic to US auto manufacturers. They have fumbled every time they possible could my entire life. They deserved to go under from 2008.

Let companies that actually want to innovate rise from the ashes.