Rubbish. If that were the case, then Toyota and other auto makers would have been failing just as badly. They weren't.
From Wiki, while the US industry had its own issues, the Japanese DID suffer also:
With high gas prices and a weak US economy in the summer of 2008, Toyota reported a double-digit decline in sales for the month of June, similar to figures reported by the Detroit Big Three... On December 22, 2008, Toyota declared that it expected the first time loss in 70 years in its core vehicle-making business. Loss of $1.7 billion, in its group operating revenue, would be its first operating loss since 1938 (Company was founded in 1937). Toyota saw its sales drop 33.9 percent and Honda Motor by 31.6 percent...
Honda has predicted that there may be reductions among part-time and contract staff. Upper management bonuses would also be reassessed and directors in the company will take a 10 percent pay cut effective January 2009.
Nissan, another leading Japanese car manufacturer, announced that it also would be slashing production and will reduce its output by 80,000 vehicles in the first few months of 2009.
In December 2008, Suzuki, Japan's fourth biggest car manufacturer, announced that it will cut production in Japan by about 30,000 units due to falling demand. The company is expected to face its first profit drop in eight years for financial year ending in March 2009.
GM was failing because its products sucked.
No, a real issue was that it had too many low MPG vehicles, trucks and SUV's, as the market had demanded, but the Wall Street-driven gas price spikes greatly impacted.
There were multiple issues, the US government required a CEO to leave as part of the bailout. But the real triggers were Wall Street driven - financial crash and gas prices.
My solution is to let failing companies fail. Now, even though I made a conscious decision NOT to buy a crappy GM car, they still ended up with my money.
Which is why you are an ignorant irresponsible citizen who doesn't understand the pros and cons of the issue and is a harmful voter.
You happen to be BETTER OFF as a US citizen as a result of the economic benefits from people who better understand the issues doing the right thing.
They fined Toyota multiple times during a period of conflicted interests. The US government was throwing money at GM as it was taking it from Toyota. The nominal reason for the fines was later admitted to be fraudulent.
Yes, they did. And every time the Justice Department fines any company who donated more to the President's political opponent, it's clearly corruption!
You are simply repeating your ignorant paranoia over,and over, and over, and over. It's just as wrong each time.
You have not answered all the previous times I pointed out you made baseless assertions by providing any evidence, but you keep on make more baseless claims.
You have not shown the fines were "admitted to be fraudulent". Why don't you try answering the lack of evidence for what you said before you do it again.
Moreover, the government obtained digital copies of both hardware and software designs while owning Toyota's biggest competitor. Hardware and software are intellectual property. If your faith in government is really so blind that you still don't see the connection, the official report contains extensive descriptions of the hardware and software, even including copied code. It's in the appendix of the official report.
Where's your evidence the information was 'stolen' and used inappropriately by the US industry?
They didn't save an industry - they saved a company. If that company had been doing anything good for the public, they wouldn't have needed saving. Instead, they were making high-cost, low-quality products that no one wanted.
No, actually, they saved an industry - GM and Chrysler are two of the 'big three', and Ford would have been devastated by the loss of infrastructure like auto parts.
The companies were doing all kinds of good for the public, and you are merely showing ignorance even more denying that.
The fact that they had a crisis triggered by the effects of two Wall Street bad behaviors does not prove what you claim, that they were total wastes. More ignorance.
You make yet more baseless claims that the issue was their products were 'low quality' and 'high cost'. At some point, your recklessness with the truth crosses to lying.
An issue they DID have was high worker pay than foreigners largely operating in Republican/Southern areas.
That's good for the country, good for the workers, that they were competing, outside of the Wall Street crises, paying workers more, strengthening the middle class.
It's too bad the Republicans put the foreign companies in their districts not only ahead of the national interest, but recklessly so trying to exploit a financial crisis to destroy a major US economic activity simply for the benefit of the foreign competitors they were serving.
The government CLEARED Toyota, but kept all of Toyota's IP and money.
Let's repeat this for you yet again.
They cleared Toyota of ELECTRICAL FLAWS. They did not clear Toyota of the things they were fined for - failure to notify quickly, failure to recall quickly.
For what, the fifth time, you have not shown the government misused any of Toyota's information for US automakers, you just keep claiming it without any evidence.
You really don't see the problem with that? When someone is arrested for a crime, are they first fined heavily and all possessions of sentimental value seized? What if that person is then found not guilty - are the money and items returned, or does the government keep them?
Toyota was fined AFTER they did not notify as required by law. They were fined AFTER they did not recall quickly as required by law. They were NOT found 'not guilty'.
What is so hard for you to get that?
It's funny that you call me an idiot for misrepresenting your position, then you respond with this in the next breath. The government can do some of those things under some conditions. The problem is that the government has done a lot of stupid crap outside the norm, creating conflicts of interest. What would you say if Toyota was put in charge of all automotive patents and GM was FORCED to file a patent for every item in the design of its vehicles? At best, you could hope for a fair outcome and that Toyota would keep the information private and unavailable to its own engineers, but that's completely naive. In the end, I don't care if "US auto" dies or not because there's no such thing. Toyota spends more of its money in the US than does GM at this point, but both are global corporations combining parts and labor from all over God's green earth. That GM's headquarters is still in Detroit doesn't make it some sacred company worthy of praise any more than Toyota's being in Tokyo make it an object of scorn. [/quote]
GM was not put in charge of Toyota's patents. The US government was. Big difference.
I'm tired of explaining to you over and over that the US government can handle such a 'conflict of interest' and you just keep posting paranoia that it can't. You don't listen.
On the issue that the companies are diversified outside the US, you're right. There's still a lot to be said that the US-owned companies pay taxes to the US more, but this ultimately isn't all about their being *US* companies, but simply the destruction of an industry that benefits the US in a great waste caused by a temporary financial crisis.
Frankly, if we could do the same thing, save an industry that greatly benefits the US economy similarly that was foreign owned, a case can be made for that, too.
I never said government was evil or that I want to destroy it. The only claim I made in this thread is what government should not be doing: leveraging its power over foreign corporations to legally extort them at the benefit of domestic corporations. That action IS evil.
You claimed government is doing those things without any evidence.
You really do believe that the government achieves everything you think it should, that it is incorruptible (except for the military, which is inherently corrupt), and that oversight is flawless.
You're a liar. Stop lying about what I say.
The current administration created a conflict of interest by taking over GM.
Nothing that it can't handle properly, that wasn't justified and a good idea.
Your ignorant paranoia is not an argument.
It then used its legal authority to take money and intellectual property from Toyota - now the US government's largest competitor in the automotive industry. Those are the facts of this case. Do you dispute them?
Yes, you haven't shown - for again like the fifth time - ANYTHING was wrong with the fines or that any information from Toyota was given to US companies to misuse.
Why don't you prove that they got it right? I thought the burden of proof was on the accuser. Evidence that NHTSA's accusations were correct should be easily found online in your world of transparent, incorruptible government.
Uh, you're the accuser, claiming the NHTSA was wrong, claiming the fines were 'admittedly fraudulent, that Toyota's information was misused by the US companies.
I don't see any burden to 'prove' the NHTSA got it right, that the fines for late notification or recall were proper. All the information shown says they were.
You are the one who posts nothing but attacks without any evidence, except that you claim a 'conflict of interest' proves it's corrupt, fines are 'admittedly fraudulent'.
More posting with attacks and no evidence won't help.