ARE AMERIANCS INFERIOR TO JAPANESE?

Do you believe that our American machinists and welders and die makers are all inferior to the Japanese? Do you believe that our unions are so pernicious that they will not let our workers be effective? Do you believe that all American engineers, chemists, and designers are inferior to all the Japanese? Do you believe that all the managers and leaders of the American automotive industry are incompetent and stupid? Have they no idea how to build and sell cars after 200 years of experience? Apparently our own government, the American government, believes this because they make no attempt to slow and reverse the destruction of the American automotive industry.

In our state we have lost tens of thousands of automotive jobs in the past few years. The phrase “in excess of 20000” has been in the newspapers. These are just the workers themselves, it makes no recognition of the destruction of the thousands more in families that formerly led middle class lives, played by the rules, paid their taxes, and fought to defend America.

Now our politicians, who we allow to reside comfortably in Washington praise the new Japanese factories that pay $14/hour jobs that have replaced the $37/hour jobs we once had. They claim that we can do nothing to protect our people because we signed up with the World Trade Organization. If we signed with them, we can cancel. Our representatives in Congress feel that the fired Americans, if they cannot live on $14/hour, should become computer scientists or brain surgeons or something that pays well. The politicians do not even recognize that the Japanese cars are not being built in America; they are being assembled with Japanese engines, transmissions, electronics, etc. Our American automotive supply system is gone; just look at Delphi and Ford.

There is an answer to this travesty and it is simple. Congress should pass a law that requires that every car and truck sold in America must be completely built in America. Not simply assembled from Japanese or Korean or Chinese or German parts but entirely built in the United States. Our politicians will say, “but the Asians and the Europeans will be upset.” I say, “Let them be upset. We have been supporting them for too long.”