Regardless of how you feel about American cars, you should think about this and its implications:

Around 1990,  the Japanese spent $400 million in the U.S. to curry favor for their products. They hired an army of lobbyists, lawyers and former government officials, even  former presidents. Their campaign was massive,  intricate and unbelievably brilliant.

For complete details of this see UNSUSTAINABLE.ORG and the article  "Political Advantage: Japan's Campaign for America."

Here are a few more outrageous details from the Japan article written by Pat Choate:

"Japan's political machine in the United States is designed to serve six national and corporate goals:

1.To keep the U.S. market open for exports from Japan.

2. To smooth the way for additional purchases of key assets in the United States.

3.To blunt criticism of Japan's adversarial trade practices.

4. To neutralize, or even better, to capture the political influence of U.S. companies that compete with Japan.

5. To influence U.S. trade policies toward Japan, Europe and all other markets where Japan has significant economic interests.

6. To create an integrated U.S.- Japan economy that prevents the United States from confronting Japan economically and politically."

I don't know where current Japanese lobbying attempts stand but it looks like China and other Asian countries have now learned at the feet of the master.

As an example of past practices,  Choate tells how the Japanese even got light trucks reclassified as cars to save them millions in tariffs. They did this with the help of several U. S. senators and a former U.S. trade official. They were able to outmaneuver U.S. automakers in their own country.This is part of an enormous revolving door where Washington officials routinely line up jobs in the private sector, often lobbying for foreign countries. It has never been this bad or acceptable before  in Washington, and you have to now question whether our officials are even working for us any more. Or are they trying to impress potential future foreign employers? Japan would never-- nor would  any other major power-- allow this  situation to fly on their home turf.

Several years ago when American news anchors and pundits suddenly started expressing an almost hatred and disdain for American cars, I smelled a rat. No industry is perfect. But in some cases  there was only a small fraction of improvement in quality for the foreign autos. But the pundits could be heard  shouting to the rooftops "What a stunning indictment of American cars!" 

 "Toyota is about to overtake G.M. !"they chirped joyously. I can see  someone casually mentioning that a foreign country's products are excellent. But year after year, to constantly badger and demean your own country's industry?

No country can be a superpower without an auto industry. Despite the stereotype of some outdated rust belt, manufacturing is now very high tech. Manufacturing  is a key to keeping the competitive technology edge in an increasingly difficult world.The auto industry is unlike any other in that there are massive amounts of money and spin-off jobs involved. We simply can't afford to hand it all over to other countries.

I remember being puzzled several years ago by all the sneering news anchors and elite opinion makers. Could they really be that naive and unpatriotic? What could be motivating them to suddenly want to destroy a critical American industry? After reading this article, the motivation is finally clear to me.