Auto expert William J. Holstein writing at BusinessWeek.com:
The Big Three figured [that the arrival of foreign auto manufacturers in the U.S.] would saddle the Japanese with the same labor costs and the same labor problems they had. But they were wrong. The Japanese located in mostly southern and border states that were solidly anti-union. They hired younger, less expensive workers, and they created an entirely new relationship between management and labor. This led to an entirely new auto industry. The net effect was to rachet up the competitive pressures on Detroit, not ease them. . . . That was followed by yet another rude awakening last November when the then-CEOs of GM, Ford and Chrysler came to testify in Washington, D.C., and found out that the government wouldn't be bailing them out. Southern Republicans, many of whom represented states with nonunion auto factories, chewed the CEOs up before the cameras. Newly powerful California environmentalists assaulted them. The center of the national consensus regarding the importance of the domestically owned auto industry had shifted, and American media coverage was also thoroughly hostile.
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