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toyota plants can retool in a matter of a few hours.
that's one of the problems---long production runs lock you into particular types of car--if demand changes, you cannot adapt in an effective manner. this is a technological constraint of considerable importance. it has little to do with the particular management in place at present, unless you want to say about them that they failed by not undertaking the capital reinvestment required to adapt more thoroughly to the technological arrangement that is increasingly the norm in transnational production in this sector.
o yeah--about this "liberal obsession" that you outlined above, ace (sorry, but i only just saw the post)....if you're talking about the car industry prior to the 1980s, you're confusing things---while it's formally correct that the american car industry was protected before that time, the rationale had nothing to do with what you claim it did---what changed is the geography of capitalist production, the logistical systems that underpin it, and the ideological rules of the game. before the early 1980s, it was GENERALLY understood that production was a social relation, that profit was tied to social stability, that deriving profit came with a social responsibility that was tied to particular geographical spaces, typically framed by nation-states. it was the rise of neoliberalism that reversed this---replacing the movement of capital for any particular geographical relationship, shareholder profits became a simple-minded substitute for broader forms of social responsibility, etc.
so far as i can see, there's no way around it: the primary explanation (even though it's an general-to-abstract one) for what's happening now is neoliberalism--which (again) is coded as conservative economic ideology in the states. "market fundamentalism" or "the washington consensus" etc etc etc.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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