Having cannibalized their fall sales by going all out with their incentive plans during the summer,Ford and GM are now facing the problem of collapsing sales of their new models which are heavily weighted with big SUVs and big trucks.October sales were down about 25% at each of the big two and the Japanese carmakers have now grabbed a market share close to the 50% threshold. When that magic mark is reached, it will have the same effect as the 2000th victim of Bush’s war.The era of American dominance of the automobile industry would have ended.As China and India enter these markets within the next ten years, one can expect a decent burial for these two once mighty giants.
In several of my posts here at Bootrib, I have been saying that the end of American dominance of the automobile industry should be seen as a metaphor for the decline and fall of American Imperial Enterprise as a whole.For nearly sixty years after WWII, Americans, as a people, have thought of themselves as exceptional partly because the more benighted peoples in the rest of the world lacked the jet fin styling, the automatic transmissions and backseat sex of American boys and girls.Now that those perks are becoming available everywhere,the uniqueness of the American landscape has worn thin.The death of the American auto industry may well presage the death of American cultural dominance.
That cultural death blow will carry over into the military and political arenas, IMO. When an American President becomes an object of scorn and ridicule as the current impoostor has become, the day is not far off when the cultural and political landscape will shift towards Asia, Europe and Latin America.
As our nation hurtles toward bankruptcy and China, India and Brazil become ascendant,we can expect the fate of GM and Ford to widen and capture many more.