Now we know what is in the future for North America's workers.
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At the height of Ford layoffs under Alan Mullaly he was pressed to answer whether Ford was investing North American profits into China. Under pressure he admitted that this was true.
The thing about investing in China after Clinton’s PNTR was that it offered great returns for investors, but the investments were very risky. So investors tried to reduce risk by shifting the risk burden to anyone else. One way to risk burden was shifted was to influence Ford at a board level to invest money into the Chinese auto industry, slow down Ford with policies like DEI and deep hiring/layoff cycles, and secret commitments by Ford to purchase product from Ford’s Chinese competitors. This approach shifts risk from investors to the Company.
US and Chinese governments were also involved. For example, information sharing between Ford, GM and Chrysler was heavily restricted by antitrust regulators, it was illegal for employees to share information between the three companies so research and development had to be duplicated and budgets were limited. The opposite was the case in China. It was illegal for employees to not share R&D information between companies. Ford opened a big library in Ford China, and shared information between Ford China and its partner companies where Ford aligned investors were investing. This gave Chinese companies a big leg up.
The problem which is apparent now resulted from the near religious belief by sponsor/beneficiaries of PNTR (permanent normalized trade relations) that industrialization of China would inevitably lead to a government in China diplomatically aligned with the US, and would for example develop a two party system consisting of the US Democratic Party and the US Republican Party. American oligarchs would become Chinese oligarchs and politicians, oligarchs would all happily expand into China.
However, this didn’t happen. Industrialization lead to creation of Chinese oligarchs who compete with US oligarchs. China’s one party system is holding strong, US political parties have little influence there. US policy created a potential adversary, not a vassal state as anticipated.
And that brings us to today.
DF wasn't really all that innovative. He just didn't have an unlimited subsidy from a government that was into king making. Maybe he could have stuck around if the lions share (and I do mean lions share) of that 19.5 billion write down wasn't hanging around his neck (of which he was deserving).
The beginning of the end of Ford, the Chinese will eventually buy just the F-150 brand.
Won’t happen in Billy’s lifetime, but the kiddies will jump on the offer.
This would not have happened if we kept Model e intact with DF as lead.
The vision, tech, and talent was there internally to never need to collaborate with other OEM's, China or otherwise.
@b2 If you can't beat them join them said the duos that'll both hold you hostage
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I mean when your beat, you're beat. They just have better tech. Of course built on foundations they stole, but boy do they know how to iterate and improve. Now here we are.