Ford is offering to pay its workers up to $140,000 to quit their jobs.  The company has 54,000 workers.  More layoffs are coming, it seems.  GM is extending buyout offers to its 74,000 workers.

These companies could have been a force for good, not bad, in American trade policy.  They are big, well connected, and still respected by some.  Hillary Clinton cites the auto industry almost exclusively in her opposition to the South Korea Free Trade Agreement.

GM could have demanded currency manipulation be addressed by us.  It did not.  Instead, they choose to outsource to China.

Ford could have demanded that we neutralize the VAT-tariff/VAT-subsidy advantage many other countries have with us.  It did not.  Instead, it also outsources to China.

Ford and GM could have looked at the U.S. trade surplus that existed for decades before we signed a hodge-podge of trade agreements that tied our hands.  They could have said, "Look at the trade deficits that immediately followed these agreements.  American consumers are not gaining earning power in conjunction with U.S. productivity gains.  This must stop because now they cannot afford our cars."  But they did not. 

Instead, the auto companies continue to aid and abet U.S. wacko free traders, and aid and abet the destruction of the very companies built by very smart Americans such as Henry Ford and Alfred P. Sloan.

Shame on them.

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