Rescuing American automakers: Left-leaning Diane Glass on "buy American"

"It's difficult to know what 'buy American' means in a context in which Toyotas are made in California, and Boeing outsources manufacturing internationally," argues sociolinguist and author Dr. Sandra Silberstein.

But I imagine if the government resorts to such tactics, it would prove fruitless. Rescuing American automakers from competitive quicksand and high health-care costs with "buy American" campaigns only encourages more self-indulgent greed.

It doesn't help to sweep bad decisions under a collective carpet called patriotic consumerism.

Although these campaigns make for effective public relations, Silberstein told me, they potentially "substitute patriotic consumerism for analysis of structural issues affecting American employment." For example, she says: "Why do employers and not government carry the costs of health care?"

When Jimmy Carter identified an energy crisis in the 1970s, I don't recall warm fuzzies emanating from American automakers — that is, unless you consider global warming over the subsequent 30 years. Instead, they stuck to their capitalist agenda, concentrating instead on creating a greedy glut in the market. Their money-hungry decision-making toppled over when mile-high SUVs were manufactured and did little more than pad the egos of suburbanites, while adding to the number of accidents on interstates.

Japanese automakers focused on innovation and fuel-efficiency and were much more considered in their approach. They undersupplied the market, which created demand and profits, not surpluses and losses.

They knew there's more to business than making money. You have to please your customers with forward-thinking design.

The fate of American automakers shouldn't be a call to patriotic action; it should be a wake-up call. It is a simple lesson in free trade: If you think short-term and make bad business decisions, you pay the price later.

The American public shouldn't pay the price for you. And, as Silberstein points out, sheltering the American auto industry with patriotic consumerism not only "asks us to respond to the vulnerabilities of the American economy, it implicitly asks us to buy the policies and structures that make American workers so vulnerable."

Harvard-educated Diane Glass (dglass@ajc.com) is a writer and freethinker with a B.A. and M.A. in comparative religion.