L’industria USA dell’auto riceve aiuti stranieri

Problema ruolo multinazionali
(auto):

tolgono o portano posti di
lavoro e ricchezza?

Tesi Kempe: ne portano.

Confronta settore tessile, dove invasione import sta
facendo scomparire produzioni locali,

con settore auto, dove
insediamento case Jap, EU ridimensiona GM e Ford, ma rafforza la competitività
americana, riducendo l’import da Jap ed EU.

• Stati USA stendono tappeti rossi alle multinazionali
  straniere, perché investano nel loro territorio.
• Governatore Tennessee Phil Bredesen ha offerto $200 milioni
  di crediti fiscali a Nissan perché trasferisca il suo quartier generale da
  California a Nashville, Tennessee. Nissan ha ottenuto 154 mila dollari per
  ciascuno dei 1.275 nuovi posti di lavoro.
• Nissan ha già grosso stabilimento in Tennessee a Smyrna, per
  il quale ricevette 39 m$ di incentivi dal precedente governatore. Oggi oltre
  125mila abitanti del Tennessee sono occupati nell’industria auto, che apporta
  oltre 3,5MD$ in salari.
• Nissan è controllata da Renault, che l’ha ristrutturata e
  riportata in attivo tramite il manager Carlos Ghosn, di origine brasiliana (cui
  sia Ford che GM avrebbero fatto offerte).
• Case estere nel 2005 hanno prodotto più del 33%
  delle auto made in USA; nel 2000 la quota era del 22%.
• Se si include Daimler Chrysler la quota ha raggiunto il 50%.
  I tagli di GM e Ford assicurano che il ridiemensionamento delle case USA
  continuerà.
• La produzione in USA da parte di case estere si è
  quintuplicata in 20 anni a 3,96 milioni nel 2005, mentre import di auto è
  caduto del 31% a 2,9 milioni.
• Le case estere si sono insediate nel Sud, in stabilimenti
  non sindacalizzati, nel Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky e Texas.
• D’altra parte i modelli della case “nazionali” sono spesso
  prodotti all’estero. Il nuovo modello Fusion viene costruito in Messico su una
  piattaforma Mazda. Ford ha acquistato i brevetti per un motore “pulito” ibrido
  dalla Tayota, mentre la maggior parte delle Toyota Camry e dei SUV Mercedes
  sono Made in America.
• Le reazioni politiche alla crescente presenza delle
  multinazionali auto sono limitate, perché in Congresso ci sono più deputati e
  senatori di Stati che traggono vantaggio dagli insediamenti di case estere, che
  non di provenienza dalle tradizionali aree di produzione GM e Ford, più
  concentrate territorialmente. Non vi è più il clima da campagna anti-Jap degli
  anni ’70 e ’80.
• Multinazionali estere hanno portato avanti
  strategia di integrazione nel territorio, con ingresso dei dirigenti nei
  consigli dei vari enti territoriali 
  (esempio: Dennis Cuneo, n° 2 Toyota in USA) e con donazioni alle
  istituzioni locali, per ambiente e ricerca (Toyota per es. ha donato oltre 1m$
  a National Underground Railroad Freedom Center che commemora la resistenza
  contro la schiavitù). Cuneo: debolezza auto USA dovuta a carenza di ingegneri e
  personale qualificato.

While General Motors was announcing late last
year that it would shut a dozen plants and cut 30,000 jobs, Tennessee Gov.
Phil Bredesen was busy luring Japanese car-maker Nissan’s U.S. headquarters
from California to the Nashville region.

To close the deal, Mr. Bredesen did some
high-octane wooing of Carlos Ghosn, the legendary turnaround guru who heads up
Nissan and automotive partner Renault. Aside from a package of some $200
million in tax credits and subsidies, Mr. Bredesen discovered that Mr. Ghosn’s
wife Rita had a passion for African violets. Tennessee just happened to have
the world’s largest producer, Holtkamp Greenhouses, which invented a new
variety and named it after her.

Mr. Bredesen, whose state will shed some GM
jobs even as Japanese companies move in, was simply working to get the most out
of an accelerating trend. The business of building cars in the U.S. has seldom
been better. It just isn’t being done as much as before by American companies.

Foreign-based companies made more than 33%
of all cars produced in the U.S. in 2005, up from 22% in 2000, says Tim MacCarthy, president of the Association of International
Automobile Manufacturers. If you count German-owned Chrysler, he says, that
number passed 50% last year. Ford’s announcement this week of
significant job cuts and plant closings following GM’s announced
belt-tightening ensures the shift will continue.

Yet foreign manufacturers’ inroads reflect
more the advantages than the disadvantages of the U.S. economy’s openness in a
globalizing world. Despite charges from U.S. car makers that the foreign
companies have displaced their jobs and sales, the deepening foreign
involvement more likely has saved America’s largest industry from going the way
of textiles, where imports have taken over the market.

The proof of that is that the number of
cars built domestically by foreign-owned companies has grown some fivefold over
the last 20 years to 3.96 million in 2005 while auto imports have fallen 31% to
2.9 million. Though Ford and GM are suffering, foreign investment has
created similarly high-wage jobs and kept the industry globally competitive
even as it moves Southward primarily to nonunion plants in places like
Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky and Texas.

Indeed, it has only been foreign
manufacturers’ output that forestalled deep declines in U.S. car manufacturing
over the past decade and through the 2001 recession, says the Center for
Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., in a recent study.

Foreign Is Less Foreign

Mr. Bredesen sees less and less of a
distinction between domestic and foreign investors in what they bring to local
economies. Some 160 Japanese companies in his state with their $10 billion
in investments and 40,000 jobs are sinking deeper community roots, building
out supplier networks and growing "soup-to-nuts" operations"
nationally that range from training and research to design and assembly.

Mr. Bredesen was prepared to offer Nissan
$197 million in state and local tax credits,
exceeding Chicago’s landmark subsidy in 2001 for Boeing to relocate from
Seattle. Nissan collected some $154,000 for each of the 1,275 new jobs.
The car maker has already invested more than $2 billion in Tennessee,
including the Smyrna plant that is one of its most productive in the world.

"You have got to step up and recognize
the competition isn’t just with Kentucky anymore, but it’s also with
China," says Mr. Bredesen. He regards as a bargain then Gov. Lamar
Alexander’s subsidy of $39 million to convince Nissan to build its first U.S.
plant at Smyrna, though the offer was much maligned at the time. "Today, more than 125,000 Tennesseans
make their living building cars and trucks, and the auto industry pumps more
than $3.5 billion in wages into Tennessee’s economy."

 

THINKING GLOBAL

 

 

What difference is there in benefit to the
U.S. between American company jobs and those created by direct foreign
investment?

Write to Frederick Kempe at
Thinkingglobal@wsj.com3 with your thoughts.

EMAIL ALERTS

Globalization is also blurring the line
between foreign manufacturers that look more American and U.S. companies that
grow more foreign. Bill Ford was busy telling the Detroit auto show last
week, "We will be America’s car company" under the slogan "Red,
White and Bold." But the company’s new Fusion model, vying to be
the year’s hit sedan, is being built in Mexico on a Mazda platform. Ford
also is licensing clean, hybrid-engine technology from Toyota.
Meanwhile, most Toyota Camrys and Mercedes SUVs bear the label "Made in
America."

Steve Collins, who as president of the Automotive
Trade Council serves as the Big Two’s Washington lobbyist, has
justification when he argues that Ford, GM and Chrysler have been hurt by an
uneven playing field. Japanese companies have profited for many years from
an artificially low yen exchange rate, less onerous pension and health-care
costs and barriers for U.S. companies entering the Japanese market.

Shrugs Mr. Bredesen: "As governor, those
arguments are part of my environment and not part of my doing." Toyota,
the biggest foreign producer of autos in the U.S., says car buyers in making
their choice are paying less attention to where an auto maker has its headquarters.
Toyota took 13.3% of the U.S. market last year, with domestic-made vehicles
accounting for 60% of its sales. It outsold third-place Chrysler for
several months of 2005.

Yet the political ripples are few, partly
because Washington now has more congressmen and senators whose states benefit
from foreign car investments than those who hail from the more geographically
concentrated GM and Ford operations.

Dennis Cuneo,
Toyota’s No. 2 executive in the U.S., remembers how "Americans were
smashing Corollas with sledgehammers" when he went to work for the
Japanese company 22 years ago. Friends who once wondered why he would stoop to
working for the Japanese should visit his 49th-floor Manhattan office
overlooking Central Park. Then-Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca tried antitrust
arguments to fight Toyota’s first U.S. plant in 1983, a joint venture with GM.

What shifted attitudes since, Mr. Cuneo said,
was the sale of Mr. Iacocca’s former company to Daimler, globalization and the
North American Free Trade agreement.

Toyota Goes Native

Toyota still finds it must work hard at
convincing Americans of its commitment to their country and jobs.
"Perception lags reality," says Mr. Cuneo. "When you are
successful, it puts a big target on your back."

To become more American, Toyota has made
rich investments in environmental and scientific research projects at Stanford
and the University of Michigan. It has created a
diversity board and expanded minority hiring. Local communities where
Toyota operates benefit from company policy that expects executives to join
community boards in far greater numbers than their American competitors.
Procter & Gamble CEO John Pepper offers himself up by phone as a Toyota
character witness in Cincinnati, his headquarters and a focal point for the
Japanese auto maker’s operations.

He saw Mr. Cuneo, when he lived in
Cincinnati, serve on boards of the Chamber of Commerce, a fine-arts society
and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center — an initiative
commemorating resistance to slavery to which Toyota gave more than a million
dollars. Mr. Cuneo was also an assistant scout master.

Mr. Cuneo says the danger to U.S.
car-making isn’t posed by Toyota but ultimately by insufficient training and
education. What worries him is that America isn’t graduating enough engineers
or preparing enough skilled tradesmen. The U.S. executive of the Japanese
company quotes Shakespeare: "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not so much in
our stars but in ourselves."

Yet perhaps U.S. car makers need a different
Caesar. The Detroit car show was abuzz with reports that Ford and more
recently GM made overtures to Mr. Ghosn, the Brazilian-born Frenchman who
took over a near-dead Nissan in 1999 and turned it into one of the auto world’s
healthier companies. File that under the motto: "If you can’t beat him,
hire him.

"Mr. Ghosn told the Detroit News he wouldn’t comment
but was flattered by the reports. Here’s a hint: Try African violets.