The Irony is Lost on Congress Here

Funny, I could have sworn during the original "Cash for Clunkers," Michigan lawmakers were upset Americans weren't buying any from the "Big Three" automakers.  In fact, cars from both Toyota and Honda almost out-sold cars made by Ford, GM, and what's left of Chrysler.

Well, it seems the Japanese don't want American cars either.

Lawmakers and U.S. automakers are peeved with Japan, which has launched a cash-for-clunkers program that doesn’t accept American-made cars.

Under Japan’s program, consumers who trade in a car at least 13 years old can get a tax cut of up to $2,800 toward the purchase of a new car.

But the program excludes imported vehicles from companies that have low sales in Japan. That covers General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, according to the American Automotive Policy Council, which has pressed the Obama administration for action.

U.S. producers are particularly irked since Japanese companies did well under the cash-for-clunkers program Congress adopted. Just fewer than half the 677,000 vehicles sold were made by Japanese companies, though Japan notes that 80 percent of Japanese-brand autos sold in the U.S. are American-built .

The clunkers program is aggravating a longstanding sore point with American automakers. U.S. companies complain that Japanese trade barriers have kept the market for American-built cars and trucks small. Only about 10,000 U.S. cars are sold in Japan. By comparison, more than 1 million Japanese cars have been sold in the States this year, even in a depressed market.

There's two ways American car companies could end up successful in this deal.

The first is to have Japan lower its barriers to trade for American automobiles.  Currently, the Japanese "Cash for Clunkers" is particularly designed to ensure the typical way American cars are imported into the land of the rising sun do not qualify for the program.  Most U.S. cars entering Japan are classified in a manner for them to avoid a $4,000 surtax on the vehicle which requires a high-end fuel efficiency test.  I'm not that engrossed with Japanese import laws to go into further details.

Given all that this Congress has done in the name of trade protectionism and kowtowing to unions (like say the UAW and other AFL-CIO-connected groups), in the past ten-plus months, the shock they have when they run into foreign protectionism is priceless.  Japan has always been protective of its internal automobile market, but more from Korean manufacturers than those from the U.S.

The second is, why don't American automakers do what their Japanese counterparts did long ag; and set up plants inside the country they are having import troubles with thus making everything they produce in Japan "a native product?"

Of course, the answer to that question is three short-little letters: U-A-W.