Trump Opposition Finds Best Reason Yet To Impeach: His Failure to Design Successful Passenger Cars

By Marc J. Rauch
Exec. Vice President/Co-Publisher
THE AUTO CHANNEL

Marc J. Rauch

The biggest automotive and business news yesterday was the announcement that General Motors will be closing several assembly plants in North America, laying off thousands of workers, and eliminating a handful of passenger cars - including the much vaunted Chevrolet Volt, the electric car that kick-started the modern era of electric passenger vehicles.

To listen to analysis from the general news media and political opponents to President Trump, you would think that he's to blame for this drastic financial downturn for GM...as if Donald Trump was personally responsible for designing and building a car that no one wants, or for staking GM's future on the hope that the Chinese people will buy Buicks and Cadillacs instead of Mercedes, Audis, BMWs Volvos, Nissans, VWs, and of course their own domestic brands. (See: Best Selling Cars in China)

GM's China gambit was predicated upon a preference that the pre-communist Chinese elite had for Buicks and other GM vehicles. I guess no one told the present-day GM management that things have changed in China since the 1930's and 1940's, and that given the opportunity to experience other options, modern China would discover what modern America discovered: Japanese, Europeans, and South Koreans build vehicles that are considered better.

But it is funny to see Trump's opponents try to blame the GM downfall on his tariff policies. Buick and Cadillac build cars in China. American tariffs wouldn't impact sales of these specific cars in China. Sales of these cars in China - the auto market that is/was expected to become more important than North America - is affected by design and quality, not on the fact that the last Chinese emperor owned a Buick.

On the other side of the coin, at least one general news media outlet (Breitbart) has took a bit of a swipe at Barack Obama for presaging the demise of the Chevy Volt because he expressed interest six years ago in owning one. (See:

Personally, I've always felt that the bailing-out of General Motors was bungled and that it was done for all the wrong reasons with the wrong intentions. (From 2008, See: The Gasoline Companies Should Fund the Big Three Bailout)

ALSO SEE: The Rise & Fall of General Motors and the Subjugation of the Industrialized World.