Why was Chrysler at the table?

Keith Crain is publisher and editor-in-chief of Automotive News, and publisher and editorial director of Automotive News Europe.

KEITH CRAIN

Automotive News / November 20, 2006 - 1:00 am
Last week, while I was in China, President Bush finally met with the heads of General Motors, Ford Motor Co. and the Chrysler group.

While I am a great fan of Chrysler CEO Tom LaSorda and DaimlerChrysler CEO Dieter Zetsche, I don't understand who was supposed to be at the meeting.

It may be painful to admit, but the only U.S. automobile companies are GM and Ford.

In case we all forgot, several years ago Daimler-Benz came in and purchased Chrysler. Chrysler is now a subsidiary of DaimlerChrysler, which is headquartered in Stuttgart. The head of the UAW, Ron Gettelfinger, is on the supervisory board of DaimlerChrysler in Germany.

Toyota in North America, for all practical purposes, has just about the same corporate structure as Chrysler. They are both large subsidiaries of foreign automobile companies.

So why would the president include Chrysler and not Toyota or Honda?

Quite a few automobile companies are doing business in the United States and manufacturing millions of cars and trucks here.

But ownership of those automakers is quite another story.

If the president wants to help all manufacturers of cars in the United States, he has a large list of companies to invite. If he is interested in helping only U.S.-owned companies, I don't understand why Chrysler was at the table last week.

Calling Chrysler "American" is not much different from telling people that Opel and Ford of Germany are German companies when we all know they are subsidiaries of GM and Ford.

A much more difficult question that Ford and GM have to figure out is this: What do they want from the U.S. government that would give them any sort of competitive advantage? Or would any help benefit all automobile manufacturers in the United States equally?

Whether we like it or not, the automobile business is a global business today. When so many vehicles are made in so many places, it is difficult or impossible to figure out what's a domestic vehicle.

The same is true of corporations. They are global as well.

I can't imagine an incentive for car companies that would apply only to Ford and GM. Anything short of a straight handout would have to apply to every other manufacturer as well.

So it looks as if everyone will have to continue to compete on the basis of the best products - which is how it should be, after all.