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There's more than a little irony in this, considering Ford has launched a campaign to regain its footing with an appeal to patriotism. "Americans really do want to buy American brands," asserted Ford Executive VP Mark Fields in a recent speech. "We will compete vigorously to be America's car company."
As the Mustang shows, though, it's no longer easy to define what is American. The result is a brewing public-relations war, with both sides wrapping themselves in the Stars and Stripes. Toyota has been running commercials touting its contribution to the areas of the US economy where it has built factories.
On Thursday, the Level Field Institute, a grass-roots organization founded by US Big Three retirees, is scheduled to hold a news conference in Washington. Among the points the group is expected to make is its belief that comparing relative North American component content is an ineffective way to determine who is "more American" among auto makers. A better way, says Jim Doyle who heads Level Field, is to look at the number of jobs each auto maker creates per car sold in the US.
Mr. Doyle says the institute's study shows that Toyota in 2005 employed roughly three times more US workers per car sold in the US than Hyundai Motor Co. Each of the Big Three manufacturers in the same year employed roughly three times as many US workers as Toyota, on a per-car-sold basis. "What's better for the American economy?" Mr. Doyle asks. "A GM car built in Mexico with 147,000 jobs back here in America, or a Honda built in Alabama with 4,000 or 5,000 jobs in America?"
GM is importing Korean-made cars to sell under the Chevy nameplate. Japanese car makers are using American designers for cars being sold in China. Some of the high-end BMW "imports" are made in South Carolina.
That said, the Japanese manufacturing presence in the US is growing. Foreign-based auto makers in the US, led by the Japanese, account for
1.7% of US manufacturing jobs. After $28 billion in cumulative North America investment - and annual purchases of parts reaching $45 billion or more in recent years - 67% of the Japanese-brand cars now sold in North America are made in North America.