It doesn`t matter who was bought out by who, but who manages the core of multi-billion dollar engineering business, and who employs real , highly skilled people in volume. The packs of highly skilled and paid workforce create a region of purchasing power, that spreads the wealth further. Do you ever wonder ,how come, average salary in China is gazillion times lower than in US, yet the highest skyscraper construction projects are in China- Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Wuhan, Beijing, etc. The answer is not money or ownership, but the exchange value of skilled workforce. For example, one engineer creates enough purchasing power for 3 construction workers to be employed. This is what creates real economies. And it is not important how big their salaries are, but what the value of their purchasing power is and how it is distributed along the workforce. Most US Hollywood studios are owned by Japanese, Mack trucks are owned by Renault etc, . Just because Ford has bought shares in Mazda, doesn`t make a nation richer. What matters is that Ford is parasiting on MAZDA engineering, which allowed to slash US workforce and sack real engineers, that were a womb for hardcore expertize. Once those 65$ an hour engineers are fired, they join the herds of WallMart salesclerk prides. This spirals into drop of constuction of new homes, yachts, etc. Ditto about GM. Opel ownership has allowed them to parasite on German engineering for decades, slash domestic engineering hardcore workforce and fill useless corporate coffers for the few chosen ones. The similar situation is in truck segment where many trucks are based on foreign platforms. I even won`t mention Chrysler which is a desperate whore every decade looking to have someone to have an engineering piggy ride on.When was the last time a US based company hired 300 engineers and built a car on a brand new in-house built platform? Japanese did it just about 5 months ago. When was the last time you saw a wristwatch which had US movt?Was it before the big dustbowl?
You see, you might slap the Chevy badges on Daewoo cars and imitate American car industry, but the real purchasing power is transferred to South Korea which translates in construction of Lotte Tower, Tau engine families and mammoth spread of Samsung conglomerate.
Analogy crawls into civil aviation. If you think that endlessly squeezing blood out of 787 with PR stunts is going to end well for Boeing in next 30 years versus the whole plethora of Boeing`s adversaries cranking out new products, then you might be wrong at least. You already saw where Boeing was, once it had to down all Dreamliners, which was the only civil aircraft engineered by a US based company in last 15 years. Don`t you think diversity would have helped a bit? Do you really think that you can sell forever a 50 year old 737 fuselage just by milking a legend? Don`t you think that Airbus is going to sell more and more due to regular product overhaul ? Where was that Boeing`s research that claimed that large double deck superjumbo`s wouldn`t sell? Not only A380 created a `halo jetliner` for Airbus , it beefed up their engineering expertize and created a a lot of positions for highly skilled and paid workforce. What does this have to do with a wealth of a nation? Well, those droves of highly paid engineers will buy VW cars and houses, and Bosch drills and Siemens refrigerators and spread their purchasing power across the nation, allowing a similar engineering to happen in other segments- be it consumer electronics, car industry or LHC. If you outsource everything, have a local basketball team, 10WallMarts with 9bucks an hour workforce and 5 billionaires who own shares in largest corporations, you end up in Detroit. You see the 5 billionaires aren`t going to buy 40000 Chevrolets or Buicks, but the Wallmart employees won`t buy even a one. So you create a catch 22 domino, where houses aren`t built, cars aren`t assembled and powerhouses renovated..all because the exchange of added value in local economy isn`t happening. The economy of golf courts, psychologists and stock brokers is a short living one.
And US military is the strongest in the world, but I want industries that yield actual benefit to her people, be it a nicely engineered Buick , a pavement, or CNC milling machine. And it can`t happen if the workforce of this great nation is sequestered from actually making things.