March 16, 2009

As the Obama Administration deals with the bankruptcy crisis of the U.S. auto industry, it is clear that the very nature of U.S. manufacturing must change. Dr. Edward Bernton describes how Detroit re-made itself during another global crisis — World War II — and how it can do the same thing today.If heavy industry leaves Detroit, and the U.S. automakers fail as businesses, it won’t be as much from lack of financing as from a failure of imagination.

Michigan has the nation’s most extensive heavy manufacturing and transportation infrastructure. But a decade of national policies that defined the era of “globalization” as synonymous with shrinking the U.S. manufacturing sector — while the United States a whole transitioned to the “knowledge economy” — have left Detroit’s industry fatally dependent on consumer purchases of one commodity, automobiles.