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This happened in Australia with Toyota, Ford, Holden (GM), and I think before all that, Nissan and Mitsubishi. Also in New Zealand with Mazda/Ford, (edit: Toyot

• Judgmentality 8y ago
  > Subsidies have never worked. I'm skeptical of this, but I don't know that it's wrong. I'm only making this comment in hopes of somebody else more knowledgeable responding to it (either for or against - really I am just curious if subsidies work).
  • sheepmullet 8y ago
    > I'm skeptical of this, but I don't know that it's wrong. It depends on what you mean by “worked”. 1) Have they allowed a slower and more humane shift of workers to other more competitive industries? Yes. The GM bailout is a great example. 2) Have they helped keep certain skill sets in a country? Yes. Undoubtably. Is this important? I think so but there are opposing arguments. It can take decades to build up an industry from scratch vs a few years to pivot into a related industry. Think of how long it would take Germany to swap its automotive engineers and factories to producing tanks vs how long it would take a services based country to start producing tanks. 3) Have they lead to the revitalization of an industry? This ones a lot more murky and it all depends on what time frame you are looking at and what you think the future will hold. There are certainly examples of it working between first world countries for limited time periods (a decade or two).