It's definitely worth keeping a skeptical eye on non-market interventions, but there are a ton of good reasons for it. For auto - companies do not exist in iso

It's definitely worth keeping a skeptical eye on non-market interventions, but there are a ton of good reasons for it. For auto - companies do not exist in isolation. They're a huge pillar for other things, especially the local economy. If you were the CEO of a 'region' that actually owned all of the businesses, this would show up in your balance sheet: it would be perfectly acceptable to lose money in your auto-making 'division' if it meant that the 'education division', 'healthcare division', 'civic division' were made profitable. Japan also makes a ton of money exporting it's cars so it's valuable. Finance, telecoms, farming and entertainment all have different reasons for being supported but the impetus in most cases is rational. If anything we probably need more high end fabs and this whole 'single source with 24/7 operations' is maybe not worth it, we might just have to be paying a little more for our chips.