The domestic automotive industry seems to have gone to hell in a hand basket. While the automotive industry indeed is in trouble, it’s mostly gone to hell in the Midwest — the once-strong regional bastion of Big Manufacturing and Big Labor. For example, the Delphi plants in the Dayton-area are slated for closure, and the only response from the union is to go on strike.
In a recent article in Detroit News, Warren Brown contends that that the automotive industry has moved to the South. “While historic, high-cost unionized manufacturing generally located in the Midwest and Upper East Coast is slowly lumbering to dinosaurian extinction, the Old South is rising.”