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9. Internationalizing “Made in U.S.A. << Trash”:

Defining the Barshefsky Legacy

In 1995, the Office of the United States Trade Representative negotiated the U.S.-Japan Agreement on Autos and Auto Parts. The United States Department of Commerce and the Office of the United states Trade Representative in a report at http://www.ita.doc.gov/industry/basic/vehicles.html boasted as one of the results of this agreement the rebadging of General Motors’ Chevrolet Cavalier as a “Toyota Cavalier” for sale in Toyota dealerships in Japan. In Chart XXV, we give the Reliability Index Values of all models of the Toyota line for which data are available and the Reliability Index Value for the Cavalier.

From this, one may see the rather extraordinary gap between the Reliability Index Values of motor vehicle models of Toyota and that of the Cavalier. The Cavalier also carries the following distinctions:

    1.      In two of the past 3 pairs of manufacturing years, it has been in the Bottom Ten of all rated motor vehicle models.

2. From 1987-1988 to 1992-1993, the Cavalier has improved its Reliability Index Value by a mere .063.

From Chart XXV and the foregoing distinctions, it seems almost certain that the Office of the United States Trade Representative has given to the bulk of the Japanese buyers of the rebadged Cavalier, their relatives, their friends and their acquaintances, as the fourth law of nature, the guiding principle Made in U.S.A. << Trash. This agency may have done more harm to the American economy than all of the bombs and other acts of anti-American terrorists and all of the bribes given by foreign corporations in this century and previous centuries, combined. This phenomenon I term the Barshefsky Legacy, in honor of the administrator who lead the Office of the United States Trade Representative during this period.

It should also be noted that in pursuit of the Barshefsky Legacy, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative appears to have been prepared to take any action, regardless of how harmful it might be to the American economy and the American consumer. For example, to extract the assortment of understandings surrounding the U.S.-Japan Agreement on Autos and Auto Parts, it threatened to have imposed a tariff on Lexus vehicles that would have doubled the price of a Lexus vehicle sold in the U.S. The possible consequences of such an action included the elimination of the Lexus line in the U.S. Per Table I; this would have eliminated two of the Top Five most reliable motor vehicle models sold in the U.S. To borrow a colloquial expression, the guiding philosophy of this agency, under Barshefsky, appears to have been that the American consumer would function best with a couple of extra holes in his head.

In addition, we should observe that eliminating the Lexus line from the U.S. would not only have harmed the first prospective buyer of each Lexus, or the second buyer of the same Lexus, or the third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh buyers, but also the last buyer and each succeeding familial generation which owns the vehicle. So, the guiding philosophy of the Barshefsky administration disregarded not only the harm that may have been done to the wealthy and well-educated, but also the harm that may have been done to the least of American society. This seems particularly callous. And while it may be okay to require a nitwit to own a Big Three vehicle, it seems deeply wrong to require a poor person, simply because he/she is poor, to own one.

To bring the reader up to date on the Barshefsky Legacy, I have this additional information. About two years ago, I enquired as to the sales of “Toyota Cavalier” in Japan, but the Office of the United States Trade Representative didn’t want to discuss the matter at all, despite their early boasts of rebadged Cavalier sales in the report noted above. And recently, the Wall Street Journal reported, on page A12 of the December 1, 2000 issue, that GM and Toyota cancelled the rebadging of the Cavalier, and its sale by Toyota, that year.

However, the same article, entitled “Toyota Considers Selling Ford Autos in Japan,” reported that Ford’s Japanese sales are disappearing and consequently Toyota may “help” by selling Ford cars at some of its dealerships in and about Tokyo. So, the Barshefsky Legacy continues, and every anti-American terrorist group and every foreign corporation in competition with an American company should be offering huge bonuses/bribes to get Toyota to do it, and an especially huge bonus to get Toyota to carry a Taurus.

10. The Dodge Intrepid, the Chrysler Town & Country

and Consumer Reports

In the April 2000 issue of Consumer Reports, the Dodge Intrepid and the Chrysler Town & Country are checked as CR Recommended (on pages 48 and 41, respectively). Presumably, this means that it’s okay to buy these models new. However, the same models are in the “Reliability Risks” list (on page 74), which “incorporates the used models that you should not consider at any price.” Apparently, these models may be bought new one day, but should be hauled to the landfill the next.

I mention these models for two reasons. The first is to amuse the reader; Mad Magazine could hardly have been more clever. The second is to show how desperate Consumer Reports seems to be to find a Big Three model to recommend.

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