Protectionism and all that

["Kim Boydell" <boydell@domain.elided>]

Damn, I just can't keep out of this thread.

First, as so many have rightly pointed out, protectionism in the U.S. is not
keeping Alfa out of the market.  Poor marketing by Alfa with, as I
understand it, some mismanagement by Chrysler (I was in Indonesia at the
time and missed all the news first hand) was responsible for the demise of
Alfa N.A. Let's face it, a dealership, let alone a distributor, can not be
run on two models, especially when one is a 20 to 30 year old design and has
its tailed burnt off by Miatas (at only 2/3 the price) in every road test.
Even the Acura dealers were having troubles with just two models and Honda
has a reputation for reliability.  Something that Alfa needed to cultivate

After saying that, the EPA and safety rules have been used to protect the
U.S. market.  Anyone remember CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) mandated
by the U.S. government?  Due to lots of lobbying by UAW, imported vehicles
could not be included with North American build vehicle for estimated CAFE.
This forced the American companies to build small cars in N.America
employing more UAW members (at least that was the goal) instead of importing
small cars from their European and Asian plants.  Hence, the J-cars and
other 4-wheeled jokes.

Second Bombardier (Can-Am) dropped their plans to build the 500cc road bike
because meeting U.S. emission standards would have cost too much money for a
low volume producer.  Alfa, of course is not a low volume producer in
relation to Bombardier.  In fact, I believe both the new (then) GTV and
Spider were built to be compliant with U.S. specifications.

On the other hand (don't you just love it when economists say that) the U.S.
rules are more flexible than Canadian rules.  In the U.S. a non-complying
car can be brought up to specs by the importer whereas in Canada only the
OEM can make a car comply with Canadian standards.

Regards
Kim
________________________________
Centre for Economic Analysis - Canada Inc.
http://www.home.istar.ca/~boydell

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