Commentary: US car industry is passing the baton to China with barely a fight

SYDNEY: Germany’s Carl Benz might have invented the automobile, but it’s the United States that got us to drive them.
The relentless export of American cars and car culture put the world on the road in the 20th century. By the 1960s, Ford Motor had plants in almost every major European country, as well as Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, India, Israel, Peru, Pakistan, South Africa, Turkey, and Zimbabwe.
Right now, it’s passing that baton to China with barely a fight.
The US car industry that emerges will be smaller, less influential – and, eventually, less profitable and financially sustainable.
The immediate question is over the fate of General Motors’ (GM) Chinese units, mostly joint ventures (JVs) with SAIC Motor. That company, controlled by Shanghai’s city government, is best-known internationally for reviving the storied British MG brand with a range of affordable, export-oriented sports utility vehicles (SUVs) and hatchbacks.
It’s no secret that these ventures are struggling. A decade ago, equity-accounted income from China made up more than half of GM’s net profit, but in the first nine months of this year they racked up a US$347 million loss. 
“It’s a difficult market right now,” chief executive officer Mary Barra told investors in July. “Very few people are making money.”
Chevrolet sales have fallen off a cliff, and are likely to end the year barely scraping 10 per cent of the level they were at in 2019. Cadillac isn’t doing much better. 
Even Buick – which in China has substantial brand cachet as the chosen marque of independence leader Sun Yat-Sen and Mao’s longtime premier Zhou Enlai – is barely keeping its head above water. 
Things are better with local brand Wuling, whose tiny electric vehicles cost about US$8,000, but Baojun, GM’s other local JV model, also appears to be circling the drain. 
Barra has long reaffirmed her commitment to China, but the outlook has rarely looked bleaker. GM and SAIC are locked in meetings through the end of the year to restructure their holdings to make them profitable.
That looks like a tough ask. Given the way sales are collapsing, turning the situation around is going to require substantial investment to refresh the model lineup, something neither side has shown much willingness to do for a business that’s long been self-sustaining. 
SAIC has its own problems fighting off domestic competitors, and so seems unlikely to play the role of Uncle Moneybags. BYD, Great Wall Motor and Seres Group, maker of Huawei’s AITO car brand, have already overtaken its market capitalisation. Others aren’t far behind.
Prospects of synergies and cooperation on innovation between the China and US businesses have also never been worse. 
Chinese-made cars or components that transmit data have been banned from the US market under rules introduced by President Joe Biden in September. His successor Donald Trump has mooted 60 per cent tariffs on Chinese imports, and retaliation from Beijing is likely to focus on US-made cars, still one of the biggest trade flows in the opposite direction. 
Even as it electrifies, GM’s core North American business of hulking SUVs and pickups is also just very different from Wuling’s locally successful range of microcars, minivans and small delivery trucks.
Many of GM’s other moves suggest it’s already looking past existing JVs. It’s focusing increasingly on exporting US-made cars to China via the Durant Guild, a so-called “lifestyle platform” targeting the sort of rich customers who might not even care about the extra cost from a Trump-era retaliatory tariff.
In September, it signed an agreement with Hyundai Motor to explore co-development of cleaner cars and source battery materials. That’s precisely the sort of deal you’d strike if you were worried your existing arrangements with the world’s biggest producer of clean cars and batteries – China – were hitting the rocks.
It’s not a foregone conclusion that GM will quit the world’s largest car market, but it would be in keeping with Barra’s similarly dramatic decisions to exit Europe and India in 2017. Such a move would largely be welcomed by the investors who’ve driven shares to about double their level when rumours of a retreat from China started to circulate a year ago.
A middle path would be to follow Ford and Chrysler-owner Stellantis, and re-establish the business as one where the Chinese company manufactures cars, and the foreign partner exports them to lower-cost markets such as Southeast Asia and Latin America. 
SAIC, however, is already working hard building its own international distribution networks. It’s recently started sponsoring English soccer club Arsenal, as well as leading clubs in the French and Saudi Arabian soccer leagues, and an Australian rugby league team.  
Besides, turning GM into a glorified car dealership hardly looks like a route to sustainable profits.
Either option, moreover, will mark another nail in the coffin of American soft power. When Detroit had its last brush with death in 2009, about two-thirds of GM and Ford’s combined sales were outside the US. With China sales dwindling, we’re approaching the point where two-thirds will be in the US, instead. 
The American car industry is turning inward again for the first time in a century. Detroit got the world on the road. BYD will inherit the earth.