Detroit’s Death Spiral? How Trump’s Climate Policy Could Kill the US Auto Industry

Source: TomDispatch
by Alfred McCoy

“It came upon a midnight clear, a vision both complete and quite specific — not from any of those ‘angels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold’, as in the Christmas carol, but from a long line of trucks on the Indiana Toll Road. On that cold winter’s night about five years ago, the 18-wheelers were playing their usual game to stay awake, passing each other endlessly and slowing me down to 60 miles an hour when I wanted to do 70 or, I’ll admit it, 75. When I pulled into a rest stop to gas up, about 50 of those big rigs were parked there. Their drivers were taking the federal government’s mandatory 11- or 12-hour rest breaks. A quick bit of mental arithmetic told me that 50 big rigs, each costing $200,000 new, meant that $10 million in working capital was snoozing profitlessly by the side of that road.” (01/26/25)

https://tomdispatch.com/detroits-death-spiral/