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The news last week from the U.S. auto industry sounded dismal.

Ford announced that it would cut jobs and production to regain profitability

after taking $1.6 billion in losses in 2005.

Are American Auto Workers Doomed?

Dan Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies, paints a very different picture

of the seemingly failing American industry in a paper he co-authored with

trade policy analyst Daniel Eikinson. Dan Griswold joins us in today's podcast.

The US auto industry hasn't been in a very good place lately has it?

It depends on how you define the U.S. automobile industry.

Ford and GM have been struggling, but one of the big stories of the U.S. automobile market

is how much it's changed and how international it's become.

And the change is it used to be kind of an us versus them, the big three versus imports.

Well now a lot of international automobile companies like Toyota and Honda and Hyundai manufacture

cars here in the United States.

So actually the U.S. automobile industry as a whole defined as production in the U.S. is actually quite healthy.

If you look at vehicles assembled in the United States, it's averaged a pretty steady 12 million

a year over the last decade.

If you look at actual production, not only final assemblies, but

parts, it's up 68 percent, more so than manufacturing generally. Employment's been hovering

...