Does buying American really mean anything?

More important to GM’s future than America?

I’ve bought a Japanese car that was made in America.

On the other hand, my father bought a Ford made in Mexico, and many others have bought cars made in America with numerous foreign parts.

Regardless, according to some experts, buying American is still more beneficial to America. “When it comes to longer term benefits, a lot of activity happens in the country in which the company’s world headquarters is domiciled,” claims Thomas Klier, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago who has written extensively on the auto industry.

Yet, in the very near future, the Chinese market, for example, could become more important to GM’s survival than the American market. And, as GM expands in China, GM’s Chinese-based design centers, suppliers, and numbers of Chinese employees will also expand.

In a decade or two, it is possible that GM could employ more people in China than in America, build more cars in China than in America, and even export Chinese-designed-and-built cars to America.

Does buying American really matter anymore? Moreover, wasn’t it the ‘Buy American’ mentality that almost destroyed the Big 3 in the first place by enabling decades of inefficient, unreliable and complacent automaking?