{"id":13721,"date":"2019-07-02T22:31:21","date_gmt":"2019-07-03T02:31:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=13721"},"modified":"2019-07-03T12:44:07","modified_gmt":"2019-07-03T16:44:07","slug":"lee-iacocca-americas-consumer-enemy-number-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/02\/lee-iacocca-americas-consumer-enemy-number-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Lee Iacocca, America’s “Consumer Enemy Number One,” Dies"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Lee Iacocca meets President Bill Clinton, 1993<\/p><\/div>\n

Former Chrysler boss Lee Iacocca passed away today at the age of 94.\u00a0\u00a0 Since he was one of the most prominent protectionists of the 1980s and 1990s, I wrote about him often. Here’s a piece I did for the Detroit News<\/em> <\/strong>in 1985. (I tip my hat to my late father, who kept my early articles in a binder because otherwise I would have been vexed to my find this piece from my pre-computer times.)<\/p>\n

Detroit News, April 9, 1985
\nIacocca: America\u2019s Wonder is \u201cConsumer Enemy No. 1″<\/h2>\n

by James Bovard<\/p>\n

Lee Iacocca\u2019s widespread fame is the ultimate proof that you can fool some of the people all the time<\/strong>. The most respected welfare recipient in American history <\/strong>is being slobbered on by the press, fawned over by politicians, and idolized by thousands of businessmen. But as a non-Detroiter I find myself wondering: Why is a man whose greatest successes in life are finagling a large federal handout and preventing consumers from buying better-built foreign autos revered as if he had actually done something productive?<\/p>\n

P.T. Barnum may have been thinking of journalists when he said there\u2019s a sucker born every minute.<\/strong>\u00a0 The Saturday Evening Post<\/em> saluted Iacocca as \u201cthe sex symbol of America\u2019s recovery.\u201d The Washington Post<\/em> commended Iacocca as \u201cDr. Detroit,\u201d and Newsweek<\/em> proclaimed: \u201cLee Iacocca is a real-world Rocky.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iacocca\u2019s biography is selling like hot cakes, and his reputation seems to grow almost daily. Pollster Arthur Finkelstein found in a poll of 1988 presidential preferences that Iacocca trailed George Bush by only three points (41 to 38 percent). Whatever Iacocca is paying his public relations firm – they\u2019ve earned it.<\/p>\n

Iacocca is so popular largely because of his reputation for taking Chrysler from the brink of bankruptcy to the heights of profitability. But Chrysler is raking in the billions now not because it is making better cars, but because Iacocca and others persuaded Uncle Sam to prohibit Americans from buying more better-made Japanese autos.<\/p>\n

Iacocca brags that the 1979 government bailout of Chrysler was a huge success, and even says federal loan guarantees are \u201cas American as apple pie.\u201d\u00a0 But since 1978, Chrysler has laid off more than a quarter of its workers and shut down 21 factories. A bailout intended to save jobs still resulted in tens of thousands of Chrysler workers losing their paychecks.<\/p>\n

Iacocca even tried to cheat the government on the bailout deal. To cover the government\u2019s risk in guaranteeing a $1.2 billion loan to a bankrupt corporation, Chrysler gave the Treasury Department warrants to buy 14 million shares of Chrysler stock at $14 a share. AT the time of the bailout, Chrysler was trading at $7 a share; a few years later, thanks largely to the bailout and import quotas, Chrysler stock was up to $27 a share. When the Treasury announced it would cash in the warrants and collect a few hundred million dollars for taxpayers, Iacocca raised hell and tried to welch on the bargain. Iacocca whined, \u201cThat kind of profit is almost indecent….\u201d Even though Chrysler has made billion thanks to government protection, Iacocca still tried to avoid paying Uncle Sam a single penny.<\/p>\n

Iacocca wants the entire economy restricted, squeezed, and bled in order to benefit Chrysler.\u00a0 Iacocca tried to block the GM-Toyota joint effort to produce small cars in California, saying the partnership would be terrible for the auto industry. But at the same time Iacocca was doing his \u201cChicken Little\u201d routine, Chrysler was already colluding with Mitsubishi, selling tens of thousands of their cars in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Iacocca is America\u2019s leading Jap-basher.\u00a0 Iacocca sweats that the Japanese \u201cwant to rape the market\u201d and that \u201cWe\u2019re a colony again, this time of Japan.\u201d\u00a0 When Iacocca gave a speech on Dec. 7 on Japanese imports, he reminded his audience that it was a \u201cday of infamy,\u201d invoking Pearl Harbor and trying to stir up hatred for a valuable ally. Congressman Robert Matsui, D-Calif., derided recent Iacocca remarks as \u201cracist.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it is understandable that Iacocca would seize every chance to slur Japan. Japanese car makers are still putting his company to shame.<\/p>\n

Consumer Reports<\/em> recently surveyed used cars, and concluded that most of the 1982 and 1983 American-made Chryslers were \u201cworse than average,\u201d and a quarter of the models were \u201cmuch worse than average.\u201d By contrast, most Toyotas and Hondas were above average.<\/p>\n

Iacocca is the biggest cheerleader for auto import quotas. As a cartoonist summarized Iacocca\u2019s view: \u201cIf you can find a better car – slap a quota on it.\u201d\u00a0 A Brookings Institute study estimated that atuo import quotas have cost American consumers more than $4 billion a year in higher car prices. Iacocca wants to permanently limit Japan to selling about 1.5 million cars in theU.S. market. If Iacocca gets his way, american consuemrs can look forward to les choice, higher prices, and more time spent waiting around in auto repair shops.<\/p>\n

Instead of being praised as a modern-day capitalist, Iacocca should be ridiculed as just another beggar of favors from Washington. Instead of being praised for his leadership, Iacocca should be castigated for his unending hypocrisy, self-serving policy prescriptions, and hate-mongering tactics. Instead of being lauded as an industrial folk hero, Lee Iacocca should be scorned as Consumer Enemy Number One<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

*********<\/p>\n

Here’s a 1992 Los Angeles Times Magazine article<\/a> where I discussed Iacocca, scoffing at his assertion that the U.S. is “the last bastion of free trade.”<\/p>\n

Here’s a 1992 New Republic<\/a> piece I did on Bush inviting Iacocca & other CEOs to accompany him to Japan for a reelection campaign photo op that turned into a disaster.<\/p>\n

Here’s a 1992 Journal of Commerce oped I<\/a> wrote bashing Iacocca’s Minivan madness.<\/p>\n

Iacocca probably got thumped in this 1991 C-span appearance. <\/a><\/p>\n

I also jibed Iacocca’s endless demagoguery against auto imports in The Fair Trade Fraud (St. Martin’s, 1991).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

UPDATE – Just found this copy of the angry letters to the editor that the Detroit News oped provoked –<\/p>\nJPB Iacocca Letters Editor 1985<\/a>\n

or a jpeg – \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former Chrysler boss Lee Iacocca passed away today at the age of 94.\u00a0\u00a0 Since he was one of the most prominent protectionists of the 1980s and 1990s, I wrote about him often. Here’s a piece I did for the Detroit News in 1985. (I tip my hat to my late father, who kept my early […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13727,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[44,2030,2029,2031,1820,1821,494,917,335],"class_list":["post-13721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bailout","tag-chrysler","tag-corporate-subsidies","tag-hate-mongering","tag-japan","tag-lee-iacocca","tag-protectionism","tag-scam","tag-welfare"],"yoast_head":"\nLee Iacocca, America's "Consumer Enemy Number One," Dies - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/02\/lee-iacocca-americas-consumer-enemy-number-one\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lee Iacocca, America's "Consumer Enemy Number One," Dies - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Former Chrysler boss Lee Iacocca passed away today at the age of 94.\u00a0\u00a0 Since he was one of the most prominent protectionists of the 1980s and 1990s, I wrote about him often. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13721"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13736,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13721\/revisions\/13736"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}