A big part of what destroyed GM, Chrysler & Ford was their degradation in quality. If you're old enough to remenber, the joke was, made in Japan=junk.

In the 50's an American man named Ed Deming tried to introduce statistical proces control to US automakers. Not wanting any of that mamby pamby math crap- they sent him packing.

Ed worked in the Japan re-building effort & eventually introduced statistical quality control to many Japanese engineers, managers, to include a few executive sessions with what was to become the sony corp, as well as their auto biz. His message was that improving quality will reduce expenses while increasing productivity and market share.

A number of Japanese manufacturers applied his techniques widely, and experienced theretofore unheard-of levels of quality and productivity. The improved quality combined with the new process controls lowered costs creating new international demand for Japanese products. Toyota & Datsun (no Nissan) were early adopters, and fully embraced his methods, and began their ascension in building quality in their brands.

Between 1979 and 1982, Ford had incurred $3 billion in losses as consumers began choosing Japanese cars over US due to quality. So Ford recruited Deming to help jump-start a quality movement.

Deming questioned the company's culture and the way its managers operated. To Ford's surprise, Deming talked not about quality but about management. He told Ford that management actions were responsible for 85% of all problems in developing better cars. (note- he did not say labor is your problem).

In 1986 Ford came out with a profitable line of cars, the Taurus-Sable line. In a letter to Autoweek Magazine, Donald Petersen, then Ford Chairman, said, "We are moving toward building a quality culture at Ford and the many changes that have been taking place here have their roots directly in Dr. Deming's teachings." By 1986, Ford had become the most profitable American auto company.

In the end, if a company has a quality product that provides value, it will be successful. It's not always just the taxes, or just the labor. It's the quality of the product that the company manages, and labor produces to that managed standard. This lack of quaity control, and the Japanese embracement of it had exponentially more effect on the demise of the US auto-industry, but the "media" likes to blame labor & taxes (get that emotional reaction for the news), and for the most part ignores the root causal factors- (hard to get folks fired up process control, stochastic methods and the like)