If it's no surprise that Michigan lawmakers are behind the pitch for a $25 billion lifeline for Detroit automakers, then it might be just as predictable that Southerners would be leading the charge against it.
Southern politicians have spent years luring foreign automakers to build cars in their states, with huge success. Most recently, Tennessee attracted a $1 billion Volkswagen assembly plant to Chattanooga. South Carolina has BMW. Mississippi landed a major plant for Toyota Motor Corp. Alabama boasts plants run by Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co.
In Georgia, the governor recently began using a Kia SUV in honor of the company's planned $1.2 billion manufacturing facility there.
It's not that Southerners are secretly wishing for the Big Three to collapse. But if those automakers were to falter, the new players are poised to ramp up production and possibly turn the South into the next Detroit.
"In the long run, having fewer competitors or weaker competitors is generally a good thing," said Efraim Levy, a senior auto industry analyst with Standard & Poor's. "It would contribute to a greater relative strength in the South."
The regional divide is not black and white. Most Southern states still have a stake in the well-being of the Big Three and would suffer their own losses if the companies dramatically scaled back operations or closed their doors.
Kentucky and Tennessee have large GM plants, for example, and major auto suppliers are scattered across the region. In addition, the foreign automakers could see temporary supply disruptions in a destabilized market.
In Tennessee, General Motors is planning to slow production at its 3,500-worker plant in Spring Hill. Nissan has more than 6,500 employees in the state, and Volkswagen's Chattanooga assembly plant will provide about 2,000 jobs.
U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., has acknowledged the importance of the domestic and import automakers to his state's economy.
As governor, he helped land the Nissan assembly plant in Smyrna and the GM plant in Spring Hill.
He said Tuesday he opposes a measure to take $25 billion from the $700 billion approved for the bailout of the financial services sector and use it to provide loans to carmakers.
But he does believe the U.S. automakers are important enough to the Tennessee and U.S. economy to help save them, and he said he favors using the $25 billion already approved by Congress to provide loans to automakers to help retool plants to build energy-efficient vehicles.
The Nissan and GM assembly facilities in Tennessee would qualify for aid under that legislation because they have been in the state long enough, Alexander said, adding that the money would be used for plants that have been open 20 years or longer.
Opposition strong in some placesFarther south, support for a bailout isn't as easy to find.
Just as U.S. consumers have increasingly turned to foreign cars, the foreign makers have made clear their preference for the union-resistant South as a U.S. manufacturing base. Increasingly, the states' economic interests — and those of their political leaders — are realigning accordingly.
In Alabama, the number of auto industry jobs has more than doubled to nearly 50,000 since 2001, according to the Alabama Automotive Manufacturers Association. The vast majority of the positions are tied to new Honda, Hyundai and Mercedes plants. Meanwhile, Delphi Corp., GM's former parts operation, is closing a plant outside Huntsville, Ala., that once employed about 5,000 people.
Some Southern members of Congress — as well as a handful of Southern governors — have been among the most vocal critics of a Detroit bailout. Most are Republicans, and they insist that their opposition is largely about fiscal restraint and free markets: They don't think taxpayers should be forced to rescue troubled companies and they argue that a federal bailout won't do Detroit much good anyway.
But competitive interests are also at play.
Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina recently wondered whether BMW would have built its plant in Spartanburg if the government had been handing out money to its rivals, and Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia voiced similar concerns about the state's Kia plant, which might bring 2,500 jobs to his rural district.
"Let's face it, who would want to come over here and put their investment into this country if they knew the government was going to be subsidizing their competitors?" he said. "It's just not right. It just goes against the grain of the free-enterprise system."
Southerners also may be hurtThose who downplay the U.S. automakers' role in the South's economy might be overlooking some of the benefits, said economist David Penn at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro.
"It's too easy to say (the demise of the U.S. automakers) is not going to affect us," Penn said.
"We're in uncharted waters here. We've had some big companies go bankrupt and have to be restructured, but nothing of the magnitude and spread of the domestic automakers."
There are a lot more jobs with suppliers than in the Big Three's assembly plants, he said.
"These states may think they won't be affected much, but they may be in for a surprise if these suppliers start going out of business," he said, explaining that the suppliers often prop up local employment in small towns.
Critics of a bailout also are failing to consider the impact of losing thousands of GM, Ford and Chrysler dealerships, said Erich Merkle, an auto analyst with Crowe Chizek and Co. LLC.
Nationwide, the Big Three have more than 14,000 dealerships — about three times as many as the import automakers combined. They employ 740,000 people and have an annual payroll totaling $35 billion, according to the Washington-based Alliance for American Manufacturing. About a third of those dealers are in the South.
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