Foreign Companies Remake The American Dream

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ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

When the economic stimulus plan was working its way through Congress, it included a Buy American provision. You want stimulus money to build something, use American steel or American textiles. Organized labor was all for it. And in no time, the provision was dropped.

Economic nationalism sputtered in the face of a reality about the U.S. economy. Our country is home to so much foreign investment that working for a foreign-owned company is no longer exotic. And according to Micheline Maynard, it is increasingly attractive.

Maynard is a senior business correspondent for The New York Times, and she's the author of a new book, "The Selling of the American Economy: How Foreign Companies Are Remaking the American Dream."

Welcome back to the program.

Ms. MICHELINE MAYNARD (Author, "The selling of the American Economy: How Foreign Companies Are Remaking the American Dream"): Thank you for having me.

SIEGEL: How big a share nowadays of the U.S. job market is a - the total of jobs at foreign-owned companies?

Ms. MAYNARD: There are about five million, few more than five million jobs at foreign-owned companies in the United States. And if you think back to the discussion about saving the automobile industry, there were studies at the time that said there were about three million American auto jobs. So the foreign share of the American economy is almost double what the American automobile industry is.

SIEGEL: You've actually written about four foreign-owned companies and how they operate in this country, and their experiences are actually quite different.

Ms. MAYNARD: That's right. I write about Toyota, which is probably the one foreign company that if you ask someone: Who's from another country doing business in the United States? They would say Toyota.

I write about EADS, which is the owner of Airbus, the aircraft manufacturer and also a big military defense contractor. I write about Tata of India. And, you know, people don't really know what this company is. But if you drink Eight O'Clock Coffee for breakfast, they own Eight O'Clock Coffee.

And the last company is Haier of China, which actually has a refrigerator factory in the Carolinas and builds all those refrigerators that kids have in their college dorms and also those wine refrigerators that people bought a lot over the last few years.

SIEGEL: Now, getting a company like one of these to set up a factory is something that is incredibly attractive to governors. And you described two governors incredibly different in terms of their political orientation, remarkably similar in terms of their interest to attract foreign investment.

Ms. MAYNARD: Yes, I talk about Jennifer Granholm, who's the governor of Michigan, a Democrat supported by the United Automobile Workers. And yet, she has made it her job to do a number of foreign trade missions over the years, going to places like Japan and the Middle East and Korea to find companies that will invest in Michigan.

I also talk about Haley Barbour, the Republican governor of Mississippi, who really has left no stone unturned going out to look for foreign investment. I tell a story about Hurricane Katrina, which people know hit Mississippi very hard. But at the end of that week, he was already making calls to places in Japan, China and Korea and saying, we will be open again for business. That was how determined he was to land foreign investment.

SIEGEL: We can understand how attractive it is to say to the governor of a state to have more jobs here, jobs at a foreign-based company. Why is it so important to those companies to be here?

Ms. MAYNARD: A couple of reasons. First of all, we're still the biggest consumer market in the world. Until China grows and becomes more prosperous, this is a place where everybody wants to compete. Second, despite what you might hear about American workers elsewhere, American workers have a great reputation to foreign companies. They see that you are probably cheaper to employ than especially for a European company, which pays higher wages and has higher labor costs. So American workers are attractive.

Imagine if you're from Europe and you're used to a country that's filled in, and you come to a place like Alabama and Mississippi, and they show you acres and acres of empty land. They offer to clear it. They offer to help you with road building. I mean, for some of these companies that are used to all these restrictions and red tape, it's a dream come true.

SIEGEL: Well, thinking ahead, I mean, do you think that the distinction between the U.S.-owned company and the foreign-owned company is obsolescent? Twenty-five years, 30 years from now, do you think that people won't even understand what we were talking about in this conversation?

Ms. MAYNARD: Some people will still have resistance to it because some people will always have resistance to immigration, to foreign investment in anything. You know, there are people who won't buy German cars because of what happened during World War II.

But 25 to 30 years from now, if we haven't become a little bit more blind to this or at least neutral about it - and I am not saying that foreign companies are the solution to America's economic problems, I just think they're part of the solution. And that if we are going to have an economy that's open to the world, you know, let's be a little more welcoming. Let's not be as resistant to foreign companies because they might be able teach us something and we might be able to teach them something.

SIEGEL: Well, Micki Maynard, thank you very much for talking with us once again.

Ms. MAYNARD: Thank you, Robert.

SIEGEL: Micheline Maynard is a senior business correspondent for The New York Times and her new book is called "The Selling of the American Economy: How Foreign Companies Are Remaking the American Dream."

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