Cars and fries

It may not draw the kind of paranoia seen in the US last year when operations of six American ports were sought to be handled by a Dubai company. Neither should it provoke the executive anxiety in Washington which led to China National Offshore Oil Company Ltd withdrawing its bid for American energy giant Unocal a year earlier. But reports that a Chinese car company is exploring ways of investment to gain Chrysler’s Dodge brand is worth taking note of. That Chery Automobile, maker of fuel-efficient cars, is said to be not considering outright acquisition of Chrysler is clearly because of the Chinese company’s financial constraints and wider political complexities. But the entry in a big way of Chinese cars into the US market, assisted by the formidable dealer network of the Detroit giant, will be interesting.

Consider first the commodity itself. Bidding for the American market is a way of announcing new global stakes. Recall the domination of American car markets by Japanese majors in the eighties, and the fears of a rising superpower in the east that it elicited. For a while the Japanese takeover seemed unstoppable, especially when Sony took over Columbia Pictures. The threat, as is the way with such paranoid anticipation, passed. Will that experience steel Americans as they consider Chinese entry into their marketplace? The experience with Unocal, of course, shows that xenophobia can kick in very easily. One hopes not.

An automobile brand is not a strategic asset, as Unocal was portrayed to be. Given the geographical scattering of manufacturing and services, the idea of brands being national is in any case obsolete. But in the United States there is a robust tendency to use the provenance of goods — or even the names goods go by — to make consumer choices depending on geopolitical considerations. Remember how French fries were officially renamed in many cafeterias as freedom fries when France cast too many doubts on the case for invading Iraq in 2003?