Hillbilly Elegy, by J. D. Vance: on Foreign Policy


JD Vance: WWII distrust of Japanese now applies to Chinese

Kawasaki, [who merged with Vance's hometown Armco steel mill], was a Japanese company, and in a town full ofWorld War II vets and their families, you'd have thought that General Tojo himself had decided to set up shop in southwest Ohio when the merger was announced. The opposition was mostly a bunch of noise. Even [Vance's grandfather] Papaw--who once promised he'd disown his children if they bought a Japanese car--stopped complaining a few days after they announced the merger. "The truth is," he told me, "that the Japanese are our friends now. If we end up fighting any of those countries, it'll be the goddamned Chinese."

The Kawasaki merger represented an inconvenient truth: Manufacturing in America was a tough business in the post-globalization world. If companies like Armco were going to survive, they would have to retool. Kawasaki gave Armco a chance, and Middletown's flagship company probably would not have survived without it.

Source: Hillbilly Elegy, by Sen. JD Vance, p. 53-4 May 25, 2017

  • The above quotations are from Hillbilly Elegy
    A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
    by J. D. Vance    .
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