

Don’t forget about cheap labor over there, economies of scale with the large Chinese market, and with a very different regulatory environment. The American auto industry has an uphill battle ahead of them.
Not to excuse the lack of innovation here, I personally blame the trend of wealth extraction for executive pay and shareholder returns at the expense of long term thinking and reduced R&D spending.
The planet money podcast has had several episodes where this has come up. I think the last one about the resistance to free filing tools is a good one