The Ford Motor Company announced to day that it would become the first "American" automaker to outsource the manufacturing of a whole passenger car model to China. Ford will be relocating production of it's runty, low margin, and slow selling "Focus" to China while the plant in suburban Detroit currently producing the Focus will be retooled for pickup truck and SUV production.
Previously, mainstream US vehicular imports from China were limited to parts while upstart brands bringing whole vehicles to the US from China typically import budget vehicles with "off-road use only" import papers and street tires to increase their affordability for cash poor American consumers.
Blame Muloly's "One Ford" strategy. Trying to bridge the chasm between the EU and US market models, the previous shitbox Focus became… driveable, which is to say upmarket, competitive even. This is obviously uneconomical using union labour, leaving little choice but to employ something requiring fewer bathroom breaks.
Besides, cars are obsolete anyways thanks to pedestrian impact regs, leaving "crossovers" to dangle by the narrowest, most delicate threads of relevance and interest. The new Detroit works on the Shinola model.