Windhoek — It used to be American carmakers build cars for American carbuyers. Long wheelbase, fat, big, V8 gas guzzler, soft suspension, fur on the dash, apple on the aerial, for the typical macho American hillbilly. And by selling to this crowd, American carmakers became very successful, and very big.

The easy thing about building for your domestic market is that you are in tune with your own hillbillies. You, as automaker do not need to go find out what the market wants cozz you're smack in the middle of your own market. And you know your market.

As the number of people in your market grew over the decades so did your business.

Then came the Japanese and started spoiling the fun. How? By a copycat system, only with smaller units, but most importantly, by almost non-existent tolerances, meticulous attention to detail and by a build-quality above reproach.

This forced US automakers to slightly adjust their models and their spreads from around the 80s onwards, but do not for one minute think it stopped the hillbilly crowd from sticking to their fat, ugly, overpowered behemoths. Nope, credit was easy, and driving was fun. American automakers only got bigger.

Then the hillbillies went bankrupt and that really spoiled the fun. Now that the average American consumer (whatever that may be) is bankrupt (actually beyond bankrupt), American automakers are forced, for the first time in about 110 years, to set their sights on export markets. - Export markets are a swear word in the US. US manufacturers have always manufactured for the US market, and if by chance, all other underlings in the rest of the world, wanted something as impressive and imposing as a Pontiac or a Cadillac or an F250, you had to take the only version available - the American version.

Sad actually about the hillbillies going broke. Such things simply do not happen in the USA. In Russia perhaps, or China or eastern Europe, but not in the world's number 1 country. Problem is, it is fact, and it will remain fact for many many years, and when the tide has turned again in favour of the US, it will be no more, or at least not the way we have come to know it since the Second World War.

Now, there is only one way for US manufacturing to survive the Japanese, and lately Chinese and Indian onslaught, and that is by exporting to every conceivable market across the globe. There is just one little snag, - the US dollar. Since it is the world's reserve currency, and since all Treasuries and Central Banks hold their foreign assets in US dollar, thanks to the World Bank and the IMF, it remained artificially strong. But with a strong dollar, the US manufacturing sector cannot compete in foreign markets, and with their own domestic market destroyed, it created a very big conundrum for any US company trying to send its stuff overseas. Even US pharmaceutical companies who control and make the world's most popular and widely used medicines and drugs, found out lately, the Indians, Brazilians and Chinese can clone the chemistry just as successfully, even if they do add a pint or two melamine to the mix, to help swell the volume.

In comes the US Treasury on its white mustang, selling bonds by the billions and then convincing the US Federal Reserve to buy these bonds, also by the billions. This is technically called monetising government debt, but it only means, the US is creating liquidity at an unprecedented pace. And do you know where it is showing now? In the external value of the US dollar. And what's more, those poor traders bargaining on a dollar come-back are in for a surprise. In my mind the US dollar is deliberately weakened otherwise the US manufacturing sector cannot export, and the federal government will become co-shareholder in many thousands of enterprises and not only in General Motors.

Accept it for fact that the US dollar will continue to weaken, commodities will continue to rise in response, and gold and other high-value metals will probably go through the roof. And once the US Treasury starts talking about an exit strategy to mop up all the liquidity, then you must be extra alert because it is only in the US bond market where their intention is to do some mopping: - in the rest of the world's markets the US Treasury does not give a damn.

There are two good results to come from this deliberate but down- played dollar destruction. Despite the world-wide consumer slump, a weaker dollar for longer should prop up commodity prices - something that is very good for us as we depend for around 60% of our economic activity on commodity exports.

And the F250 should become ridiculously cheap so that when I retire, maybe I shall be fortunate enough to afford one of the best offroad vehicles the world has ever seen.