Bob, With all due respect I think to at least some degree you are missing the point.
I drive a Ford vehicle, I've driven one since I gave up on GM in 1978 I love my Ford and I would buy another before I even considered a Toyota but in all fairness, this is a witch hunt.

No one purposely designs flaws into their vehicles. They come as a result of an oversight or a problem that doesn't surface in every vehicle or perhaps even only after extensive mileage has been accrued.

Every recall hurts. It hurts whoever the manufacturer might be and though in many cases the manufacturers do get in front of the issue at other times it takes government pressure to force them to make these recalls.
You might recall how Ford fought the issue of Exploding gas tanks on their Pinto model in the 70's

Toyota has earned a reputation as a well built car, I can't take that away from them. Now however that they have serious problems it seems that everyone is looking to dig up every piece of dirt that they can to further discredit them. Things that normally would be handled through a recall made by receiving a letter, Things that the average person would never have heard about.

As an example, did you know that Ford had the largest recall in history of 12 Million Vehicles in 2008?
Perhaps you knew but how many others did, I didn't so if you mention sweeping things under the rug, this alone would have been a good headline.

You are right, this IS far from over. Imho what should have been done many years ago was to protect the American worker by imposing stiffer tarrifs, import duties and limitations of the amount of vehicles that could be imported. Now we are using this as a ploy

Even looking at Ford today, what portion of their production occurs in places like Mexico and Canada not to mention other countries.
A friend of mine who worked for an arm of Ford (Vistion) has lost his job due to foreign labor.
Many of the Foreign autos now have larger US content than American makes. Recently I read that one Jeep model contained only 46.7% American parts compared to a Toyota which is as high as 80%

Right now a good deal of the American Auto workers are employed by foreign companies that manufacture in this country and as was stated further up in this thread, they are still the American Auto workers that will bear the brunt of this pain they are the ones that may lose their jobs, incomes and homes.