It's called lemon socialism. They're willing to give the lemons back to the government. The reason why the Japanese and the Europeans have beat us is because they have better products. It has little to do with subsidies. If subsidies really worked, the Russians should have been leading the world in terms of global competition.
Subsidies actually debilitate innovation and efficiency.
Secondly, the Japanese and German corporations pay much higher taxes than ours do, which could cancel out any subsidy advantage. And finally, the subsidy is vastly exaggerated in terms of Japan and Germany. They don't give their companies many subsidies at all. To the extent that the Japanese play unfairly, they do it through non-tariff trade barriers. But that's a trade issue.