Christmas came a little early for the nation’s automakers, thanks to President Bush’s announcement of a last-minute $17.4 billion bailout after fellow Republicans in the Senate defeated a similar rescue package.

But like so much expensive holiday giving, the cost won’t be felt till after the holidays.

In this case, Americans and our leaders will find themselves facing prickly issues, including possible approval of billions more to help the auto industry resurrect and reinvent itself amid a fast-changing international market, an economic downturn and mounting pressure by lawmakers and consumers for fuel-efficient vehicles.

Plus, more Americans are now poisoned against the idea of bailouts for the auto industry. Who can blame them after earlier Wall Street bailouts were followed by revelations of executive excess, lack of governmental oversight and disagreements about whether our tax money is even truly addressing the problem?

One local auto dealer, talking casually with a member of the Trib editorial board last week, said the whole business of government bailouts for the car industry — or any industry — went against his conservative Republican principles, founded on the idea of free markets and Darwinian business models.

Yet, he rightly acknowledged, these are not typical times.

President Bush obviously thought so, too. He defied fellow free-market Republicans and provided a financial bridge to help the auto industry survive. But warring has already erupted over his conditions, notably how much of a sacrifice the United Auto Workers is willing to make.

We agree with the president that hard conditions must be demanded, including drastic revision of wages and benefits for U.S. auto workers, especially when extravagant contracts between industry executives and the union signed in good times years ago now threaten to sink both the industry and its huge work force.

The United Auto Workers has already made concessions on some of the most outrageous benefits, but if workers’ wages and benefits packages average out to more than $70 per worker, while workers for their foreign competitors in the United States get between $20 and $25 less, then you’ve got a serious business problem.

U.S. Rep. Barney Frank has already blasted President Bush for insisting on bringing pay for U.S. auto workers closer to the levels of auto workers in U.S. car plants owned by foreign corporations. Such criticism might be valid were not the U.S. auto industry begging for public money we may never see again. Why should taxpayers who make less in their own jobs subsidize the high wages of auto workers?

We believe high wages are fine for workers, even for CEOs, but only if they can produce real success — and without public handouts.

The test ahead will be formidable for the president’s successor, given Barack Obama’s obligations to the unions during the election. We hope, when faced with whether to embrace these conditions, he can stand tall to the unions and demonstrate he represents the nation, not just autoworkers whose excessive pay and benefits are, in some respects, just as out of whack as those of many CEOs.

That means insisting that the United Auto Workers either adopt wages far more competitive and clearly understandable to the taxpayer, or else encouraging the auto industry into some sort of grand, customized Chapter 11 scenario, which could well force such a situation.