Posted on 09/22/2011 12:19:51 PM PDT by AfricanChristian
(CBS/AP) Two years after it was saved by a bailout from Washington, General Motors is trumpeting its latest investments in China. As CBS News business and economics correspondent Rebecca Jarvis reported from Shanghai, American cars are more popular than ever in China, and U.S. automakers sell more cars there than anywhere else in the world. And while that's good news for American car companies, it makes many question what it will mean for American jobs.
If you were to visit General Motors in Shanghai, you'd find a lot of what you would in Detroit
The plant, says David Gibbons, executive director of manufacturing for GM in Shanghai, is "very similar. The processes are the same, the systems are the same, the quality systems are the same. Really, the only difference is the employees."
With its Chinese partner, Shanghai Automotive Industrial Corp., GM manufactures Buicks, Chevys and Cadillacs in China -- for the Chinese market -- and employs more than 13,000 people throughout the country.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
I think I have just bought my last GM car.
I think I have just bought my last GM car.
There is a simple enough solution: They can move to China. But they have to take the UAW voters with them.
How is GM a U.S. car company when it has plants in China, Mexico and other foreign countries? Is that just a euphemism that GM keeps going so it can get American taxpayers to bail them out every so often?
I’ve read it postulated that as GM’s sales in China (presumably) continue as they currently are, the company may be hard pressed to continue to base itself in the U.S.
Similar to how FIAT has considered moving it’s ops to the U.S. post Chrysler, the upper management wants to be nearer to the nerve center of their primary serviced market.
Yet the unions are suing Boeing for simply moving to another state.
And the WH is helping the unions.
By a Ford! “Fix or repair daily” is better than God’s mechanical curse” or “fix it again Tony”!
What I found interesting is that GM sells 3 times as many cars in China as they do in the US. It is only a matter of time before GM moves domestic production of autos sold in the US offshore to the existing Shanghai plant and wave buh bye to the UAW. They cannot do it now politically because the Government owns a chunk of GM but once the government unloads the stock, GM will start making noises about not being able to manufacture competitively stateside.
It could be a double secret plan to infiltrate China with unions.
But let me pose this question.. We all don't like China having all those US dollars! So how do we get them back? Well GM is investing Chinese Renminbi to produce cars, sell them in Renminbi and make a profit in Renmibi. To bring back profits to the US, GM will convert Renminbi to USD from Chinese reserves and send DOLLARS to the US. GM can then invest US $ in the US economy.
Unfortunately since the US taxes patriot profits, companies tend to send those profits to Belgium tax free the invest the capital elsewhere. GOOD thinking liberals- what is a tax to appease big labor is hurting the US economy.
One of the main reasons GM kept the Buick brand and dumped the Pontiac brand was because of Buick’s high brand recognition in China.
The real problem is that the UAW, a line workforce comprised more or less of hereditary aristocrats, many of whom happen to be high school dropouts, pervades everything GM does stateside, from final assembly to GM's stateside parts makers. Until Detroit can de-certify the UAW and operate like BMW, Toyota and Hyundai stateside, production will inexorably move abroad in order to escape the UAW's extortionate wages, inefficient work rules and filtering process (that also happens to select the least productive workers to become members).
Annnnd why has it taken you so long to figure this out?
The numbers area little deceiving. GM’s joint ventures sell more cars in China than GM does in the US. Over half of them are tiny commercial vehicle ‘micro vans’. GM owns 49% of the JVs, the most China will allow. Shanghai Automotive and Wuling are its two partneres, and they have significantly more employees than GM does in the JVs. If you take 49% of the JVs auto prodction and ascribe that solely to GM, then its vehicle sales in China are nowhere near that here.
Also GM doesn’t sell anything remotely like that cheap micro van here in the states.
Waiting to hear from the union thugs on this one..... waiting....waiting....
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