Posted on 11/18/2016 10:17:13 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
On Thursday evening, President-elect Donald Trump tweeted that he received a call from Ford chairman Bill Ford indicating that the automaker had chosen not to move an entire plant from Kentucky to Mexico.
As many reports rightly indicated, that’s not entirely true. Ford never intended to close and move its Louisville Assembly Plant — to which Trump is referring — to Mexico. The plant currently employs a little more than 4,700 workers.
The Detroit-based automaker was only considering moving its Lincoln MKC production — only one of the vehicles manufactured at that plant — to its factory in Cuautitlan, Mexico, according to a Ford spokesperson.
As part of a four-year contract with the United Auto Workers that Ford signed in 2015, the automaker was making room to produce the new Ford Escape at its Louisville plant and expected to “balance out” its MKC production. But now, the company has chosen to keep its MKC production in Kentucky.
Trump wasn’t wrong about his influence over that decision, however. In his tweets, he strongly suggests he had something to do with Ford’s move....
(Excerpt) Read more at recode.net ...
No, it’s not the regulations or the taxes. It’s the labor cost. You could remove all the regulations and taxes in the U.S. and you still couldn’t compete with Chinese wages of $2/day for a 12 hour day.
And you wouldn’t want to remove all the regulations. A lot of them are there for good reason. Some need to go. But we need OSHA regs, we need some EPA regs. And we want Social programs. You can’t afford either the regs or the social programs if you let countries that don’t have them sell into your market without a tariff.
Our founding fathers had high tariffs. Tariffs before and during the roaring 20’s were in excess of 20%. We’ve lowered them to an effective average of 1%. Which means imports pay only a fraction as much taxes as domestic producers would pay. We’ve actually created an incentive to off shore.
I loved my 1986 Mustang GT. Paid cash for it from selling payphones. Remember those?
When did 0bama, while still just President Elect, have any kind of positive impact? Hopefully, this is a sign of good things to come. I have a feeling that 2020 could be another 49 state blowout, with only CA (did you ever notice that the medical abbreviation for cancer is CA?) being the only holdout.
Kentucky, like its neighbor, Missouri, will soon be a Right to Work State. IMO. This matters, long term.
I do. I can recall "dropping dimes."
We need to reward Ford again for building American. The new Mustang could be a good mid-life crisis mobile for me.
Are there any auto producers which do NOT have domestic assembly and production plants here?
WOW.
Not sure but we imported $172 billion in autos in the first half of 2015.
So it really doesn’t matter whether they have a token assembly plant here, or whether they assemble parts that are made overseas. It’s the total trade picture. We have a huge trade deficit and high unemployment, and we are losing industries.
A tariff helps rebalance that. It funds the government when American workers aren’t working. And it makes US operations more profitable relative to overseas.
It’s actually refreshing to “win”, as the American people, not a “global citizen” for a change.
I’ve said it for almost 8 years... I cannot wait to get the grown ups back into the White House. I’m tired of a 19 year old’s never ending keg party.
You would not believe the chemicals that get dumped in the canals from the factories.
But it is the Chinese companies that are doing it. Foreign companies from Western countries and their foreign resident managers do not do it.
It is not the labor costs. Well, for labor intensive industries it is. But for most it is a neglible savings given the levels of automation. In the West, a machine does a job you might have 10 of 15 Chinese perform.
That is such a misconception the savings is in labor.
Yesterday in Kentucky, a Federal Appeals Court upheld a county right to work law. Overturned a lower court ruling. Unions throwing a fit. Love it!
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