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When William Bachman, president of Bachman Machine Co. in St. Louis, was asked to submit a bid to make tools to stamp metal parts for car jacks, and to also produce the parts themselves, he priced the tools at $595,000. His Chinese competitor offered to make the tools free.

"It really doesn't matter how much I automate," Mr. Bachman says, "I can't compete with zero."

Yup, its hard to compete against communist slave labor.

The free traitors that hold our government in sway don't give a *hit about the future of the USA.

was asked to submit a bid to make tools to stamp metal parts for car jacks, and to also produce the parts themselves, he priced the tools at $595,000. His Chinese competitor offered to make the tools free.

The bidding process itself is skewed against ALL specialty toolmakers, foreign or domestic.
Tool and Die shops focus their facilities and expertise on the product they make: precision tooling. But rarely, if ever, do they make the capital investment in the production machinery on which this is used.

However, a supplier that has the production equipment (but not the toolmaking equipment or machinery) can easily supply the tooling for "free". They merely subcontract the tooling work and incorporate the cost into the piece-price of the parts they'll produce.

IMHO, purchasing agents who play this "game" oughta be shot. Yeah, it may be a way to access competitive tooling sources that they might not otherwise be aware of. But it also muddies the water between the true variable costs of direct material and the fixed cost of capital investment.