I was planning to guess 15, but I took a conservative number.
Wait, almost there.
Why does CAT do this? First, it’s like Harley production in Brazil. If all the parts are shipped for final assembly in Brazil, the duties start magically disappearing. China just took this a step further and wants the unit itself built and partnered in China.
It’s a little suspect to point at the U.S. car companies on this as most of the big players are there, too (VW huge investment, Honda, Toyota, Peugeot, etc). VW owns 18% of that market...never hear these ‘why?’ stories out of Germany, though. Why, they must be robbing VW blind. But, China’s vehicle exports are incredibly low — about 5% of the 5.7 million vehicles produced.
Really don’t think it’s the U.S. regs stopping them as much as the duties placed by the govt...hmmm where do we hear about that a lot...lol.
Hope that counted.