Posted on 09/15/2019 8:29:01 PM PDT by rktman
The moment usually comes during Greg Petras’s commute through the rolling hills and cornfields of southern Wisconsin. Somewhere between his home near Madison and the factory he runs on the edge of the small town of Brodhead, the news will turn to the trade wars and Donald Trump will again claim that China is bearing the cost of his tariffs. That’s when Petras loses it.
“It’s just an outright lie, and he knows it,” says Petras, president of Kuhn North America, which employs some 600 people at its farm-equipment factory in Wisconsin. For Kuhn, Trump’s trade war has produced a toxic mix of rising costs and falling revenues. “You’re slamming your fist on the steering wheel and saying ‘Why would you tell people this?’”
About 250 Kuhn employees spent the Labor Day holiday caught in a two-week furlough, and they’re facing another in early October. A shrinking order book means Kuhn is cutting costs and slashing production as Petras and his managers peer out at a U.S. economy that looks far bleaker from the swing-state heartland than it does in either the White House or on Wall Street.
The company’s circus-themed summer picnic survived but weekend shifts are gone. A plant that just four years ago was humming along to a record $400 million in sales together with a sister plant in Kansas is running at 50% capacity. The five-year-old, $11 million paint shop that coats the company’s manure spreaders and livestock feeders in a distinctive “Kuhn Red” is at 39% capacity. Plans for a new $4 million research and development building are on hold. “We’ll do it someday,” Petras says. “We just need things to be going in a better direction.”
(Excerpt) Read more at discussionist.com ...
They need to find some counter-cyclical business to keep going when the farm equipment business isn’t there.
Every store near me has help wanted signs up, perpetually.
There’s literally not enough people to fill all the positions.
Nicely played
I don’t think we will have another recession for 7 more years. The 2008 recession lasted over 8 years, from before the end of Bush’s term til past the end of Obama’s term. There was so much pent-up economic potential that it burst loose almost by itself when the 8 years were over, and the deregulating that has happened since has been medicinal in its effects. There are at least 10 years left, as long as regulation keeps being reduced and immigration is slowed down significantly.
As far as China trade goes, China has been reaming us for 2 decades. American companies would open factories over there, and run two shifts, and after closing time, China would run a third shift making the same products using the same materials in the same factories with nearly identical labor. Where do you think counterfeit products come from?
They also take our technologies, like computer chips and software, and duplicate them for their own use and for selling back to us. They embed their code in our devices for who knows what reason. They make spyware and malware and install it on our computers.
They are also very good at making things that resemble real things, so realistically that they can be temporarily used as substitutes for the real things. Take the lowly Phillips screwdriver: They can make something that looks so much like a real Phillips screwdriver that you don’t even know it isn’t real until after you have used it a couple of times and the end is more like an awl than a screwdriver.
They have been flooding our discount stores and hardware stores with cheap crap and everybody knows it is cheap crap and they even say so, but they want to be able to buy it because it isn’t as expensive as good American craftsmanship.
Who are his customers? Why would the trade war with China affect him or his company at all? I’ll admit I didn’t read the article, because I’m relatively certain he was a Hillary supporter.
That is what Free Republic has been doing for 25 years, except for the guy that yells at the blog pimpers.
GRIPS!!! MENACING!!!
These scaremongers are so juvenile. And so obvious.
There’s literally not enough people to fill all the positions.
I know a guy who has retired 3 times and keeps going back to work because it is so easy.
Complete and utter BULL$HIT!
If that’s even true, it was expected under the effort to stop the trade imbalance madness and get America back to work. Fight!
The bastards are going to talk us into a recession again.
I bought a new tractor in February. Went up to Indiana to get it. The dealer there had very little stock and was beefing up their shop because farm equipment sales are way down and making do with old equipment will be way up. Not because of trade wars back in February but because they have been planting less corn for fuel. It is a cycle. Eventually you run out of money, need or desire to keep buying new stuff. It looks to me like the market is flooded with late model used tractors from the folks flush with enough cash to trade in before the warranty runs out. I never thought much of warranties anyway. I’d much rather have something that runs and doesn’t need a warranty.
I got another clue for the Kuhn guy. They make good stuff but it isn’t that good. Way over priced.
If you are going to buy expensive equipment build a barn to go with it. Take care of both and they will probably last a long time. I work with a 16 year-old truck, a baler made in 2001, a rake that came over on the Mayflower etc. They are washed, greased and oiled before storage, cleaned again and serviced before the season.
I’m so damn sick and tired of the endless campaign. I’ll be glad when this chapter of the American Experience ends.
Well put and accurate.
Cows are also in the ditch. Good time to be a buyer.
Oh so true. Even the “good” tools are made in china. I bought a name brand phillips that broke the tip off on the first screw.
So true as well on the pent up economy after 8 years of curious george. I don’t know how long it may go but I expect it has some life left in it and renewed life if Trump can pull the china thing off as well as somehow get elected again. Maybe second time the courts will be with him a bit more.
The indians are also good at dimensional duplication but not the metallurgy. Surely someday people will learn value instead of price for just a little while.
Cheap crap lowers the quality of everything.
Construction is going like gangbusters, too.
Warehouses expanding, houses, new businesses.
Empty anchor stores at the mall getting new life.
Although I certainly am not one of them, people are shopping their brains out and driving nice new cars.
Rarely do I see someone driving an 18 year old beater like mine.
It’s not coming my way but there’s a LOT of money flowing locally.
Reminds me of the 80s.
Recession has a specific definition and in no way and in no place in our nation has anything close to that specific definition been met.
This is pure, straight lies by the left.
Those who are saying this are LIARS.
Pretty simple.
Yea things would be so much better with one of those insane kooks running the show..
Can you say ‘Fake News’ Sure, I knew you could.
Throwing fake news at the wall to see if anything sticks.
There are always economic sectors that are doing better or worse than the US economy as a whole. The metal fabricating business that I work at didn’t see a pickup until just this spring. It just took longer for the economic tide to reach us. We were, however, getting hammered by high raw material prices due mostly to the trade war. Made it very difficult for us to quote our customers for a few months until things settled down. Several projects got “put on hold” because the spike in raw material meant that budgeted funds were suddenly insufficient to meet project costs. We weathered it and the plant manager in this article will too.
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