Posted on 11/16/2016 5:46:17 AM PST by monkapotamus
Ford’s chief executive officer Mark Fields must not respond well to threats; he admitted to Reuters on Tuesday that Ford was still planning on moving the production of its small cars from Michigan to — you guessed it — Mexico...
Fields claimed that the move would not have any effect at all on American jobs because the move south will “make room for two very important products we’ll be putting back into Michigan plants.”
Ford has yet to announce what, exactly, those “important products” are, but Fields is convinced that the move will lead to “no job impact whatsoever.”
“It’s very difficult for us to be able to make money on a vehicle produced in the U.S,” said Fields, explaining that if they were to raise the cost of their smaller cars to compensate for the increased cost of manufacturing in the United States the car just “wouldn’t sell...”
(Excerpt) Read more at nymag.com ...
You'll probably find that this trend in auto/truck manufacturing is very common. It's no coincidence that when these foreign companies open new plants in the U.S., they are typically building larger vehicles like SUVs and light trucks.
I have a Ford Taurus wagon.
It still does.
:D
Bull.
The Koreans are making plenty of small cars in the Southeast (USA).
All selling quite well I might add.
I would suspect that one of those lines will be for their F-150 and/or Expedition, possibly Superduty, vehicles. The other, I suspect, will be for the rumored Bronco revival. SUVs and pickup trucks are the only vehicles that really make any money for the big manufacturers in the US, so it makes sense to shift loss-leader econobox cars off to a cheaper plant to make room for the company’s bread-and-butter products.
If you destroy their auto industry via a trade war they won't be auto workers any longer.
Hopefully the big manufacturers will do the math on the 35% import fee and follow their bottom line.
Make them in South Carolina. No UAW problem. No tarriff. Where do I send the hill for consulting.
This might be a good thing. All of the illegals being deported will be able to find jobs!
Some of the strongest lobbyists for EPA fuel efficiency standards aren't environmentalists -- they're engine manufacturers. They push for these higher fuel efficiency standards because the regulations force auto manufacturers to pay a premium for newer, more advanced engines. This is why Barack Obama announced one of his new diesel emission regulations not at an appearance with environmentalists, but at an appearance with the CEO of Cummins.
So a company like Ford basically has to move part of its operations to Mexico to offset the higher cost of engines that have been mandated by the Federal government due the lobbying efforts of one of their own suppliers.
This is crony capitalism at its worst. And this is why I have no problem with a company like Ford building cars in Mexico. If they're going to have to deal with a sh!tty, corrupt, Third World government, they might as well deal with the one in Mexico City that costs less than the one in Washington.
It’s not ugly, especially if you’re satisfied with it. It’s not a Pontiac Aztek.
Ford’s contract with the UAW covers the entire country, including right-to-work states. This is why Ford doesn’t bother opening plants in the South, since they’d be required to have UAW workers anyway.
Precisely. The primary motive of a stockholder is social justice. Any economist will tell you that!
Are we still peddling this crap? Free trade with Mexico and BLAM all the illegals coming here will go back, because they don’t really wanna be here anyway, and they’ll have jobs now in Mexico..yea yea. Take away their auto industry and they’ll flood us..blah blah
The standard of living there is not any better, and these companies along with a severely corrupt Mexican government pocket all the profit from the cheap labor.
He hasn’t “addressed” anything yet. We’ll see how quickly he acts on these stupid regulations.
Tariffs could be part of the solution but massive ones are bad. The real root problem here is the crushing regulatory burden and Trump can do that without any risk of igniting any sort of trade war. Sweep away some of the ridiculous regulations and costs will come down without anyone taking a pay cut and no new taxes driving up costs to consumers. And the President can do most of it without any help from congress since it's all bureaucratically derived mumbo jumbo, not law. Let's start there.
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