Posted on 01/14/2017 7:14:50 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
If the Roman emperors ruled by edict, President-elect Donald Trump appears poised to rule by tweet. Even before taking office, Trump has discovered he can move the world’s largest global corporations with simple, 140-character tweets. And though his aggressive approach is winning politically, good politics doesn’t necessarily mean good economics.
Voters see Trump fulfilling his campaign promises to close America’s borders and bring jobs back home. He is using the bully pulpit to stand up for workers by taking on the most powerful American companies, including Ford (F, +0.32%), General Motors (GM, -0.45%), Toyota (TM, +0.14%), Boeing (BA, +0.34%), Lockheed Martin (LMT, +0.76%), and United Technologies (UTX, -0.54%)/Carrier.
Thus far, no CEOs have had the courage to stand up to Trump. General Motors CEO Mary Barra has said the company’s small-car production will remain in Mexico, but it could only be a matter of time before she’s forced to change course. Trump’s sudden tweets likely worry many CEOs who fear they may be his next target. Right now, most have just tried to stay out of his way. Some, like SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son and Fiat’s Sergio Marchionne, have put forth peace offerings to invest more in the U.S.
(Excerpt) Read more at fortune.com ...
Average total compensation (pay plus benefits) in the US auto industry is nowhere near $100 per hour. The highest average total compensation in the industry is actually at the nonunion Mercedes Benz plant in Alabama, about $70 per hour. Average total compensation at UAW plants is less and it’s been declining in recent years.
I am using $100 as worst case scenario.
Look CEO's would put grandma in a meat grinder to shave 5% off of production costs. That would be an exaggeration but not much of one. '
. . . which is exactly the approach that did not work for the Japanese in the 1950s. Deming convinced them that quality ultimately saved money, and they stopped taking the approach of the US auto companies - that if you save a dollar a car and you make a million cars you are saving a million dollars.Which is undeniable mathematics, all else being equal. But under that approach, quality will not be equal. Quality will suffer - and at the end of the day you find your system is designed to generate schlock. Worse, you find that out from the customers you don’t get and retain. It’s how the Japanese went from having “Made in Japan” be a byword for shoddy, to the point where the quality of Japanese autos forced the US auto manufacturers to adopt their approach to cost v. quality.
The 30 hours per vehicle figure is also misleading. That is the average number of hours of labor associated with manufacturing the vehicle. It does not include design, engineering, marketing, transporting, prepping, and selling the vehicle. There is much more labor content in a car or truck you drive off the lot than the manufacturing aspect.
The 100% cotton shirt on your back, perhaps made in Vietnam, may have cost you $40 or $50. If made in the USA, it would cost you $100 or more. Most of us aren’t willing to pay that much for a shirt. When it comes to foreign-made consumer goods, the “enemy” is us.
Please provide the basis of your cost analysis. I’m in no mood for slanted guessing.
that’s a great story and that’s a lot of nonsense about the government needing to train people and educate people. They don’t want to do that. They want to hire cheap labor from India. That’s all they want to do.
All of the taxes we pay will go down, as will any business tax, with an excise tax.
You appear to love penalizing Americans working over penalizing foreign goods which pay no US tax.
You probably prefer having US citizens raped over that of Mexican citizens.
There are plenty of people to coerce out of not working. First, we end welfare and foreign workers. This will provide the labor pool and raise wages. People currently in retirement may come back if the income potential seems decent enough. With 0care being repealed, it's believed a number of doctors will reenter the labor market, for instance. Teenagers have an incredible unemployment rate, but adults and illegals are taking their jobs because the factory, mining, and power plant jobs have been ended by regulations. That will now change.
Free trade does not mean one cannot have excise taxes.
There is nothing inherently better about other taxes over excise taxes.
By the way, I have had a number of economics classes and have read several of the authors you listed. I specifically spoke up to, and successfully corrected, one of my Economics teachers concerning Keynes in one of my Masters-level Economics courses, as well, in which he agreed and corrected his own notes in front of the full classroom.
It is possible to buy a Made in the USA 100% all cotton shirt, comparable in quality to, say, an imported LL Bean shirt that costs $40 to $50, but it will cost $100 or more. I’ve tried. I invite you to do the same.
It may come as a surprise to some of the tariff pimps on FR, but I buy USA made products when it’s reasonable to do so. But a 100% premium is not reasonable to me. Maybe it is to you.
For educational purposes on behalf of other Free Republic readers, can you point to two existing countries which typify “free trade” practices to you?
I’ve tried to source reasonably priced all-cotton shirts from the US for 20 years. Good luck with that.
You haven’t been following what I have said. A uniform tariff for the purpose of revenue is far superior to n income tax. We are not going to get rid of the income tax. Given that we are stuck with an income tax, the tariff is just giving Congress another major tax to play games with and raise every year. Do you actually think a 10% or 20% tariff is going to stay at 10 or 20% for more than the first year? If Trump had gone for a real and low flat income tax, maybe 10-13% I would believe he could be working toward pushing an Amendment to repeal the 16th Amendment. Then a tariff would be appropriate. Most people on the right who want that tariff are into punishing our trading partners and competitors or are just miffed because they are out trading us. They are but it is what we have done to ourselves by making higher business taxes than anyone else and more expensive regulation. On trade what is appropriate and the royal road to fast rising prosperity is to take off almost all of the regulation and all or almost all of the business taxes. On an evenly taxed and regulated playing field American business produces more per dollar of input than anyone else in the world. If you think everyone else has to be punished then there is no discussion.
There is a philosophy that believes that trade must be managed and taxed for social purposes and to guide prosperity. They are called Progressives or Socialists or Liberals. A tariff in the light of an existing major tax structure i.e. the Income Tax is no more than government intervention in business.
The Official Start is not the real start. The economy was sliding and businesses and banks were pulling back during the time that Smoot Hawley was being processed in Congress which began well before the Crash. When it became obvious that it would pass, the market crashed. I wish folks would read some Economics instead of magazine articles and party platforms.
It is not “punishment” against anyone to have an excise tax. I will say our country suffers, both from crime and unemployment, when we don't have millions of people working. Idle hands do the devil's work, as they say.
The excise tax has always been there. There is no “extra” tax of any sort. Excise taxes were a primary source of federal revenue for almost 130 years. We never abolished it.
From “ENGLAND UNDER FREE TRADE, AN ADDRESS
DELIVERED TO THE SHEFFIELD JUNIOR LIBERAL
ASSOCIATION, 8th NOVEMBER, 1881.BY GEORGE W. MEDLEY.”
“But, before we proceed further, let us define what we mean by the term Free Trade as just used. In the abstract, Free Trade may be defined as that state of affairs in which the nations exchange with each other their various products untrammelled by hostile and prohibitory tariffs. Protection, on the other hand, is that state of affairs in which the nations are hindered from this free exchange by tariffs imposed for that special purpose.
Well, we all know that Free Trade as thus defined does not exist. We are said to be living under Free Trade, but in a strict sense that is not so. We are living under a system in which our imports alone are free; our exports to some of the principal markets not being free. It is only as regards our imports that we enjoy perfect freedom; and it is for this reason that the present régime has been called Onesided Free Trade. It will now be our task to inquire whether this has been, as regards our national welfare, a success or a failure.”
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/England_under_free_trade
Perhaps you were thinking of a different England?
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