Posted on 07/29/2011 8:29:16 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Workers at the New Balance factory in Skowhegan, Maine fear a deluge of cheap shoes if President Obama signs a free-trade agreement with Vietnam and seven other countries.
It is the last major athletic shoe factory in America.
New Balance pays its workers upward of $10 an hour, plus benefits, while labor costs in China are about $1.50 an hour, and even less in Vietnam.
The factory can only compete through protective tariffs. Washington Post's Peter Whoriskey explains:
The shoe tariff, by pushing up the cost of importing shoes, means a pair of athletic shoes made in the Norridgewock factory or anywhere else in the United States is more competitive than it otherwise would be, and partially offsets the costs of higher wages paid here. On a pair of shoes that comes into the country valued at $30, for example, a typical 20 percent duty amounts to $6. (In many cases, the markup amounts to 100 percent, meaning those shoes would sell to consumers for $72.)
As workers in New England look around at the shuttered textile and shoe mills that still dot many towns, relics of the industrial era, some see the shoe tariff as the least the United States could do for what’s left of the battered industry. In their view, removing the tariff only rewards those companies such as Nike and Adidas that have shut U.S. factories and concentrated their operations elsewhere.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
come on now...no one thinks Uncle Phil Knight would be unAmerican now would they?...afterall, doesn’t he own a professional American football team, lock, stock and barrel?
I need to go out and buy another pair of NB crosstrainers ....
I need to go out and buy another pair of NB crosstrainers ....
The only athletic footwear I use is New Balance.I sure hope they continue to stay in business.
The question you have to ask yourself is does the government have a greater obligation to interfere in commerce to benefit the consumer or manufacturer. As long as Joe Sixpack price shops at Walmart American companies have to outsource to survive.
if they voted for comrade obama,
what do they expect?
RE: The only athletic footwear I use is New Balance.I sure hope they continue to stay in business...
Who’s to say they won’t open their factory .... in Vietnam?
To me the answer isn't tariffs but MUCH lower taxes, Corporate, sales, ect ect, and FAR LESS regulation. To me it's like attracting more flies with Honey than with Vinegar, sort of like what Canada is doing, you don't increase the Tariffs on Imports but you lower your Domestic taxes to where it is behenfical for businesses to operate factories there.
RE: MUCH lower taxes, Corporate, sales, ect ect, and FAR LESS regulation
Can anybody inform us what burdensome regulation a shoe maker like New Balance faces?
RE: Exactly how does one go about surviving on $10/hr., seriously, I’m curious.
Vietnamese would KILL for Half that amount in salary.
RE: The only athletic footwear I use is New Balance.I sure hope they continue to stay in business...
Who’s to say they won’t open their factory .... in Vietnam?
I want them to stay open here in the U.S.That’s why I buy their shoes because they are made here and their prices are not bad either.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-4380
You can read through it if you like.
I like New Balance and have been buying the brand for many years but for the last seven years they've started to suck. I get sick and tired of how they are always deleting a certain shoe band number or change the model I like and make it more narrow.
Before I was able to just look up my number and order a couple of shoes that I liked and be done with it. Now I have to go to the stores and try on different models. Even the same model don't always fit right anymore. And some of their colors suck too.
I hate to be blunt, but $10 per hour is what that kind of work is worth. If you’re 40 and trying to support a family of 4 on $20,000 per year, then you probably made some bad choices along the way. These jobs should be for entry level people, those who have retired and are looking for additional income or those who are working and going to school to try and move up. In addition, the high minimum wage drives up the cost of unskilled labor. Its artificial and must be abolished.
Tough issue here. If we assume the shoes are the same quality (probably not, but let’s assume so) and the US shoe sells for $70 and the import sells for $50, the consumer saves $20. Let’s also assume NB employs 2000 people and they sell 500,000 pairs of shoes each year. Consumers would spend $10 million more for the US shoes, or about a $5000/employee subsidy to the workers. I guess the question is: Do consumers want to subsidize the NB employees?
Agree with you about the model number change. I have on 856 that was something else a year ago. And another number the year before.
These shoes are the same size of previous, but my foot swims in them. Had to buy the $40 insert to make them work. Outside is wide, like Donald Duck. Some things changed and not for the better.
Unless congress makes life better for business, companies will leave period. They need to make a profit. Things don’t look good. Third world is coming to America. And then, God help us.
Litigation and insurance costs. Didn't hire someone because they wore a burqa and you didn't think it was safe? You could get fined and sued for discrimination even though you acted in good faith. Want to expand your plant to another state? Not if the NLRB thinks that may be retaliatory against a pro union state. Sometime last year one of the workers thinks they didn't get their full break time? That'll cost you big. Even though you may have followed guidelines you thought were reasonable and accommodating.
The thing that I’m hating is every pair of sneakers I buy for the past 10 years or so has the sole come off. The glue just stops adhering the sole to the shoe.
I’ve got a pair of Nike’s I bought in boot camp in 1988, from the NEX, and sure enough - they still fit, are fairly comfortable, and while the sole is worn smooth, it’s still solidly attached.
I wonder what EPA regulation forced manufacturers to change the glue?
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