Posted on 07/18/2014 6:58:03 PM PDT by shove_it
Since China joined the WTO. So many U.S. companies laid off workers and closed factories.
John Bassett III, a third-generation furniture factory owner in Virginia, refused to do that. He decided instead to take on the Chinese.
"He's absolutely relentless, “says Beth Macy, author of Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local -- and Helped Save an American Town.
Bassett traveled from the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains to northern China to visit a factory that made knockoffs of the furniture his factory made. Bassett pretended to be interested in doing business with the Chinese manufacturer, who was willing to supply Bassett with furniture provided he closed his own factory.
Not a chance. Bassett returned to the U.S. and organized a group of other U.S. furniture makers to file a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission, charging Chinese manufacturers with dumping products -- selling them for less than the cost of production. He eventually won, saving 700 jobs in the process and a small Virginia town.
But winning trade complaints is not the only reason Bassett has succeeded...
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
when i need furniture, i’m buying his.
This is inspiring.
More people need to do this.
Great job.
Great story, and not the only one like it I’m aware of. But here’s the common factor to all: this is a privately-held business. Most (but by no means all) of the 3 million jobs that the article refers to have been in publicly-owned corporations. Why is this a big factor? It’s not because they are smarter or dumber or that the private businesses know things they don’t know. It’s simply because public companies are under immense pressure to show quarter-over-quarter improvement in order to keep their stock price up, in doing so have sold out their future for short term gains.
Well, if anybody needs a job, Ashley Furniture is hiring like crazy, especially at their new manufacturing and distribution plant in NC, outside Greensboro.
Most of my furniture purchases in recent years have been made by the Amish and the Mennonites in Indiana and Ohio from red oak with some really great finishes. The Bassett story is a good one for all US manufacturers, many of whom really need to put a pencil to their total cost of acquisition when outsourcing.
i bought a large pipe wrench cheap at HD name brand but made in china. I had to fix it. The metal spring that opens the jaws kept displacing and failing until i fixed it. a pipe wrench. wait til they start making cars. can you hear “what is a wecall”?
“The metal spring that opens the jaws kept displacing and failing until i fixed it. a pipe wrench. wait til they start making cars. can you hear “what is a wecall”?”
The worst part of it is that even if you;d be willing to pay more for American-made it often isn’t even available.
Most Red Chinese merchandise is absolutely crap, but Americans better get used to it; it is all they can afford, and all that is being offered.
We have been savaged financially by other countries dumping their products here. We are on the losing side of a vicious trade war
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