Posted on 02/07/2016 7:46:41 PM PST by 11th_VA
I worked in a GM Plant for two years. It was state of the art. They fed the floor workers three times a day: Free meals.
They had a water treatment plan: It was to treat the water coming in not going out. The waste going out was cleaner the what was coming in LOL.
Since NAFTA allows a maximum of 95% of production to cross the border there was always inventory with no place to go.
We should renegotiate NAFTA to lower that across the border allowance.
And again (you never answered me), why are you at FR, a very conservative site, gleefully using arguments of what communist “Karl Marx liked” to justify an anti-competitive, anti-free-marketplace, pro-interventionist, pro-protectionist social-economic stance? I doesn't make any sense unless there's an anti-conservative agenda involved. You're lucky the mods here are more forgiving than I.
I am pro American, pro American industry like Donald Trump.
So do you really think Ford is going to pass on the production cost savings onto their costumers?
Do you think the founding fathers were some kind of pre cursors to Marxist because ALL OF THEM WERE STAUNCH PROTECTIONISTS?
Then Rubio and Jebbie are your guys.
Nice charts, notice in the “U.S. Productivity and Compensation, 1948-2011” chart that compensation begin to diverge from productivity beginning about 1971, the same year Nixon took us completely off the gold standard.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/08/15/forty-years-ago-today-nixon-took-us-off-gold-standard.html
“But if Trump is President he’s going to slap a 35% tax on every car, truck and part coming in from Mexico.”
Then you can expect a 30% increase in the cost of every automobile sold in the US. Do you know who else has 35-40% tariffs on all cars, trucks and auto parts imported into their country? Brazil does. It has allowed for the national cost of every car to be 2x their average wage!
If you like the utopian policies of Brazil, you should at least go visit to see their utopia!
“I read somewhere that these companies pay the medican workers next to nothing.”
Well, they DO pay a prevailing market wage in Mexico. In addition, they are usually in auto OEM and supplier manufacturing parts so the fringe benefits are always changing to meet the desires of their employees.
“They get no benefits and the factory has a cafeteria on site to keep them at work.”
The benefits in Mexico differ greatly than the benefits we expect. Yes, food is part of their benefit package, but that is mostly because the average mexican can’t afford to eat at home. Once they get a job, they give them a benefit of on-site food, that garuntees that they get food.
They also provide them transportation to and from work, but it would be reflected in your comments as something along the lines of “the evil corporations even force them on busses to get them to work faster.”
The miss-information and ignorance on this thread is astounding.
The average profit per car/truck that Ford sold in the NA market was $600 each. The average price for cars made in Mexico is about $25K. The 35% tariff would be $8,750 per car imported. If the story is true, then Ford would pay an additional (8750 x 500,000) $4.4B USD.
It is impossible for Ford to absorb that. It would mean a cost increase on all cars sold in the NA market, not just the ones produced in Mexico.
“So do you really think Ford is going to pass on the production cost savings onto their costumers?”
They can’t, there isn’t any. This move is a move of survival. The margins per car produced are going down by thousands every year. Let me give you a specific example.
Due to CAFE, the OEM’s are spending thousands more per car to get any incremental fraction of CAFE reductions. It has added $5,000 worth of content costs to the base Mustang. However, the customer doesn’t see that as $5K worth of value, instead they only see it as COST increases. Since it doesn’t provide a value to the customer, the customer has reached their limit to the cost increases.
Now, the margins are getting squeezed on the B and C car markets, so what is an OEM to do? Well, one answer is to move production of those segments to Mexico, Thailand, etc. If labor costs are from $5-10K per car, then the CAFE requirements that drove a cost increase can be offset by cutting the labor costs by half or 2/3rds.
You can’t get those reductions in overhead or capital equipment......
I’d prefer that we reduce CAFE to something that is actually achievable, that we reduce enviro regs, that we reduce mandated fringe benefits (obamacare) and on and on.
The problem is not the manufacturer as much as it IS the government’s meddling into their business.
“The miss-information and ignorance on this thread is astounding.”
In your case I agree.
The average Mexican worker at the Ford, Chrysler and GM plants in Mexico earns just less than $4 per hour or about $26 per day. About 10% of what an American auto worker makes.
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