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?
“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.