Posted on 10/28/2011 4:43:31 AM PDT by tobyhill
Whirlpool Corp , the world's largest appliance maker, slashed its full-year profit forecast and said it would cut about 10 percent of its workforce in North America and Europe, to protect margins in a weak economic environment.
The maker of Maytag and KitchenAid appliances will cut more than 5,000 positions and said it would close down its plant in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and reduce its overall manufacturing capacity by about 6 million units.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxbusiness.com ...
Uh, the U.S. just signed a FTA with S. Korea. And if you seek to emulate Japan, you don't know jack about economics.
Chinese guy ?
Import tariffs do not increase taxes on Americans.
Import tariffs increase taxes on importers.
No tax, on anything made right here in America...
“chinaboy”, I think?
Sorry if I mixed you up with someone!! That would be embarrassing.
Just keep repeating it, Dorothy. LOL Then, explain to me how doubling the price I pay for gasoline is not a "tax."
No speaky...
Sorry. Need more coffee.
/ (embarrassed lurk mode on)
Interesting that there is nothing in your comment addressing ‘free trade’ or ‘comparative advantage’.
Tariff money should not go to the government. It should go to trade R&D groups that must invest the money developing proprietary technologies, such as robotics and automation, so that local industries can compete again with imports. The tariff should be temporary and taper off at some point. Developed technology should have high strength intellectual property protection mechanisms, should be banned from export, and should destroy itself if not re-certified periodically.
FTA = Free Trade Agreement
My apologies.
Went back and found it, and was I offbase.
Sorry, total screw-up on my part. Apologies.
No harm.
Cheers back atcha.
There's no difference. Companies must raise their prices to cover higher taxes so customers really pay all taxes.
Consumers looking to buy new wash machines and clothes dryers should look at the American made brands first. They compare well with foreign ones and the price is close or the same. Just because the local big box store has a big promotion on foreign brands such as LG, etc. is not a reason to not look at US made products. Buy American and a guy in NC may keep his job.
Now you’ve done it. Don’t you understand that these evil traitorous companies that relocate overseas at the slightest provocation . . . uh, won’t raise their prices as the result of a tariff placed on their competition out of the goodness of their own hearts?
FYI, Kitchen Aid, Maytag, Whirpool, Ammana and several Kenmore models are all made in the same factories.
I have a french door fridge. It says Amana on the outside and Maytag on the inside. It was made in IA.
I bought it because Consumer Reports gave it the highest marks. I have had no problems with it in about 5 years since purchase.
The reason I bought it was it was the ONLY french door fridge I could buy that was made in the US.
GE Mexico
Samsung S. Korea
LG S. Korea
Bosch Germany
I also recently bought a Kitchen Aid diswasher. It is made in the same factory as Whirpool. They just put a differnet name on it.
Also, do not buy from the big box store.
Buy from the local appliance dealer that actually services the machine if there is a problem later on. He may be your neighbor.
They can meet or beat the price the big box stores advertise most of the time. They are also more likey to tell you which machines have the service problems.
After all, when you have a problem that you can not fix, are you going to call Home Depot or Lowes to come out and fix it.
His point wasn't apt at the time (the Royal Navy got some of its best warships from France (!) whereas its domestic shipyards were beset with cronyism and corruption) but it might seem more apt in the high-tech modern age. It can indeed make sense to keep strategic production in-country, paying a tax for the privilege. For instance: it can make sense to maintain an ability to produce nuclear weapons, anti-missile lasers, stealth fighters and so forth.
It can also make no sense at all: for instance our UK Apache fleet cost literally twice as much as it would otherwise have done because Westland Helicopters got to carry out assembly in the UK. This was nice for WH shareholders but very bad for the taxpayer. We would have been able to get twice as many Apaches for our money. This was NOT a victory for strategic protection.
And don't me started on Eurofighter. We've got the most expensive fighters on earth, and we simply can't afford to fly them. There's no money left - another huge debacle for strategic protection.
So - no - *Smith is not correct about this*. There are some niche cases where strategic protection makes sense, but in general it leads to massive over-payments and bloated defense procurement.
Point 2: Adam is saying that where an internal tax exists, it might make sense to bung up a protective tariff to even the playing field.
There is of course a simpler and better solution, which is to remove the internal tax..
Of course Smith doesn't examine the industry-retardant effects of taxation in his Canons of Taxation: there was very little scope for tax-driven capital flight in the 18th century. If you wanted to invest in industry back then it was the UK or nothing, so I don't blame him for not considering the point. The first cotton mill only opened in the US three years before Smith's death.
Point 3: Adam is saying that tariffs can be put up in retaliation against foreign tariffs - with the eventual aim of getting the other guys to remove their tariffs.
This isn't the argument against tariffs that you apparently believe it to be. It's no different from saying 'we should bomb people when they bomb us, to get them to stop bombing us'. It's true, but it's not saying that bombing the other guy works out to a net plus.
Point 4: take tariffs off slowly. Here Smith acknowledges a need to *remove tariffs*, apparently recognizing that they are an arbitrary Government intervention which reduces the wealth of nations. Well, good for him.
In summary: Smith lived before the time when capital movement in support of industry routinely crossed national borders, and well before the modern welfare state and our modern levels of taxation. He has nothing to say about the effects of tariffs on industry - because he lived in a different world, a world without socialism.
Well, hope this was helpful.
Companies never ever pay taxes. When a company is taxed more it simply raises the price of it’s goods and services. The individual always ends up paying the tax in the end. By taxing companies politicians are just able to divert the blame to the companies.
I good example of this is gas prices. If the price of gas goes up the oil companies are the bad guy. If the price of gas goes up due to an increase in taxes on the oil companies, the oil companies are still the bad guys.
So making individuals pay more taxes is the way to go because they keep the politicians in check. Companies do not get to vote individuals do.
Sometimes they can not pass on all of that cost, in which case it is passed on to the workers in the form of lower wages or the owners in terms of lower profits.
But you are right, it is just a pass through, an inefficent pass through of the taxes.
And you are still wrong.
The tariff issue is more complex than that. The Founders evidently thought them good both for revenue and to help infant industry survive. Some industries are strategic and must be sustained for national defense.
Many nations have de facto tariffs in fees and delays in their customs facilities which make it impossible to sell mass quantities in their markets. Free trade only seems to work one way in the real world of international trade.
The free trade nation in a Mercantilist world is a sucker.
Sometimes they can not pass on all of that cost, in which case it is passed on to the workers in the form of lower wages or the owners in terms of lower profits.
But you are right, it is just a pass through, an inefficent pass through of the taxes.
Then the outside icemaker control unit, started rusting and dripped down the front of the Fridge. I swore I would just put up with this, and not buy another unit. Until, the Fridge part stopped cooling, over froze in the freezer. I would never Ever purchase another Maytag Refrig. Hopeing for better results with this KitchenAid, plain Jane unit.
I have a 25 yr old Whirlpool washer and dryer, hubby said to get a new one, NO and HELL NO, mine still works GREAT, never had a repairman out for either. But they were made when the workers actually had some pride in what they did, not much, but some, or didn't come to work DRUNK.
Yes: it is indeed more complex than that.
Tariffs forced those in the Southern States to buy goods from the infant industries of the North rather than allow them to buy the cheaper goods they preferred from Europe.
This tariff enslavement of the Southern states in the service of the North was a factor that led to the Civil War.
Tariffs are a form of slavery: why would you wish them upon a free people?
I recall my days in industry when we downsized because competitors were getting some of our share of the market or the economy going south, that the plant became more productive and continued in business. However, when profits increased we couldn't stand the good times, so we added people we didn't need, and did all kinds of nice but costly things and soon our competitors were beating us again, sales slumped and we downsized again. It seemed like a cycle for undisciplined industrial leaders.
95 percent of U.S. goods shipped to S. Korea will become duty-free within 5 years.Read it and weep, protectionists. Then read it again.
I should also mention subsidies: which are a form of tariff. Both tariffs and subsidies are a form of slavery.
For instance, every GM Volt, every Solyndra panel, every gallon of ethanol not-fuel - they come with a price tag which you, the American taxpayer picks up.
You are paying a coupon on these subsidized goods so that some Democrat can live large.
But hey, it’s not slavery if you say it isn’t.
So make tariffs small and temporary and dedicate the money to developing competitive advantages such as new automation technologies. Exporting these must be made illegal. We can't just give up. We have to restore our competitiveness somehow or move to the poor house. How would you do it?
It’s so nice of you to be concerned with us Yankees.
Gosh. Thanks I see the light.
I think I’ll buy a Jaguar. A good British car.
Tata for now.
They do incentivize domestic production, and companies will of course locate to the US as it is the second largest mkt in the world, they would still offshore profits of course but the idea that they would just not participate is simply illogical.
Reagan proved exactly this in the 80’s by using import quotas to incentivize japanese automakers to locate to the US.
[1rudeboy thinks ruefully of the excise tax paying for the Spanish-American War].
Exactly, Adam Smith was a smart man.
Or..*gosh* the company has to reduce it’s earnings outlook.
Shock! Horror! Fire!
Which is somewhat poor for the shareholders, thems the breaks.
As economists love to say “in the long run, it will all even out”
IE, enjoy the screwing, when wages are down to 3rd world levels, then it won’t matter as much...
U.S. corporations pay VAT there, S. Korean corporations pay income tax here (absent some sort of a tax treaty that I am not aware of). But we are talking about tariffs and duties.
Well, there are large differences in struture between the US and UK, meaning a company can easy avoid some of the mess of a heavily unionized workforce by simply locating to a State that does not have such a workforce.
In the UK, that is not possible of course, the US also has far more potential capacity then the UK meaning trained workers or raw materials are more abundant and more cheaply sourced.
Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.
Uhm, not they don’t, offshore companies typically transmit their earnings to Ireland or other tax havens and remove it from their domestic US books.
Got any numbers on that? LOL
Economists are to math as withdoctors are to the medical profession.
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