Why buy American made?

[Cesiumsponge]

Cesiumsponge, Because of current policies that reflect those from the past.

Completely understandable. Hopefully history won't repeat itself.

"America and Americans have have made it so incredibly expensive to do business in America that it's cheaper to send it all overseas"

But Toyota and Honda can build vehicles in the U.S. and make money? Is it magic? What do they know that the U.S. companies don't? There are lots of examples out there.

Heck, Rolls Royce is building a 2nd plant south of Richmond in Prince George County.

"The 90,000 square feet AAMF facility will produce turbine blades and nozzle guide vanes for Rolls-Royce engines, including the Trent 900, Trent 1000 and Trent XWB engines."

Magic? Hardly. Labor costs and cost of doing business are a large concern.

Labor costs via unions are a huge burden to American auto companies. Look what UAW and poor investment and management did to our industry. Toyota, Nissan, and Honda plants in America aren't tied down by unions, despite UAW efforts over the last several decades. They treat their employees well and willingly give out benefits and large bonuses as incentives to keep employees. Assuming eventual unionization in the future, you'd still have to give them several generations of incremental union milking like Detroit, and when they start amassing a huge retired workforce that starts drawing on those sweet pension funds, we'll be singing a different tune. Chrysler and GM couldn't even pay their bills without government walfare. FYI, the Toyota Camry won it's fourth award in a row as "Most American-Made Car" on Cars.com’s American-Made Index comparison chart. In fact, four of the five most American-made cars are Japanese brands.

Have you seen the cost of business in Europe? While it has similar corporate tax rates as America, there are a lot more labor restrictions and other miscellaneous taxes. Europe offshores it's job's all over the world too. Germany offshores jobs to Eastern Europe and India...even the USA. I'm sure our Teutonic friends are arguing on their deutschland forums about Americans taking good German jobs from Volkswagen.

If a company in Pennsylvania making American socks is struggling against competition, it has one of two choices:

• do nothing, dig a grave and hopping right on in if it's products price itself out of the target demographic
• moving production elsewhere to lower operational costs

Which alternative do you suggest? A company going bust employs absolutely no one. A company that offshores will fire some employees, which is a damn shame, but people will find jobs again. Having to fire part of a company's workforce is better than having to lay everyone off. Look what happened to Hostess.

This brings us to another facet that hasn't been discussed yet: serving regional markets abroad. It's why Mercedes and Volkswagen have auto plants in the USA. It's why WE offshore entire production facilities to other countries to serve as a hubs to service markets abroad. Ford and GM have manufacturing facilities in Europe, run with Europeans to reflect European demand and tastes, and markets European vehicles for a European market. These vehicles are not sold in America. Do you really think we could design and market a better product to Europeans with an American factory in America run by American marketing, pay to freight them over by boat and pay all sorts of additional import taxes for a finished product, AND keep the product competitive price-wise to the competition? That's why we sell Holden, Opel, Wuling, and Vauxhalls abroad instead of making them here in a GM plant.

If you want to look at a country that doesn't offshore or outsource at all, you're free to take a look at North Korea and their economy.

 

[osteodoc08]

I own far more "American" guns than
Imported. Ruger, Kimber, Remington, Smith and Wesson, mostly. 1 walther. 1 Sig.

 

[WinThePennant]

One persons says unions create expensive labor. Another persons says unions create strong demand because the workers are well capitalized.

Why is it that we see well capitalized companies as a a good thing, but well capitalized workers are viewed as "too expensive" and "burdensome?"

 

[Vaarok]

Because a worker is supposed to create 3x their labor cost in value-added production to their employer, and unions do their very best to squeeze as much of the profits out of the employer and redistribute it to the workforce.

Ask not what you can do for the company, demand all the company can do for you.

And honestly, working with a lot of immigrant labor, US labor sucks.

Most modern stuff made in the USA has adopted least-cost least-quality methods to remain competitive, and I've been increasingly buying eastern-european products.

I have no allegiance to anything but quality for my money.

 

[JohnBT]

"Magic? Hardly. Labor costs and cost of doing business are a large concern.

Labor costs via unions are a huge burden to American auto companies."


I thought we were discussing offshoring by American companies. I asked how Toyota and Honda can build cars here, but American companies claim they have to offshore to survive.

I don't see that American union made cars fit in this discussion. Maybe if they offshored the production or learned to cut wages and benefits they might finally figure it all out and stop repeatedly dancing on the edge of insolvency.