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There are a lot of items made by Americans that are similar in price to products overseas, but the profit margins are not as great. They could make the iphone here but then they would not make 500% profit either.
Meanwhile, a lot of the items made overseas are inferior in quality and cheap to make so the execs and wall street charge the same price and pocket a larger sum of other peoples money.
The quality of products Carrier will pop out will deteriorate in quality.
The same thing that happened to Craftsman Tools which used to be one of the halls mark products of American Made before they were manufactured in China. Now Craftsman is junk.
Fortunately there is still Snap-On which is good quality American Made Tools.
All Snap-On branded tool products are made in the USA, with the exception of two lines of tool storage made in Canada. Anything else not 100% made in the USA are labeled as Blue-Point. In addition to the plants listed below, there are other plants in Murphy, NC, Carson City, NV, Crystal Lake, IL, Milwaukee, WI, and Robesonia, PA.
Oh, yeah, Snap-On, that's a great example. Who, besides people who turn wrenches for a living can afford or would be willing to spend $500 on 14.4V Lithium Drill? You could buy 2 different kinds of 20V DeWalt cordless drills and 2 5 amp lithium batteries for that.
German and Japanese manufacturing does just fine with higher wages than the US. What do we have that they don't? TERRIBLE ONE SIDED TRADE AGREEMENTS.
I have done a lot of research about differences between manufacturing in the U.S. and in Germany or Europe in general. Here are some of my observations:
I don't think that trade agreements are a major reason for the development. Obviously there is free trade within the EU. But it's completely uncommon for German manufacturers to shut down larger factories in Germany and move the operations to Poland, Romania or Bulgaria. The vast majority of German manufacturing businesses are family owned and operated. Even very large ones. Those companies are strongly rooted to the city or region they were founded. And their most important asset is the highly skilled workforce. They have put a lot of effort and money into the training. Apprenticeships takes normally 3 years in Germany. They also need the proximity to a vocational college that supports by teaching the needed skills.
The manufacturing industry is to be held in high esteem by the general public. Working in manufacturing isn't considered as lower class. And by my observations most factories in Germany seems to look brighter, the working place looks nicer. Many factories in the U.S. are quite untidy inside. I have seen a factory for metal works with about 100 employees, that used residential furnitures for storing business documents and screws. Very unprofessional.
In the U.S. it's very often the case that the HQ with the management and sales operations are located in a fancy business building in a nice business park, whereas the production facilities are located in not so nice areas, and the production facilities mostly don't look inviting. It's not so common that the management has contact to the production workers on a daily basis. If you view websites of medium sized manufacturing companies in the U.S. You can find informations about the history, but not that much about the locations, and the employees are rarely mentioned. It's also uncommon to find information about the number of employees. Probably because this number fluctuates much stronger than in German manufacturing companies. In Germany it's common that the local newspaper constantly reports about events in local manufacturing companies. For example a class has visited the furniture factory. A machinery factory has installed a new miling machine. They report about the final examinations of the apprentices or about honored employees for staying 40 years with the company.
The degree of automation is much higher in German factories. The U.S. has compared to most other developed countries a very low degree of automation. Not sure why, maybe they seem to prefer to invest in share buybacks. A lower degree of automation makes it easier to move the operation to a low wage country.
Factories in Germany are normally build exactly to the specification that is needed to produce a certain range of products. That is often different in the U.S., where it's for example not uncommon for a plastic manufaturer to buy or lease a facility that was formerly used for producing textiles or furnitures. I have seen this in NC very often. The production in such facilities can not be so efficient as in facilities that were build exactly to the needed specifications.
it's astonishing, but the prices for domestic made products in the U.S. are often very high. It's strange, because the labor costs are slightly lower, energy costs are far lower. But for example building materials at Home Depot are very expensive. Or paper products or plastic products like trash bags. The prices for such products are strange. I have never found a satisfying answer for those price differences.
Many medium sized manufacturer only deliver the North American market. It's probably difficult for them to export their products to Europe, because of different design preferences. It seems easier to export contemporary designed European products to the U.S. than exporting American products with this traditional? American design to Europe. I don't know how I should describe the American design. For example the design of the products from Carrier looks strange and it would be difficult to export them to Europe, even if we would use air conditioning. Many medium sized manufacturers in the U.S. don't have a website or only a very poor looking one. Pretty strange in an internet affine country like the U.S.
During the last recession many U.S. manufaturers mothballed some of their production facilities and laid off all the employees of those factilities. A few years later they reopened some of those facilities and recruit new employees. Pretty unthinkable in Germany. It's much more difficult to lay off the workforce, and it would lead to unmotivated employees.
And there is a difference in business ethics. There are quite a few examples of American companies that have bought medium sized German production companies. But short they have bought the company they have moved the operation to countries with lower wages. A good example is Colgate, they have bought a well known German manufacturer of high-end toothpaste, a few years later, they have closed the factory in Germany and moved the production to a already existing Colgate facility in Poland. An even better example is the American company Whitesell. They bought a struggling German company with 4 manufacturing facilities which produced screws for the automotive industry. Main customers were companies like BMW or Audi. The first thing that the new American owner did was doubling the prices. They knew that it was impossible for the car manufacturers to find promptly replacements for the screws from other suppliers. The car companies had to pay those through the nose prices. After one year the 4 screw factories had lost all customers. The American company closed them and laid off all employees. They bought the German company with the intention to make as much profits as possible, with absolutely no empathy for the employees. If you want to lose manufacturing jobs, sell the businesses to American companies American corporations have the reputation for absolutely don't caring about their employees. It's all about short term profits to please investors. The reputation of American companies is not so good over here.
Overall the manufacturing industry in the U.S. isn't doing so badly. In the last 6 years the manufacturing industry has added about 900,000 employees (from 11,460,000 in 01/2010 to 12,356,000 in 01/2016). But it don't have recovered to the 14,210,000 from 01/2006.
In Germany the last recession don't had a significant effect on the number of employees in manufacturing. In shrunk in 2009 by about 400,000. But employment has recovered completely: 7,228,000 in 2014 vs. 6,925,000 in 2006.
But the employment figures between the U.S. and Germany aren't comparable. The counting method in the U.S. makes much more sense than the one that is used in Germany. For example the employees at the Adidas HQ in Herzogenaurach in Bavaria are considered as manufaturing employees. But they don't produce shoes there. About 3,000 employees for management, sales operations, design, advertising. Or almost all salespersons in bakery shops are considered as manufacturing employment, because they are employed by the bakery company, but only a small fraction of all employees are working in the production facility. The number of manufacturing employment in Germany is completely overestimated. The German statistic is in this field utterly useless.
Maybe you guys should grab some tissues or something.
And who brought us this Globalization of our countries and where was the peoples input on it?
You know that Constitution thing for the people, by the people and to the people?
It was all done in secret via Bilderberg and CFR Groups hid from the main stream media.
The attendees consist of the Heads of the Largest Corporations and Banks along with their puppet politicians.
This is their NWO spoken of by many presidents and politicians.
Global Corporate Fascism where the shots are called by the wealthy elite and everyone else is supposed to shut up and take it.
Quote:
We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. … It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now much more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.
You sir are not Pro American, but a Globalist like the person above.
That is where the line is drawn.
Not Democrats and Republicans but Globalists vs Americans and I'd love to see that go viral where presidential candidates are labeled as Globalists or Pro American.
" Meanwhile, Germany finds a way to keep their high paying manufacturing work"
Do you mean like the Mercedes and BMW plants in the U.S.
And this:
"New generation of German SUVs made in USA
With today's third generation of the ML, you'd be hard-pressed to tell that it was built anywhere but in Germany. In fact, if you buy one of these anywhere in the world, including in Germany, it was built at the Alabama plant.
Yes, Mercedes-Benz exports cars from the United States so does BMW. In the world economy, auto companies have found it easy and cost effective to set up shop anywhere in the world."
Another thing that DesertDetroiter is missing is that Germany has a whole underclass of full time workers paid so little that they need government handouts as Germany doesn't have a true minimum wage. Poverty is on the rise in Germany.
Quote:
But hidden behind the so-called German economic miracle is an underclass of low-paid employees whose incomes have benefited little from the country’s stability and in fact have shrunk in real terms over the last decade, according to recent data.
And because of government policies intended to keep wages low to discourage outsourcing and encourage skills training, the incomes of these workers are not likely to rise anytime soon.
His life is like one of those jokes “with good news and bad news”, says Mr Pavalache, whose name has been changed to protect his identity. The good news is that he is in Germany, “the bad news is that life is no better than in Romania”.
Mr Pavalache is but one of a vast underclass of low-paid workers – proportionately, the biggest such sector in western Europe – who represent the underside of Germany’s admired economic success.
And the end result will be products that are affordable in emerging nations.
US labor is just too expensive when you want to peddle your product globally.
United Steelworkers said 1300 of these jobs were members who make an average of $20- 21/ hour. These jobs pay $5-6/ HR in Carrier's Monterrey, Mexico plant.
This does not include negotiated benefits ( exceeded ACA minimum requirements), tuition reimbursement, retirement plans, payroll taxes and compliance with US labor laws and so on. Then add on the tariffs imposed by other countries who import Carrier products from the US where no such bilateral tariffs exist as they do with Mexico.
Carrier has 80 manufacturing facilities of which 28 ( before this announcement) are based in the US. They established their Monterrey, Mexico facility about 25-30 years ago, depending on source. That Mexico maintains the most free trade agreements with the rest of the world means Mexico exports are not subject to tariffs as they would be from the US.
The company claims most of their suppliers are based in Mexico. Since 1992 Carrier has closed 6 US plants, not including this intended closure. NAFTA was signed by Bush 1 in 1991, subject to Congress approval that followed during the Clinton administration in 1994.
It's a curious thing to read posters who trend anti - union and anti free trade agreements pounce on this particular issue.
Last edited by middle-aged mom; 02-13-2016 at 10:35 AM..
It should have been required that All potential trade partners should adopt a Constitution like ours where it is For the People, By the People and To the People.
If the Bilderberg and CFR meetings would have been publicaly held, The For the People in the Constitution would never have allowed what they did.
Just like the TPP negotiations should have been held publicly for all affected parties to have a say.
The workers not only did not have a say in the TPP but did not even know about it before it was well underway.
Capitalism is the VOLUNTARY exchange of goods, services and labor.
There was no voluntary acceptance of these Trade Pacts by all members
It is Global Fascism plain and simple by the top wealthy elite and their puppet politicians
I didn't realize President Obama was CEO, CFO or on the board of Carrier or if he had any say so in the dealings of American corporations. But thanks regardless, for the right wing nut website you posted.
Deny, deny, deny. Typical Leftist, fails to acknowledge that Obama's policies HURT business. If companies could make a profit here in the U.S., they would have no reason to leave. But we have the highest corporate tax rate in the world, we are talking about forcing a $15/hr min. wage on businesses ... and then there is Obamacare.
We can't expect business to stay here when we punish them for making a profit, and burden them with regulations.
You might want to read, "Atlas Shrugged." It's all in the book.
Wonder why Japanese SUVs are made in US plants? The US imposes a 25% tariff on Japanese SUVs imported to the US. It goes away under TPP. Goodbye jobs!
Japan initially came to the US to build cars and trucks because they had a quota on what they could import. The vehicles made in the US didn't count against their quota.
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American corporations have the reputation for absolutely don't caring about their employees. It's all about short term profits to please investors. The reputation of American companies is not so good over here. 
