Why We Should Buy Vehicles From American OWNED Companies
U.S. auto jobs disappear
New research suggests that for every 10 jobs eliminated by Detroit's Big Three
auto makers, just one job is created in the U.S. by foreign car companies.
Click this link to see how foreign vehicle companies are destroying our American
economy: http://www.levelfieldinstitute.org/
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At Witz’ End: What’s an American Car?
Where it’s assembled is irrelevant.
by Gary Witzenburg (2007-02-27)
So what is an "American" car?
If it is simply one built in America, as most foreign makers and U.S. media would have you believe, then vehicles built in Canada are Canadian, those assembled in Mexico are Mexican and Porsches built in Finland are Finnish.
But we know intuitively that's not the case. And yet in this global age of autos, some people insist on sticking to the idea of purely "American," or "German," or "Japanese" cars - when in many cases, today's vehicles are polyglots, products of the same global industry.
But that doesn't change the political nature of the question.
Say General Motors decides to build Chevrolets in Japan . If the cars are competitive (could happen), that might make sense to escape expensive barriers the Japanese government puts in the way of imported vehicles to protect its own automakers.
So GM buys some land outside Nagoya , builds a plant and hires some local workers and managers to run it. Say it builds a GM Powertrain plant next door, hires more locals and - since it would be cheaper to source parts and components locally than import them - sources most of them with Japanese suppliers. Say it starts cranking out enough appealing and carefully assembled cars to put a meaningful dent in the Japanese market.
This would be good for the local economy in and around Nagoya. However, assuming that the Japanese new-car market was not growing, it would displace sales of cars built by weaker Japanese makers and hurt employment elsewhere in Japan. And as those companies' sales and shares declined, the jobs displaced would not be limited to factories; a lot of better, higher-paying headquarters jobs would be lost as well, most of them in and around Tokyo.
Would the Japanese people and media see this displacement, and net loss, as okay because "home-built Chevrolets are as Japanese as anything from our own makers"? Would they see profits from increasingly popular Japan-built Chevy's going back eastward across the Pacific as okay for their own (currently struggling) economy? What do you think?
Protection or barrier?
Let's carry this scenario a few steps further: Say GM's success with its first Japanese plant and its growing penetration of the Japanese market leads it to build more plants there. Say Ford and Chrysler Group follow, and their American suppliers are encouraged to build parts plants there to support them…and to win business away from Japanese suppliers.
Japan 's highly protective government, of course, would never allow any of this to happen. And even if it did, few highly nationalistic Japanese would buy American-brand vehicles at the expense of their own coveted makers regardless of where they were built.
But say, just for a moment, that they would. Would those Japan-built cars and trucks - most designed and developed in North America -- qualify as "Japanese?" Would those parts built in American-owned Japanese plants be considered "Japanese?" Would the assembly and sales of those vehicles in Japan be perceived as good for Japanese jobs and the Japanese economy? Could their U.S. makers get away with advertising them as such? Would the Japanese media endorse and recommend them as such? What do you think?
So why has exactly this scenario evolved in the U.S.A., where nearly every Japanese automaker and some Europeans and Koreans assemble cars and trucks for the American market and beyond? Because, once import vehicle makers began achieving serious penetration of this market during the fuel-crisis 1970s, our government essentially forced them into it by imposing quotas on imported vehicles. Because our domestic makers during the 1980s and '90s were not especially worthy of protection. Because enlightened off-shore makers saw huge PR and some business benefits in building vehicles here despite our much higher business costs. And because our governments (federal and especially state and local) and most media encouraged, enabled and welcomed them here as job "creators."
Job creation - or job death
What they did not see, or chose to ignore, is that "creation" of a few thousand plant jobs here and there would eventually destroy many more and better jobs elsewhere. So while some (mostly southern) states continue to battle each other with big incentives to attract new foreign-maker plants to gain two or three thousand jobs, other (mostly northern) states lose tens of thousands. While import companies will "create" about 3000 U.S. jobs in 2007, raising their total to 106,000, U.S. automakers will lose nearly 43,000 this year, falling to about 378,000, according to Jim Doyle, president of the Washington, DC-based Level Field Institute, which tracks and reports auto-company U.S. employment.
Doyle further predicts that U.S. industry-job losses will total some 95,000 (from 2005 employment) by 2010, and even then the three U.S.-based companies will employ 71 percent of all American auto workers - four times more per car sold than Hyundai, 2.5 times more than Toyota, and nearly twice as many as Honda. "Reporters tend to focus on plant jobs and miss the headquarters jobs," Doyle asserts.
"Foreign automakers spend millions around the country promoting their new plants and U.S. investment," he says. "We welcome their investment, but Americans should know that each Ford, GM, or Chrysler Group purchase supports nearly 2.5 times the number of U.S. jobs of foreign automakers, on average."
What's more American?
Some say a Japanese car bolted together in America with a fair amount of U.S. content is more "American" than a U.S.-brand car assembled in Canada or Mexico with some foreign-sourced parts. Nonsense! Ask yourself, again, where are the bulk of the better jobs and where do the profits go? DaimlerChrysler's Chrysler Group, by the way, still qualifies as "American" because it is an entire self-contained car company based in America and employing tens of thousands of Americans at all levels that happens to be owned by a German company, just as Opel is a self-contained German company owned by General Motors.
"Toyota spends huge sums of money promoting the idea that they 'support' 368,000 U.S. jobs," Doyle says, "but those include supplier, dealership and other peripheral jobs. Using the same multiplier, GM supports 1.9 million U.S. jobs and Ford 1.2 million. Toyota also says it builds here most of the vehicles it sells here. That may be its eventual intent, but Automotive News reported that 48 percent of the vehicles Toyota sold here in 2006 were imported.
"Is it more important to the U.S. economy for someone to buy a Ford Fusion, although it's built in Mexico, from a company that employs 105,000 Americans," Doyle asks, "than a Honda built in Ohio from a company that employs 27,000? Domestic makers also purchase nearly 80 percent of the parts made here, and domestic vehicles average 76 percent U.S. content vs. 48 percent for U.S.-built imports. That represents billions of dollars in spending."
No, an "American" car or truck is one built by a U.S.-based company that supports primarily U.S. jobs and the U.S. economy, regardless of its parts content and especially its point of assembly.
And should Americans buy "American" out of patriotism. No, but they should carefully consider U.S.-brand vehicles - now that most are competitive or better in design, engineering, quality, and fuel economy - out of their own economic self-interest. Because whatever business they are in, every time "Detroit" and its struggling U.S. auto suppliers shed another 10,000, or 20,000, or 30,000 American workers, that multiplies to hundreds of thousands who can no longer afford whatever goods or services their own employers sell.
Think about it.
http://www.thecarconnection.com/?article=11981
Originally Published in The Lakeshore Guardian
Another Senior
Moment - May 17, 2007
By Jim Sponseller
Most of the time,
this column takes on a light-hearted attitude. Today, it's
a heavy-hearted
one.
It’s heavy-hearted
because I’m both disappointed and worried about the way
that so many car
buyers are ignoring the products of America’s automobile
manufacturers.
Yes, I know all the arguments pro and con. The reasoning for
buying from
foreign manufacturers abound in letters to the editors and
columns by auto
writers in our newspapers and magazines.
Up front, I should
admit that I worked for two U.S. auto manufacturers in
addition to
several decades in the newspaper trade. The first was
Kaiser-Frazier,
back in 1953. I had worked there only six months when they
locked the doors
of the huge plant in Ypsilanti because of the lack of
sales. I later had
a stint with General Motors that lasted longer. I
personally believe
that most of the models produced by American carmakers
are just as good
as those offered by foreign companies. Many are even
better.
But besides the
fact that I have been completely satisfied with the cars
produced by
American-based companies, one of my main reasons for never
considering the
purchase of a foreign vehicle is quite different than anyone
else you may know.
Some may even call it stupid and antiquated reasoning.
Here it is:
Not until I went
to work for the Fisher Body Division of GM did I realize
what an impact our
auto companies had in the defense of our country. I had
heard of Detroit
being called the “Arsenal of Democracy” but really didn’t
appreciate the
meaning of it until I thumbed through the historical files of
Fisher Body. One
of my many jobs was to keep them up to date. Fisher Body
was the division
that produced the bodies for nearly every GM model since
they started in
1908 until the division was merged into other units in 1984.
While the “Arsenal
of Democracy” tag wasn’t applied until World War II,
Fisher Body’s
involvement started during the first World War. Soon after the
U.S. entered the
war in 1917, the Army granted a contract to Fisher Body for
the largest order
every written in this country for airplanes. Although
Fisher Body had
never before made a single airplane, it produced the first
one 48 days after
taking over a government-owned building near downtown
Detroit (later
used to assemble Cadillac car bodies.) It eventually reached
40 a day. By the
time the rather short war for the U.S. ended, the plant had
assembled 2,005
planes.
Within months
after Pearl Harbor, Detroit’s auto industry shut down its
assembly lines and
converted to the tools of war. Ford Motor was soon
turning out such
items as aircraft and tank engines and gun mounts. It was
most famous for
its vast Willow Run plant where 8,685 B-24 bombers were
produced. Chrysler
converted its assembly lines to tanks, Army trucks,
anti-aircraft guns
and assemblies for B-25 medium bombers. Detroit's Hudson
plant made
sub-assemblies for the B-29 bomber and marine engines. Packard
produced engines
for fighter planes and PT boats. The hundreds of automotive
supplier plants
all became involved.
I don’t have a
record of the items produced by the score of other General
Motors divisions
but I discovered that its Fisher Body Division alone
contributed a
remarkable assortment of material to the war effort. Twelve
Fisher plants were
assigned for use by other GM divisions and other
companies such as
Boeing and Firestone. The remaining 13 plants, mostly in
Michigan, tallied
up production numbers such as these:
§ Aircraft
assemblies, such as wings and tail sections, were
produced for 5,214
Mitchell B-25 bombers.
§ In Grand
Blanc, 17,213 tanks rolled off the assembly line, most of
them the famous
General Sherman.
§ Over in
the Grand Rapids plant, the assembly line produced 2,359
anti-aircraft guns
and later 550 huge 5-inch guns for the Navy's ships. They
also shipped out
over a half million high-explosive 155mm shell casings,
plus aircraft and
tank components.
§ In
plants of the Ternstedt Division of Fisher Body, a total of
293,100 intricate
gyro aircraft instruments were manufactured. The division
also produced 1.2
million parts used in fighter plane cannons.
§ Five
Fisher east coast plants were merged into the GM Eastern
Aircraft Division
and was the source of three-quarters of the nearly 18,000
Wildcat and
Avenger planes produced for the Navy carriers.
§ In
Cleveland, a 400 acre plant was built for assembly of wings,
tail sections,
ailerons, flaps, tail gun turrets and other parts for the
huge B-29 bombers
as well as parts for tanks and Naval guns.
§ Also
pouring out of these facilities, along with plants in Flint,
Lansing, Detroit
and Pontiac, were such items as 200,000 rocket fins, 86,000
droppable fuel
tanks, 1,500 cowlings for Navy fighters and 9,352 huge
crankcases for
diesel engines to power Navy ships and submarines.
Today, dozens of
auto plants are closing. So are hundreds of automotive
supplier plants.
One can only wonder how we could ever gear up to fill
wartime production
should the need ever arise. Call up Japan, Germany or
China?
All of this
wartime production stuff may sound boring and trivial to most
Americans now, but
back in the 1940's it was a life and death matter for our
troops and for the
defense of our country. Back then, when I was among the
millions of GI's
serving overseas, I had no idea of how vital the efforts
were of our auto
plants and the men and women working there in achieving
final victory.
Today I do.
You can call me a
sentimental old geezer still living in the past, but I'll
just keep on
buying and loving the cars that best support our country's
economy today and
played a huge role in keeping it free over 60 years ago.
Oh yes, I almost
forgot. During those war years, 14,761 Fisher body
employees left
their jobs and families to serve in the armed forces. And 288
gave their lives.
Submitted by: bop41@cox.net
April 10, 2007 1:19 PM ET
Japan Car Makers Bring Work Home (Toyota, Nissan and Honda making more vehicles in Japan)
TOKYO (AP) - At a time when Detroit's "Big Three" are closing plants and slashing jobs to revive their ailing business, their Japanese counterparts are busy opening plants in Japan for the first time in decades.
That's because there's strong demand for fuel-efficient small cars such as the Toyota Yaris and Honda Fit -- all of which are made in Japan -- as well as luxury models and hybrids, most of which are made here.
But there's also a shift away from the conventional wisdom that automakers are best off making cars in the same region where they sell.
Toyota, Nissan and Honda realize that the roots of their success lie in the management and production strategies developed and honed at home -- from outstanding quality control to their extensive supplier networks -- and that expanding in Japan may be the smartest way to meet demand for certain types of vehicles.
"It doesn't make sense to produce everything abroad," said Tsuyoshi Mochimaru, auto analyst with Deutsche Securities in Tokyo. "The idea is that rethinking quality begins in Japan."
Among the recent boosts in production here:
_ Honda Motor Co. is planning its first plant opening in Japan in 30 years. The new car-assembly and engine plants will be running by 2010, creating 2,200 jobs in Japan.
_ Toyota Motor Corp. is adding a new line at a plant in southwestern Japan to double production of engines for luxury models. The engine plant, which opened in 2005, marked Toyota's first plant opening in Japan in about 20 years; the new line, starting in 2008, will add 500 jobs in Japan.
_ Nissan Motor Co. completed a second engine facility last year (in Japan) to make engines for luxury cars and other models. It's expanding another engine plant in Yokohama, southwest of Tokyo.
Thierry Viadieu, a Nissan executive who has overseen alliances, said the plant openings in Japan mark a new stage of growth from earlier decades when the main goal was simpler: Get out of Japan to produce cars where they're being sold.
These days, he said, multinational manufacturers need to be sophisticated in their production strategies, coordinating output among their far-flung plants, amid increasingly intense competition.
Nissan, for example, imports all of its Infiniti luxury models sold in North America from Japan -- and for now, that makes sense, said Nissan Chief Operating Officer Toshiyuki Shiga.
"We don't start out with the idea that we need plants in Japan," Shiga said. "Each plant taking up the challenge leads to Nissan's overall competitiveness."
Kazuo Aoki, general manager at the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers, an organization that promotes technology, said the fundamentals of ensuring quality are based in Japan, which boasts top-notch parts suppliers and steelmakers.
"It's still best to produce domestically those cars with extra value," Aoki said. "But what you want to avoid is friction with nations, where the cars get exported."
In the 1980s and 1990s, Japanese automakers busily set up plants abroad, including North America, to cut costs and blunt the "Japan-bashing" among some Americans who blamed them for the loss of U.S. jobs.
Some U.S. legislators have revived complaints about Japan's success at the expense of American manufacturers. United States Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., who represents thousands of Detroit-based auto workers, has said that the Japanese have an unfair edge from a weak yen, which makes it easier to underprice American rivals.
Such complaints have struck a sensitive nerve for some Americans worried about the fates of U.S. auto companies, which are slashing jobs and shuttering plants.
General Motors Corp. lost $10.4 billion in 2005 but underwent massive restructuring and trimmed its losses to $2 billion in 2006. Ford Motor Co. lost $12.7 billion last year, while DaimlerChrysler has decided to put up money-losing Chrysler for sale.
Toyota is steadily encroaching on their home turf. Autodata Corp.'s figures for March gave Toyota a 16 percent of the U.S. market, behind GM, with 22 percent, and Ford, with 17 percent.
Toyota is now exporting nearly half the vehicles it sells from Japan. Last year, that percentage was 46 percent, up from about 38 percent in 2005 because of a surge in U.S. demand and the inability of U.S. factories to keep up with demand.
One of Toyota's hot cars, the Prius hybrid, which switches between a gasoline engine and an electric motor to deliver as much as 60 miles per gallon, is made only in Japan.
Analysts say the recent production boom in Japan is also a reflection of how Japanese automakers have dispersed production -- small cars and high-end models in Japan, pickup trucks in Thailand, and bigger trucks in the U.S. -- so strong local demand, labor costs, tax laws and other factors make that place the best choice.
The Japanese have much at stake in maintaining the legacy of quality production methods and management philosophies in Japan, said Anand Sharma, manufacturing expert and co-founder of TBM Consulting Group.
"They have to keep that spirit alive, and they have to have some of that production there so that spirit doesn't fade away," Sharma said.
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.aspx?Feed=AP&Date=20070410&ID=6727344&Symbol=GM
This new study should open every Americans Eyes..........Wake Up American's!
Auto Jobs Disappearing
For every 10 jobs lost in the U.S. by one of the big three American automakers, only one job is created by a foreign automaker opening a plant in the US. Click link below to see how foreign vehicle companies are destroying our American economy:
http://www.levelfieldinstitute.org/
http://www.overthehillcarpeople.com/why_we_should_buy_vehicles_from.htm
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