American auto makers have decided it’s more profitable to export jobs than vehicles and other industries have been following suit. At the same time, the Republican Party is here to make sure the situation doesn’t change.
It wouldn’t be surprising if you didn’t catch it in the U.S. media, but Ford announced this week that it’s building a new plant in China that will cost $500 million and will produce 400,000 engines annually, starting in 2013.
All told, Ford has exported a little over 100,000 jobs to foreign shores while its U.S. workforce has been trimmed to 58,300. China, which also has two large Ford assembly plants, is far from the only foreign country involved. Two days ago Ford’s global boss told Sky News that Ford’s 15,000 UK workers were “the best in the world,” and he pledged to keep his plants there. Other European activity includes the Focus being built in Germany and the Fiesta in Spain and Germany.
And General Motors - whose new CEO said last week that its $50 billion bailout package would take several years to be repaid to the U.S. taxpayers - has exported over 130,000 jobs to 33 foreign countries. In the meantime, according to its own press releases, its U.S. activity over approximately the past year has involved cutting 900 dealers, closing 13 plants and terminating 13,000 positions, leaving a U.S. workforce of 68,500 employees.
In an effort to give carmakers and other corporations an incentive to stop outsourcing jobs and increase their production capabilities in the United States, the president and the Democratic leadership has been ushering legislation through Congress that would end tax deductions for companies that move jobs overseas and provide tax breaks for companies that hire new U.S. workers. It would also weaken an incredibly inappropriate tax feature that currently allows companies to defer taxes on income earned abroad.
Given the appalling conditions along Main Street, the legislation sounds like a natural economic savior but, as it turns out, it won’t have a chance to get off the ground.
On Tuesday, Senate Republicans blocked the bill.
So, in our system of circular logic, taxpayers who are suffering job losses and insecurity in the workplace will now have to continue subsidizing companies that are sending jobs overseas - thereby increasing their job losses and insecurity in the workplace.
Dave McGill, News Correspondent
Dave’s column, "The Contrarian," generally published every Friday, to Gather Essential News and other groups will sometimes present a contrary view to various aspects of the news, or an alternate take on the conventional wisdom of the day. It will also often appear on other days of the week
Dave has been a senior officer of an eastern insurance company, involved in economic projections and investment strategy, president of a Midwestern mortgage banking company, and a financial consultant in Southern California, serving clients in the field of commercial real estate development.
You can find all of Dave’s "the contrarian" columns at: http://gather.com/thecontrarian. Keep up with Dave’s other postings and Gather activity by joining his Gather network at: http://atadaskew.gather.com. You’ll find Dave and other News correspondents, plus celebrity content and plenty of news experts at: news.gather.com.
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Comments: 66
We might as well start squinting as we try to look into the future because we are going to end up being second-class Chinese citizens.
It's really clear that the people working and pushing forward this idiotic agenda are souless pustules that hope they can benefit from selling out America for a buck, because they can wave the flag and talk red, white and blue, but they never understood or believed what this country is supposed to be about.
Applied Materials is moving its newest research facilty to China to make solar panels. China has the most engineers and the biggest systems. General Electric is building their wind turbines in China. General Motors is building electric cars there. China just sucks up our companies who are dumb enough to think they can gain from trusting them.
When we were bailing out GM and Chrysler, both corporations sales in China was up 67% and sold more cars in China than the US.
China wants jobs to be in China, not America, so we give tax cuts to corporations and the rich, and are Americans just not smart enough to see where that investment is going, and for who it is going to pay off?
And the really rotten thing is that investors here in American begrudge paying an taxes to the country stupid enough to give them the opportunity to invest in China.
We pay the Chinese people not to riot while China gives us trinkets in place of our jobs and takes us over from the inside.
Most of these stats are from the new book "Aftershock: the Next Economy and America's Future" by Robert Reich. This books tells it like it is, analyzes and puts in historical context how things got this way, and forecasts the future, as well as details plans for fixing what the problems are as elegantly and logically as I have ever read in a book.
Face it folks, unless a critical mass of Americans can come together and agree enough to put a stop to this bullshit that has been going on, this country is over and the lights will go out faster than we can imagine. Reich's book is a good starting point.
The outsourcing manufacturing jobs is a tad more complicated than your post leads us to believe. Many countries will not buy our products unless we manufacture a certain percentage of them in their country. Reasons are obvious. Also, I believe the repubs fell into a trap and they knew it going into the vote. The progressives believe in redistribution of wealth on a global scale. Obama has said many times that salvation does not come from the individual but from the collective - in other words collective salvation. Sending jobs overseas or south of the border fits nicely with that mand set. One must remember that the letter "I" in SEIU stands for international.
I am falling asleep - time to turn them off
LOL
So much more to write
really, I have been following Obama since a year before the election and I have never heard anything close to this.
Another Obama hack job here?
This is just more false GOP rhetoric. Despite our economic troubles Americans still buy a bigger share of the worlds exports than even the next 50 countries combined. No one in their right mind would even suggest such a thing. Competition for American dollars is fierce my friend. If anyone cut off their exports to the U.S., a 100 countries would line up to replace them in a heart beat.
Next - I should have been more specific about off sets. Let's look at the airplane building business which is one of our major exports. When we want to sell say about 100 billion dollars woth of planes to an air transportation company in some country, they "require" that a certain percentage of the plane be built in that country. In other word, they want to keep some of that money in their own country. BTW this no big secret. Expand your knowledge and do a little digging. Also, Airbus, Boeing's main competitor, manufactures many parts for their planes in the US. It is a sweetener for us to buy their planes. Remeber, our econ0my doesn't operate like the rest of the world.
Us not buying their products doesn't fit in with what I wrote - I don't know where you are coming from with that. I agree with what you said about American dollars. Our biggst export IS American dollars. We either buy stuff with dollars or we just give them away (foreign aid, loans, etc.).
>> we manufacture a certain percentage of them in their country"
>
> This is just more false GOP rhetoric.
Devin, that is hardly rhetoric. China and lots of other
countries does not want to lose jobs and create dissension
among their people like we apparently are willing to do.
Even the US demanded in the 80s that Japan and Mercedes
start to manufacture some of their cars in America so we did
not hemorrhage jobs like we were doing. It worked well for
the American car industry as well in terms of undercutting the
unions though. The corporations always seem able to turn
these policies to their advantage.
The main point is that other countries are far more protectionist
of their people and their economy. We tend to be more
protectionist of our rich and corporations. After all we have
let huge amounts of businesses basically relocate internationally
and pay no taxes to America.
> away (foreign aid, loans, etc.).
You were making sense until this. We do not give dollars away,
we give loans that we often know will be defaulted on and then
in lieu of refinancing or forgiving, we demand that our industry
be given private ownership of some sector of their economy.
Read anything by John Perkins to get a close up view of how this
works and what happens when the US is refused.
What I find amazing is that the people of South American have
more guts and more courage and more willpower to stand up to
the abuses by American corporations than our own people have,
and the people of South America have it much worse, they have
been murdered and have had their governments taken over by
US military action for trying to stand up to us.
Oliver Stone is coming out with a movie about South America
fairly soon where a lot of the leaders down there talk about
America and how they have experienced us first hand.
Saudi Arabia and China are teaching our own government, business and elite the power of the dark side and how easy it is to enslave and demoralize their own people and create an all powerful aristocracy. We are seeing a scrambling of top Americans to be in that aristocracy while they can, while the rest of us fairly know nothing about what is going on.
"The Eastern Hemisphere is a market that is more heavily weighted toward oil exploration and production opportunities and growing our business here will bring more balance to Halliburton's overall portfolio," Lesar said.
BLAME the environmentalists!
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/12/business/main2558620.shtml
Globalism was and is going to happen whether we like it or not.
The Republicans have made our bed for us at the direction of Big Money. The only reason that I don't emphasize the Democrats is because they were mostly out of office. Whoever was in government would have done big money's bidding. "He who pays the piper calls the tune" works so obviously in government.
The problem with globalism is the heavy handed way it has been implemented in the United States with no safeguards to international people and no help for our own people in terms of benefits, displacement training, etc.
The US has used globalization as a way to enslave and dehumanize our working class, and it had better stop. If we want it to stop WE are responsible for bringing that about, and believing GOP propaganda about the economy and capitalism is one of the first things we have to get over.
Peter, you have embraced Capitalism and are enjoying the benefits. However, your logic and intellect supports Liberalism and tolerates the moral degradation, socialistic agenda and collectivism of solutions from Liberal "group think"! You’re an enigma!
Malaysia. Vietnam. Indonesia.
No clue what I'm talking about, right, Arthur?
Now, yes, I do have a clue about the countries you mentioned and a few more, however I would like a link to data you imply you have or a reputable article defining what those countries aredoing economically for their citizens and whom is paying for it. This is, in my opinion, a very serious topic for discussion. We need to get all of the out to see the light of day. The US population needs to see and realize what is going on in this world. At present, they don't realize that all of this affects them and their families and their families future.
Help us here. David.
Nora, I wish they would ethat question. Anothr question is, I think, is what type of economic system will we live in? Will a majority of countries be able to force us to do something we do not wish to do because we are the minority country? Etc. Etc.
Do we have to answer to unelected politicians (at least not by us)?
I'll readdress - Devin give us a few more details of the global governance model. What are the benefits to us?
We actually give incentives to companies to move jobs overseas? Whose idea was that?
Taxes 100 years ago were just a tiny fraction of the current levels.
It seems like as a nation we've taken our once successful economy for granted and have wondered why it's falling apart as we beat it up with countless blows by government hammers.
The problem is that you have reversed the sense of this effect. Because business - and mostly finance - has set up this artificial government within a government, they are going to wait to see if they can get back the stranglehold they have on the country before doing anything.
This is not about fear of Democrats regulating them, they are just waiting to see if the people will go back to sleep and they can return to their criminal ways that are so much more highly profitable than really producing and working.
Crap, another grammar error slipped through. Amending the original comment: This administration has to stop perpetuating those things.
Bruce, I'm sure some of that could be true about some of Wall Street, but smaller businesses especially are facing uncertainty- from government, not just Democrats. If I were to invest, the United States would be one of the last places I would put my money. The environment is simply becoming to hostile for honest business.
Big business generally has little right to b*tch, but what about the rest of us- the 99% or so that are not part of that elite corporate-political gang? We're suffering from the regulation most while Wall Street writes it and kill's it's competition.
Solution, regional grids system of the world, let's move on to a world-wide federation. Nations is nostalgic thinking. One World Order.
I actually had not heard this and appreciate reading your piece on it. It's interesting that after being saved from the brink of disaster by the U.S. that the company decides to move jobs overseas. When is Congress going to start penalizing companies that do this?
Are those engines for domestic consumption or are they being shipped to the US for use in American cars.
Ignoring the problems on Main Street will inevitably come back to bite corporate America in the backside. It's only a matter of time...
Barack Obama's Presidential Appointments, Bills and Policies.
http://obamasupporters.gather.com/
Your article is now our latest FEATURED post.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Most U.S. and foreign corporations doing business in the United States avoid paying any federal income taxes, despite trillions of dollars worth of sales, a government study released on Tuesday said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1249465620080812
Since, apparently, work is performed not for the sake of consumption, but simply for the sake of doing work, and since there are only a fixed, definite number of jobs to be done, this proposal is the only consistent, rational policy.
Each advancement in technology and know-how which preceded the enormous increases in the productivity of labor during the 20th Century and since, has necessarily implied a loss of jobs in some capacity or another. As an industrial steel painter, I can tell you that the invention of the spray pump has enabled one painter to do the work that it once required 10 or more to do in the same amount of time; and the advent of the sandblast unit has made it so that one blaster can remove in 8 hours what it once took a dozen workers perhaps a week to remove. And this is just two small examples from one industry; imagine how many jobs have been destroyed all across the economy by innovations exponentially more ingenius than the spray gun and blast pot!
But that's just the start. The division of labor has been responsible for more job losses than anything imaginable. With vast networks of interpersonal exchange (which the enemies of the working man call "markets"), the baker began outsourcing production of clothes to the tailor, and the tailor outsourcing the production of bread to the baker. Social cooperation under the division of labor means that we can specialize in producing a particular commodity (or play even a minute role in assisting in the production of a particular commodity) for a market, and with the value we've created then exchange for goods and services with others who have done the same. Can anyone even begin to comprehend the sheer enormity of the number of jobs that have been destroyed by this development? How much less time does each of us have to spend working to satisfy our wants and needs now, than if we had to produce everything we currently own all by ourselves?
Each of us "hemorrhages jobs" by engaging in this sort of rotten bourgeois activity. If it is inherently bad for us as a society to outsource jobs to foreign countries, then it is equally as bad for us as states to purchase goods made in other states, as communities to purchase goods made in other communities, and as households to consume goods produced outside of our own household.
Lets get to writing to our congressmen and senators on this immediately, folks. Now that the logic is clear, it is a moral imperative that we demand policy consistent with what we know to be right.
It would also weaken an incredibly inappropriate tax feature that currently allows companies to defer taxes on income earned abroad. Sure. We're one of the few nations who even tax this revenue. Even many European nations don't touch this.
Let's keep pushing jobs away, pitiful tax CREDITS won't offset the ever increasing burdens US businesses face from foreign competitors. Neither will heads in the sand government politicians.