Labor Unions Demand Escalation Of Trade War With China, Ask Obama To Restrict Chinese Auto Part Imports
Because the last time the administration got involved in the car space the results were so positive (for the unions if not so much for creditors), it appears we may be approaching another episode where central planning will make the decisions in the US auto space. Only this time instead of creditors, the impaired party will be China. Reuters reports: "Midwestern U.S. lawmakers and union groups on Tuesday urged President Barack Obama to restrict imports of auto parts from China that they said benefited from massive illegal subsidies and threatened hundreds of thousands of American jobs. "We need to stand up to the bully on the block," U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, said, referring to Beijing. "The bully on the block continues to take our lunch money and we need to stop that," she said." Odd - China was not complaining when the Obama administration was providing massive subsidies (whether or not illegal remains to be seen - surely Holder is all over it) to the solar and other "green" industries. In other words, just like Solyndra and Ener1, who are merely the first of many artificially subsidized entities, provided such great if highly transitory results for US employment, let's recreate the experiment at the wholesale level, by implicit subsidies and while also angering America's biggest creditor. Something tells us this proposal has a definite probability of passing. In the meantime, central planning for everyone.
More on this brilliant foray into trade wars:
The push for the administration to bring a possible case at the World Trade Organization or begin a U.S. Commerce Department investigation that could lead to duties on Chinese-made auto parts came one week after Obama said he was creating a new Trade Enforcement Unit to crack down on unfair foreign trade practices in China and other countries around the world.
It could create further strains in the U.S.-China relationship as Obama is preparing to host Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, who is expected to be China's next leader, a the White House on Feb. 14.
"We must be aggressive on trade enforcement - especially as China ramps up subsidies in strategic industries like auto parts, said Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat.
"Today, we're providing the president with his first opportunity to deliver on the promise to guarantee a level playing field," said Scott Paul, president of the American Alliance for Manufacturing, whose members include the United Steelworkers union and steel companies.
The groups released studies prepared by the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute and the Stewart and Stewart law firm that cataloged Chinese government subsidies and practices that they said violated WTO rules and threatened jobs at many small- and medium-sized U.S. auto parts manufacturers.
"If these policies are not stopped, by the end of the decade China could seize 50 percent or more of our auto parts market, costing hundreds of thousands of American jobs," said Terrence Stewart, Stewart and Stewart's managing partner, which specializes in cases against allegedly unfair imports.
Last year, the United States ran a deficit of nearly $10 billion in auto parts trade with China.
Here's a thought: perhaps the US would run a surplus if it provided quality pieces at affordable prices that could compete with China-made products? As for the idiocty of the remainder, we will just watch it crash and burn as it is enacted, and has dire consequences on every other part of the global economy, as these same trade unions finally realize that Chimerica are actually joined at the hip, and that what is worse for China is n-fold worse for the US.
(9 votes)
»
- Login or register to post comments
- 6826 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
Good. Fuck China.
Phuk ewe PRC.
We should have done this years ago instead of bailing out the auto industry. It would have made the industry more competetive and at the same time would have kept the competition inside America.
2 problems here:
1) Junk made in China is just that: JUNK.
2) Unions increase prices to the point of no return, as union workers will not accept benefits, etc... being removed.
just like the rich refuse to pay 30% in Taxes like everyone else.
CIA Officer Explains New World Order's Demise
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K99LvfeWBoc&feature=related
If you don’t LOVE Robert D. Steele I will eat your and my shorts both!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_David_Steele
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/people.cfm?authorID=105
Parameters Quarterly
Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/hackers/interviews/steele.html
@ nope-1004
+ 1
Chinese bearings are (usually) junk, but they are cheap.
Your point No. 2 is correct. And Timken (the US bearing manufacturer) is among the worst crybabies re imports from Japan, China abd even Germany, France and the UK.
Timken has low market share in Peru because their bearings are too expensive. NO WAY their (automotive bearings anyway) are 25% better than Japanese as their higher prices would imply.
In all seriousness though, it's too late for anything but escalation. What you should have done, if we're going to be dealing in hypotheticals, is not have partnered with the Chinese in the first place. Too late, now you have to export your inflation to them before they can import their [wage] deflation to you. Good luck with all that.
actually lennon, we are just pissing off the chinese, who have a potential market of 1.3 billion plus people. as it is, american companies have a hard time getting their foot through the great wall, how do you think they will react with more free trade manipulation on our part???
china is working feverishly towards an internal consumption market. there will come a day when they wont need anything we provide. truth be told, they need africa and south america for raw commodities alot more than they need the u.s.
As it is China is the US 3rd export market.
Trade war?.......... like with money?........... Well..... that doesn't sound fun at all....... we wouldn't even have an excuse to build more tanks.
Let's not half ass this. Let's have an old fashioned war.
Yep. All that excess capacity needs to be scrubbed, just like it was in WWII.
Good, That way GM, still in business because my government bailed it out with my money, can still charge me $180 for a part that wouldn't have failed if it had been designed right in the first place. Heads they win, tails I lose.
The Unions won't get anything but an election year token stroke & tug.
Did they really believe that either of the two 'parties' in the U.S. were going to interfere with multinational corporate investment in the trillions building plants and facilities in China, so that they could use China as the factory for lower-cost-of-production cars, car parts, electronics and every other consumable good, now and for decades to come?
Do the brilliant leaders of the unions, who represent their union due-paying members best interests (/sarc), really think those massive GM andFord (and every other manufacturer and supplier in the world). etc. factories in multiple Chinese manufacturing zones are going to be shut down due to their wails and moans?
Aside from that, anyone having even a basic understanding as to how China has made it far easier to produce goods there than in the U.S., with giant zones, with every faciity, machine, engineering resource and any other tool or problem 'solver' on hand 24/7 (essentially being subsidized by the Chinese Government), understands why this continued investment won't be reversed absent some sort of major global event that turns into an actual war.
It was Bill Clinton that gave China Most Favored Nation Trade Status, after George W.'s father set the ball up on the tee for him.
What's a union member to do?
(I am not arguing for or against trade sanctions on China for purposes of this response. I'm just relaying the realities to those who may have missed economic and global trade history since the 1980s.)
Truth is... you can't fight and win this war while stirring another actual one again. America is out of sudden moves, can't afford them anymore. You need a nation of tacticians not war-brutes or you'll lose big time. Start here:
http://www.amazon.com/Art-War-Sun-Tzu/dp/0195014766/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&q...
Little Clean water... and no Oil..
China's issues come to a head sooner then later.
Export the trade unions to China. That will cook their goose.
Trade wars always end in disaster.
http://goldisking.blogspot.com/
China is currently 79 on the list of country's about to be phuked.
No, America is fucking you, stupid!
I think you are mixing up the US Empire, which is run by globalist bankers, with America. America only exists as an idea now.
And all the Ad Hom is getting ridiculous. At least have an arguement to go along with the name calling. If you need a reference to see how it is done, find Trav, he will learn you.
Bullshit.
Most of America would rather vote for Romney/Obama than Ron Paul. As far as I'm concerned, they can be lumped in with the bankers. If they're going to ignorant, they deserve the coming fallout.
I think you are mixing up the US Empire, which is run by globalist bankers, with America. America only exists as an idea now.
//////////////////////////////////
'America' is just a fable.
'America' is just the tale.
US of A has always been driven by US citizenism.
The ways of US citizens have not changed since 1776,July,4th.
The US of A is a product of globalism.
What did you want to say except you wanted to be first to post?
oh boy...I can see it already. Prep for the newly priced (at cost) $156,000 Ford Escort.
I'll wait for the more affordably priced Ford Fiesta at $100,000.
Tariffs are NOT central planning. Unless, of course, you the economy had many times more central planning the late 19th Century than it does now.
And I would be curious how anyone thinks that someone could make it on $2 a day here in the States.
BDIY says China is ahead of the game.
Again I might add...
Yes, do it. The faster trade war starts, the better.
Of course, making better quality cars than Chinese would also work but that is impossible alternative.
Sorry, but I happen to think that we Americans make quality products if given the chance. It sure would be nice to have a manufacturing base again.
They painful irony is that in current situation it is not possible.
Government subsidies = no incentive to work better, and no subsidies = costs more than in China.
Agree. Most of the "auto parts" that are the low end Chinese made stuff is so bad I would not put them on my enemies car.
pods
Might want to look a little closer-most of the parts you buy from the dealer (and what is installed on the car at the factory) are Chinese.
2010 chevy car tail light?Made in China.99 chevy pick up oil cooler lines?Made in China.et cetera et cetera............
I run a shop,and it would amaze you the very few parts made here (I buy as much as possible made here,but sometimes you have no choice).I refuse to install Chinese steering components-I will sell US made at cost instead.
It's too late now anyway-we should have been preventing this 20+ years ago.If only someone <cough>Ross Perot <cough> had debated the outcome wth Al Gore many years ago..........
Oh I agree. Source my parts on the internet. Not many made in USA. Some decent stuff I have found from Mexico. Actually posted down below about $8 Chinese tie-rod ends I saw. Did the front end on the minivan, and forgot to order the sway bar link kit online. Stopped by Advance and they only had one type. Cheap ass boots, impossible to torque without twisting. Nightmare. Guess they just cannot make margins with higher end stuff?
pods
Are you kidding me? Domestic automobiles are and have been pieces of garbage. I bought my last domestic 10 years ago and never again will I buy another one.
except for the high corporate taxes, onerous environmental laws, union featherbedding, and O YEAH--try building a factory without every local politician tossing up legal obstacles until you make payoffs that push your break even to the 23rd century.
Doomed.
One small correction ... the Federal Reserve is America's biggest creditor.
yeah, yeah, its China's fault...
its always someone else's fault when it comes to the great basket case of the "free world"...
bitch ass america...just can't stand being second best...
or, should i say third world...
Silver and Gold suckers..............
http://www.cnbc.com/id/46202656#ixzz1l448qC8o
S&P Warns of Cuts; Another US Downgrade Coming?Concerns over the size of United States debt reared their head once again as ratings agency Standard & Poor’s warned that health care costs for a number of highly-rated Group of 20 countries, including the U.S., could hurt growth prospects and harm their sovereign creditworthiness from the middle of this decade.
"Governments' fiscal burdens will increase significantly over the coming decade, with the highest deterioration in public finances likely to occur in Europe and other advanced G-20 economies, such as Japan and the U.S.," S&P said in a statement on Tuesday.
Can you say war?
"War is good for nothing" except for kick starting your failed consumer economy.
At this point it will need to be a serious kick ass war, the effects of the last 12 years of war are wearing off.
Like WW2 where everyone elses manufacturing was bombed into rubble?
America would need to put the unemployed 10% to work making bombs to get all that done.
StupiD, its not just for breakfast anymore!
Get them Chinese! How dare they interfere with the lifestyles of Obama voters! If the American taxpayers are all tapped out and can't afford to subsidize union jobs directly, why, then, they'll just have to support them indirectly, through higher prices.
There. Now that that's taken care of, lets go print some money and distribute it to the proles so they'll be able to afford the crappy "output" of the Obama voters.
GM should name their next car "The Excretion."
So we go to protect our manufacturers through trade policy like the Chinese have been doing for decades and somebody is crying foul? I say repeal the 16th Ammendment and raise money through tariffs!
While (taxpayer owned) GM just inked a deal with South Korea's Hyundai to supply $1 billion in parts...
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/31/us-skoreas-hyundai-idUSTRE80U0...
Yezz. Its jerbs jerbs jerbs, just not in the US.
Maybe the Chinese central planners have alternatively decided to not import any NA automobiles for they have sided with German automobile manufacturers instead (reoccurring trading theme) ... and all this propaganda is just a face saving effort on behalf of Government Motors/NA manufacturers who have also now stuffed every possible channel.
Pass the Sweet and Sour Shrimp........
Unionistas and scared scatless Dem's to Obama - Dance, bitch! LOL!
Yea this is what I want auto parts from china. How would you like taking a trip thru the Rockies with a set of brakes just rebuilt with chinese parts.
I actually do all the work on our cars and I can tell you, some of the stuff I see is downright scary.
You ain't livin until you are taking a high speed turn on an $8 Chinese tire- rod end!
pods
Let's just enact trade sanctions via the currency markets instead, where it's so much more polite.
Do I have to think of everything around here?
I dont know why all aren't writing checks to Trumka. Please turn us into the Disneyland unions built in Michigan....please I beg you...please!
Oh, you mean the ones that gave us the 5 day week and 8 hour day? Those unions?
Union employees get paid for 5 day weeks and 8 hour days. What they actually work...er, well that's not a number that you're gonna see.
Anyone who's scratched out a living as a self-made person, or worked in an entrepreneurial environment, doesn't know the meaning of a 40 hour work week. And no one twisted our arms to do it.
If they had stopped there history would see them as hero's. Course if Hitler had stopped with the economic improvements and not gone on to kill a few million Jews he would be viewed differently too.
But he didnt and neither did they.
Any other fairytails you want me to tell you the ending too?
Shrek cheats on Fiona in #8.
Stocks and bonds are in a holding pattern. Usually we would have seen a trigger pulled so the algos could have scalped investors. I wonder why not? Perhaps this next trigger is much bigger than a banking panic in Europe or America.
In other words, let the unions keep their pensions, benefits, and high labor costs at the expense of the American taxpayer.
Buick is one of the best selling cars in China.... or was.
Was in the U.S. too. 'bout 30 years ago.
My first car was 1979 Buick Century. I thought it was a solid car because it lasted me 65K miles. My Nissan now has 120k, and the engine only fails when it needs a new battery.
Buick is just another name for Opel these days.
A really bad and cut down Opel.
Charge a slave labor and environmental tariff on Chinese imports.
Yep.
What is this crap Tyler? "Here's a thought: perhaps the US would run a surplus if it provided quality pieces at affordable prices that could compete with China-made products?" Chinese workers at Foxconn make about $.70 an hour. At another company I know, the workers make about $200 to $300 a month. I think you don't know what you're talking about.
"We need to stand up to the bully on the block," U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, said, referring to Beijing. "The bully on the block continues to take our lunch money and we need to stop that," she said."
Yes China is the biggest bully on the block. Shut your pie hole Debbie.
C'mon, give a dumb bitch a break. Even if it's just because she had to get divorced, again, because her 2nd hubby got caught up in a prostitution ring.
Man, I wish the UP could break off from Troll-land. Her and Carl Lenin are big incentives to restart the "Blow Up The Bridge Committee."
The screeeeeeams will get louder as the economy wallows. I are so cornfused by the data coming out of late - recession, yet car sales picking up. Recession, yet employment keeps going up.
What does the end look like?
China's food Inflation accelerated to 9.1 per cent in December, up from November's 8.8 per cent. Food costs account for up to half of monthly spending for the poor.
http://shanghaiist.com/2012/01/31/mcdonalds_starbucks_and_pizza_hut_r.php
"Because the last time the administration got involved in the car space the results were so positive (for the unions if not so much for creditors)..."
So it sounds like you would rather have let GM go under?
Yes.
So it sounds like you would rather have let GM go under?
The gap had to be reconciled. Either slowly (Chinese water torture, no pun) or band-aid-like. Why is it that (almost) every other corporation has the right to default/go bankrupt? This isn't about producing quality, competitive cars (hasn't been for a while at Direct TV...er, GMAC...er GM, anyway) - it's about subsidizing voting employees.
Well,, we could take a page from the China book and subsidize all the "workers".
As to the submission that started this, China didn't "complain" becuase they can't IMAGINE that a country would NOT protect and grow their industry.
Pile of crap, weak at that.
So how the fuck is it that BMW, Mercedes, Toyota, VW, Nissan, et al can build cars here, repatriate the profits, and still compete, or beat, the GMs, Fords, and Chryslers (well, FIAT now, which should be in the above foreign group really)? Ah yes, their plants are placed in no-union states, with tax benefits from those states, to the benefit of the home-countries. How is it that the foreign car co's can eat our collective lunch while the US car co's sit back and get crushed (but for Ford, and here comes the answer...)? It's management you idiots! Build a better, cheaper car, duhhhhh... The auto industry was the foreshadowing of the US economy, just 40 years ago! Soon the Germans will own Europe, and then the US. I may still be alive when it happens. The Thousand Year Reich. Bormann Flight Capital. Just you wait...
"So it sounds like you would rather have let GM go under? "
And Chrysler twice already (1976 and 2008). Now, it combined with FIAT which is the only other company in the planet that is actually worst. So, Fix It Again Tony. Tony is a busy guy.
"Because the last time the administration got involved in the car space the results were so positive (for the unions if not so much for creditors)..."
So it sounds like you would rather have let GM go under?
Me and every other American. We have demonstrated and proved that we do not want GM cars.
Repeat- We do not want GM cars.
Americans do not buy these cars. The only "people" who "buy" these cars are .gov fleets, and the feds who drive these "work" cars buy lexus and beemers for their personal cars. Americans do not want their money going to this garbage company which makes crap cars. Evidently they are one of the first companies to eliminate the spare tire also. So since Americans do not want these crap cars and do not spend their money on these crap cars, the .gov steals the money out of their pockets to prop up the company and pay for the CEO personal jet flying about. So in the end, like the Trabant company before it, the people end up paying for the cars, but they don't get one. (not that they want one)
And for every troll, zombie and goon bashing Chinese products, can I have a personal waiver so I can buy a Chinese car please? Please? Please? If their quality is so bad, how come Americans line up in droves fist full of cash at Walmart to get Chinese gear? And if the quality is so bad- why do you outlaw and ban Chinese cars from import? Why not let them in and let them fail here like Fiat/Renault/GM? ("If" they are such crap)
Huzzah!
Auto's? They're so 40 years ago, why don't we start building vehicles to get us to that moon base already?
Central planning is the mouthpiece of the worst interest groups/lobbies in America that in actuality will destroy America in hopes of reviving America.
Back in the 80's I worked for GM and was a CAW member. The auto industry is a relic and needs to crash and burn and take the union with it. It didn't work then and it does not work today. How you can justify the hourly wage an assembly line worker gets along with all benefit costs is beyond me. Dinosaurs are extinct - this one just survived way past its best before date.
Most of the US economy is a relic. Factor out government money (both direct and indirect) and it's nothing but a stinking pile of dog shit.
How to defeat the strongest economy which has the strongest army in the world for free?
Give them cheap stuff, grow them lazy so they'll get fat and unwilling to build stuff themselves.
Once they don't have the capabilities, Look for their last reamining industries, give it away for free and tripple the prices for all the other stuff they can't build themselves.
We have a winner. The Chinese won the Cold War without firing a shot. Next takedown will be the US Dollar as the world's reserve/terms of trade currency. That will take 20+ more years but they're fine with that. All their central bankers did hard time on dealing desks in NYC and London...compared to the technocrats/pseudo-intellectuals/academics at the Fed who never had a real job in their lives...let alone played high-stakes poker.
The worst part is that the government has also been destroying the Technology industry. One of the last industries that the US has a copetitive advantage on. Everything internet related is under attack. Just kiss ass Suckerman is alive. Keep on posting your life away.
Why not pay the union folk in cars, specifically the ones they make. That'd solve the channel stuffing and perhaps provide some incentive to make something of value, too.
Finally, a break from the "free trade is the answer to everything" bullshit. China is able to undercut U.S. companies because it has: 1) no labor laws; 2) no tort system (if your kid burns to death when a Chinese toy explodes tough shit, caveat emptor); and 3) it has no environmental laws. It is not because China builds a better mousetrap. Free trade with China is suicide unless your goal is to obliterate your middle class, and increase the wealth of the oligarchs. Of course it's been working so well the last 40 years....
China is able to undercut U.S. companies because it has: no labor laws; 2) no tort system (if your kid burns to death when a Chinese toy explodes tough shit, caveat emptor); and 3) it has no environmental laws.
Because those things work so well in Europe and the U.S.? How many folks in the U.S. Congress are direct financial beneficiaries of a (warped) tort system? How those labor laws working when you've got what remaining industry there is hamstrung by unions, plus an immigrant worker problem? And the environmental laws - what % of those are actually useful vs. usury?
Yes, let's all live in a world controlled by oligarchs where children labor in the mines and we all drink toxic sludge and like it. Your team has been selling this bullshit to the American population for 40 years and they bought it. Now we are seeing the end result. Tell me again how an American company with plants here can compete with a company that has plants in a country that has no labor laws, no envirornmental laws, and no tort system? Telling me that our system is corrupt and that some people abuse their rights is not a valid answer. China is not a democracy and it is a state controlled openly fascist entity that is kicking our ass because it is effectively a giant slave ship rowing faster than us. Is that the answer in your book to what America should become to compete?
So you're saying the solution to a nonexistent problem of everyone in America drinking toxic sludge and being forced into child labor is to adopt the socialist system of a lot of the countries where those problems with environmental abuse and lack of property right enforcement are widespread. Is anyone on the internet a bigger government shill than you? Why don't you go to North Korea and apply for a job sucking dear leader's cock you fucking commie pinko.
Ah yes, the only two options are a Randian ideal of no government on the one hand, and communism on other. Anyone who challenges your Randian ideal is a commie. Well reasoned and brilliantly played. There is no middle ground where we have roads and schools and a space program and nuclear power and everything else evil government made possible in our modern society. Let the oligarchs have the keys.
Rand was a minarchist, not an anarchist.
For someone whose entire schtick consists of frothing at the mouth against a single deceased writer, one would think you'd have a better grasp on her ideas.