Honda is my employer's second-largest customer in terms of sales dollars. That means they put more food on my plate than two of the three American car companies. Kinda kills your theory, eh?

While the domestics moved production to Canada, Mexico, and abroad during the last decade and scouring the globe for cheaper parts, who was building new plants in the US? Who increased their domestically-sourced content, putting untold tens of thousands of people to work at suppliers?

 

There is actually more "healthcare" in a US-made car then "steel". On average there is $1200 worth of healthcare costs for employees built into each US made vehicles by GM, Ford, Chrysler while there is only about $500 worth of raw steel used.

Large corps only makeup 1/4 of all business conducted in the US so inreality 3/4 of the US economy run by small and medium sized businesses. Often large corps love new restrictive legislation (that was intended to put restrictions on large corps no less)because it oftenhinders and puts more restrictions on small companies and creates more hurdles and expenses for them to overcome. In the real world more laws actually stiffles new innovation and competition since it makes a business more expensive to operate and often companies have to merge and share resources and become larger in order to stay in business.

I agree the some Corp Execs get carried away with themselves but those public Corps are accountable to shareholders and those shareholders can sell the stock when management goes in the wrong direction.

Consumers are in contempt since they have denied their own purchasing power and personal responsibility for exporting jobs for decades while they conveniently blame and scape-goat Corporations.

The day consumers take responsibility for their own actions and realize that ethics and morality can apply in their everyday purchases and stop pretending as if they are mindless and helpless brainwashed-projects that have no free-will then we will see things improve for the better.

 

Eric Bryant has a point about the domestic car companies building factories in mexico and canada.

I hope that the next camaro/gto is built here in america.

The government should put a tariff on foreign steel. If the EU doesn't like it, they can kiss our american asses. American cars should be built with american steel.

 

Thank you - you've joined the ever-so-small minority that understand this point.

Not a bad idea in principle, but the American steel companies didn't get hurt just by the foreign competition - they were managed into the ground. A coworker who sits not 10 feet from me spent his last 4 years working in Gary, IN at National Steel, and he's got some stories that'll make a sane person go crazy.

My concern with the tariffs is that while they provide some temporary shelter for the industry, they may only drag out the endgame a bit longer. I think what we're seeing now is the long-term consequences of severe short-term thinking.

 

(yawns) Ah...no. You may live in this example, but lets not speak for everyone. If you want to promote imports, do it on a Honda message board. I, for one, am proud of the American based General Motors. Yes, GM, as well as the other domestic companies have plants outside the US. But don't try convince anyone that Honda, or any other import, is more domestic than the REAL domestics. Don't forget that Honda, Toyota, Nissan, etc, have the large majority of their plants in their own country. Not to mention, they are based in their own country. This equals an Import.

 

So this board is reserved for only rosy comments about domestics, and GM in particular? Musta missed that section of the user's agreement when I signed up.

So what am I supposed to do when I see GM and Ford taking an ever-increasing amount of sourced parts overseas, at the same time that component sales to the transplants are booming? What about all the tooling that the domestics are taking overseas? What about the massive capital investments that the transplants are making in this country?

Sorry, buddy, but for those of us that don't live in a GM showroom, things are not nearly as cut-and-dried as locating the geographical location of the corporate headquarters on the map.

 

What are you supposed to do? Well, promoting the sale of imports won't help the situation, will it? Hey, believe me Eric, I don't want to see the domestic auto makers move more tooling and production out of the country any more than you do. What I am saying is that this pattern will only continue the more Americans become less proud and buy imports rather than a product from their own country. I guess we will have to agree to disagree.

 

Let me just highlight this part of the discussion...

Quote:

Originally posted by johnsocal
There is actually more "healthcare" in a US-made car then "steel". On average there is $1200 worth of healthcare costs for employees built into each US made vehicles by GM, Ford, Chrysler while there is only about $500 worth of raw steel used.

Large corps only makeup 1/4 of all business conducted in the US so inreality 3/4 of the US economy run by small and medium sized businesses. Often large corps love new restrictive legislation (that was intended to put restrictions on large corps no less)because it oftenhinders and puts more restrictions on small companies and creates more hurdles and expenses for them to overcome. In the real world more laws actually stiffles new innovation and competition since it makes a business more expensive to operate and often companies have to merge and share resources and become larger in order to stay in business.

I agree the some Corp Execs get carried away with themselves but those public Corps are accountable to shareholders and those shareholders can sell the stock when management goes in the wrong direction.

Consumers are in contempt since they have denied their own purchasing power and personal responsibility for exporting jobs for decades while they conveniently blame and scape-goat Corporations.

The day consumers take responsibility for their own actions and realize that ethics and morality can apply in their everyday purchases and stop pretending as if they are mindless and helpless brainwashed-projects that have no free-will then we will see things improve for the better.

...ahhh there we go....