GM to pay more than $400 million in worker bonuses

NigelTufnel said:
A law passed in 1964 imposing a tariff on light trucks does not require foreign manufacturers to build passenger cars (or trucks for that matter) in the United States to sell them in the US market.
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I suppose that argument could be made......they had the right to lose market share because of higher costs.....
 
Mott the Hoople said:
Hardly. There is no such law. They not only build their plants here in the US (mainly in the south and midwest were land and labor are cheaper) for the reasons I stated but they also do so because they can take advantage of the cartels they have in their home countries (which violate Sherman anti-trust laws in the USA) in which they agree to raise prices by a set amount across the board and for all members of the cartel. They do this to offset their fixed costs such as egnineering and tool making for new models which gives them a huge competative advantage over US automakers for which this practice is illegal.
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You are wrong. There is such a law, well not exactly as I stated but definitely it is protectionism. Basically what they do is build the cars here to get the domestic tag and avoid tariffs. This is protectionism at work.
 
Damocles said:
You are wrong. There is such a law, well not exactly as I stated but definitely it is protectionism. Basically what they do is build the cars here to get the domestic tag and avoid tariffs. This is protectionism at work.
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Passenger cars are not subject to the tariff, only trucks. And there are work-arounds that would allow for foreign importers to manufacture most of the trucks abroad and modify them in the United States to avoid the tariffs if they really wished.

Basically, your stated "only reason" is wrong. Just admit it.
 
Look at data from the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers, and it's easy to understand why: More than half of all vehicles sold by foreign automakers in the United States are made in the U.S. Those manufacturing plants and research centers employ 92,700 Americans with a total payroll of $6.3 billion.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/01/06/foreign-automaker-towns-forbeslife-cx_he_0106cars.html

There are various incentives from state governments mentioned in the article, and lower labor costs compared to Detroit are mentioned, but there's no reference to any laws requiring a company to build cars in the USA.
 
PostmodernProphet said:
the answer was obvious, TS already gave it.....
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I just don't seem the same level of indignation on here about banking bonuses, indeed Yurt said that to even suggest it marked you out as left wing. I just find it odd that you are left wing if you object to Wall Street bonuses but right wing if you do the same with GM bonuses!

Last year Wall Street paid out over $145 billion in bonuses and even the banks that have repaid their loans only made money because the cost of borrowing is so ridiculously cheap. That and much of their competition was wiped out by the banking crisis.
 
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sure there are tards on the right here who spew venom about unions.
But there a lot of RICH conservatives here who were against all the bailouts from the beginning.
I see it as more of a class issue than a right vs left. The UBER RICH hamptons yatch club types got bailed out thru fear tactics.
One could easily make the case that it would have been a regional recession/depression limited to the NY yatch club. A lot of what caused the deepness of the recession was the needless spreading of fear to get the trillion passed.
 
Topspin said:
sure there are tards on the right here who spew venom about unions.
But there a lot of RICH conservatives here who were against all the bailouts from the beginning.
I see it as more of a class issue than a right vs left. The UBER RICH hamptons yatch club types got bailed out thru fear tactics.
One could easily make the case that it would have been a regional recession/depression limited to the NY yatch club. A lot of what caused the deepness of the recession was the needless spreading of fear to get the trillion passed.
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The trouble with that explanation is it doesn't account for the virtual worldwide blowback that occurred as a result.
 
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