Originally Posted by Garden Toad
IMO they don't realy need us as customers either. China is the customer they are intersted in. They are creating a middle class to buy their product. This economic crisis may have come a little bit earlier than they expected, but their plan will happen.
The American consumer is the engine that drive the world's economy. China may be the customer that the international corporations lust after, but China has a stronger manufacturing base than the USA and I doubt that the Chinese will let the Westerners exploit them again.
Originally Posted by Garden Toad
I worked at Allison Transmission. It was one of the few (maybe last) American union company that was making them a lot of money. They sold it. They wanted all American factories running in the red. Management there would tell us that the future of their products is not in the US. They would show us a slide show of vehicles with their transmissins and the signs in the backgrounds were all foreign. GM didn't sell their Allison plant in Hungery. They will probably import a few cars to the US.
Through a combination of tax policies and trade "agreements," the US government encouraged US corps to move production out of the country. This didn't happen overnight, but rather began in in the 70's (probably earlier). For example, most US corps were relying on 50's technologies with a lot of patches, while the international corps had state of the art tech. This "degrading" has only accelerated since the 70's. Why could the internationals invest in the latest modern equipment and not the home based US corps? What inane tax policies encouraged CEO's to go off-shore when previously it was in their interest to reinvest in the US, i.e. before the big bonuses and stock options? The US Government even gave tax incentives to move off shore. Why?