It wouldn’t be devastating if you read the room and made AFFORDABLE ANYTHING. Why do you think your own company couldn’t keep the $20k Maverick in stock for years? Why do you think your $100k Lightning didn’t sell well?
Make affordable, decent vehicles, and you won’t have to worry about overseas competition.
This is backwards. Capitalism is the disruption of free markets to create extraordinary profits for some and higher costs for most. Ford is doing Capitalism. What Capitalists don’t want are free markets.
People definitely do not understand that free markets and capitalism are different things.
It’s intentional, like the conflation of capitalism and democracy. It doesn’t make sense if any thought is put to it but that doesn’t happen enough.
Capitalism refers to economic systems were economic decisions are made by private, rather than public, actors.
The free market is a didactic model of a market with no barriers and no information imbalance.
Capitalism is where an ownership class undercompensates labor and pockets the spoils.
That’s a basically inevitable consequence of capitalism, but it’s not part of the definition.
Capitalism is to broad of a term to say it’s different.
Subforms of it may differ (i.e. to my knowledge there is no free market capitalism, although at this point likely better than what especially USA does have…). I’d say free market capitalism is the purest form of it though.
The reality is unfortunately worse (e.g. fossilized energy is still substituted, lobby is much too strong etc. regulations at this point do more damage than good).
And I say all of this as a communist…
The exact same thing they said about japanese-made cars in the 70s and in both cases they were right because american cars are trash.
I mean the CEO of Ford said it was humbling when he traveled to China to see what they were doing. Then he imported a Xiaomi SU7 to Michigan apparently so they could “study” it. The U.S. called that reverse engineering anytime China did such when I was growing up.
IIRC, some executive at Ford imported a Chinese EV and prefers it over their own cars, says he won’t give it up.
That’s how captive the US is as an auto market. You think that guy is going to stop lobbying to prevent the cars he sees as cheaper and better from competing against his product?
I guess i dont understand the loyalty, if i was that guy id go to the chinese and be their main importer. Fuck ford their cars are plainly inferior, but jim farley is a free man and he can just call the chinese up and tell them he’ll be the ceo of xiaomi USA and bring in their superior cars. That’s how competition is supposed to work!
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
That’s what i mean, leave ford and drive them under with the chinese cars, make more money that way but it’s not all about money, it’s about them having more power over us.
It’s the same CEO, Jim Farley. He knows American manufacturing is smoked cause they can’t keep relying on F150s forever.
Especially when the current F150 isn’t desirable. Every truck guy I know of wants old trucks with less tech and longer beds.
Exactly, Ford thinks the avg American still wants these massive trucks when that is gradually not the case anymore. Hell small trucks are actually starting to make waves again, and its why people are looking at the Slate truck and Ford itself with their new EV platform, their first vehicle on that platform will be a small truck. They botched the F-150 Lightning and now they’re scrambling.
How the tables have turned.
If you look at history from the 60s to 2000s, America has a history of blaming another country for “stealing”, then creating laws to slow them down only to adopt it because Americans can’t build it as well.
America then reclaimed some market value with technology in the 2000s. But we’re also at the mercy of the hardware.
I think America is banking on AI heavily, and other countries will do it cheaper (thanks to hardware, so called “stealing”, and having better power supplies). America is reaching its peak and going into free fall.
Agreed. Also, I want an SU7 so bad!
They’ve all lost foreign markets, no one wants American cars (usually not even made in America) so they’ll bribe our government so we have to buy them.
The wealthy can afford luxury imports.
The problem is the whole bailout culture, if existing companies can’t fail, new ones can’t replace them. Innovaters are forced out or bought up and diluted.
And eventually that means they can’t compete with foreign companies who weren’t hamstrung like this.
(usually not even made in America)
I’ve a wonderful car that was made in the US.
Its a Nissan.
Well yeah Japanese cars are made in the US and Canada. American cars are made in Mexico
The silverado was made in London, ON for a while. So was the Geo Metro, which was a japanese car with an american nameplate being built in canada.
I had an F150 made in Kansas city, and I wondered how much of it was manufactured outside of the US.
Wow, a 32% american truck!
I tried to find that info for my current car, and it was assembled in Smyna, TN but I wansn’t able to find where the parts were made.
because america is trash.
FTFY.
When they want to move manufacturing or people lose their jobs … these guys are all “this is just business”.
There’s plenty of competition in the US auto market, both from US, Japanese and European brands.
The difference is these cars are either made in the US or in countries with similar enough wages. Even cars made in mexico are required to have a $16 minimum wage as part of USMCA.
China is on a different level and allowing them to sell cars here without restrictions would cause a race to the bottom for wages in the auto sector, pushing back a lot of wins the UAW has gotten recently.
If they want to sell cars here they should get the same deal as mexico, require a minimum wage and labor standards.
Why would cars be different from phones and other electronics?
Didn’t say they were, almost all products these days are made by the exploitation of cheap labor in the third world.
Only difference is there still exists a manufacturing capacity to produce cars here that we can preserve instead of letting it die at the alter of globalization.
Other than us crazies on the left, I don’t remember anyone giving a fuck when industries were being obliterated in the global south because of WTO rules. All I remember is stories about competitive advantage, English cloth and Portuguese wine.
Ironic that Ford initially had to fight a ‘car mafia’ that he didn’t want to pay their fee on every car he sold. Ford was trying to make sure workers were able to afford his cars for cheap and he couldn’t do that if he had to pay the extra money.
He just went ahead and started selling his cars and fought them in court and won. Now his company is using the courts in order to stifle competition that wants to sell cheaper cars to the workers.
Once again proving that corporations have no beliefs apart from “Make more money.”
The Ford that has moved a bunch of their manufacturing to Mexico after carving out a tariff exemption from vehicles manufactured there?
Devastating… like having Dump’s policies close your manufacturing locations down and have to layoff all the workers? That kind of devastation?
Its because they don’t actually want free markets. They want captive markets in a corrupt system that they can influence. The last thing want is to be forced to make a decent product at an affordable price
If a manufacturer without labor laws competes with a manufacturer with labor laws it’s just not a fair fight
Are you referring to the US as the country without labor rights?
- China does not allow at-will employment
- Non-compete agreements in China are extremely limited and rarely applied to anyone below senior management
- Wages and overtime are (theoretically) more strict than the US
- China has paid vacation time that increases through years of employment regardless of company, more public holidays, marriage leave, parental leave, bereavement leave, and more
- Discrimination and harassment must be proactively prevented in Chinese workplaces (though US workers are more aggressive in pursuing legal rights)
- Chinese workers earn a pension, along with several types of social insurances
- Workplace health and safety enforcement is increasing in China, as opposed to weakening enforcement in the US
- Severance pay is required on most instances of termination in China (exceptions for performance and conduct exist)
Fundamentally it all comes down to wages, US workers can’t compete with Chinese workers who will do the same job for far less.
Even on the benefits side all of what you listed above and more is common for auto workers in the US because they have an independent union, and even the workers who are not in the union get the same benefits as the manufacturers compete for workers. Meanwhile independent unions are not allowed in China so they’re at the mercy of the employers and the CCP. Granted the CCP does seem to care about workers more then the US government, neither care nearly as much as the UAW.
That’s not wrong, just incomplete. Who wouldn’t be willing to do the same job for far less when they could have the same standard of living for far less? The cost of living is reportedly anywhere from 40-75% less expensive.
America is nuts.
America has modern day slavery and we have states that are squishing the child labor laws.
Not to mention many folks who retire in America will be destitute because there is no social safety net.
Disgusting to hear about elders living in cars. It really sucks and to be honest me and my whole family are only a few paychecks away from losing everything. All the while expenses are increasing much fast than our income. We are starting to consider desperate ideas like making our own bread instead of buying it just to save money. Things are getting progressively more bonkers.
Which of those countries has effective labor laws?
Was this the fat dude in an episode of house who was like totally happy being fat and insisted that his disease had nothing to do with his weight?
It’s Brendan Fraser in the movie The Whale
The irony is: the original theory of capitalism (in contrast with the clusterfuck that we have now) was based on the idea that competition breeds innovation - because those who didn’t innovate would go out of business due to being surpassed by the others.
And China is kinda steamrolling US in a lot of markets right now.
They have subsidize the shit out of their industry by keeping their citizens capital tied up in their banking, housing and stock market. It is hard to get capital out of China now and only the very wealthy can pull it off.
So yes if the government took a good chunk of the interest or revenues you’d make from your investments yes you can have the same subsidized industries.
In their defense they are also willing to let bad companies go under which is something the US hasn’t done since the 90s.
That’s kind of missing the forest for the trees
They have more than two times the population of the EU and US combined, and the manufacturing capacity for basically the rest of the world.
They have enough population so that whenever there’s a new tech/infrastructure to spin up, they’ll do it internally and then come out internationally with a finished & field-tested version of that product.
They also have more PHDs, research and patents than anywhere else in the world, integrated in their industrial ecosystem. That’s like a silicon valley but for basically every field of manufature, research etc.
And to address your first paragraph: Yes, if instead of value extraction for shareholders, which is literally capitalism, we reinvested all of that cash back into the economy as subsidies, we would also be thriving. That’s not a diss on China, that’s a failure on the US/EU.
China still calls itself “communist with Chinese characteristics”. They quite openly gave their companies strategic goals to fulfill.
It’s all the dorks thinking they could get hold of that sweet big market if only they gave China enough concessions. And there it was always only for the bosses and owners to participate in the windfall, employees be damned. They were played big time and payed themselves huge bonuses in the mean time for selling us out.
Mostly in the areas of custom fabs, general manufacturing and not being run by fucking idiots.
I don’t work in manufacturing, in work for a giant popular retail company.
I swear to Christ, I have zero clue how it has survived under the gross incompetence of our leadership. I have never witnessed such stupidity in all my life.
These guys are beyond the pale. Getting mad and emotional and making stupid decisions on vibes. When their nonsense fails, they just blame it on anything but themselves and do the next dumb thing. If we didn’t have stores everywhere, we would be dead. We only survive because you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one.
I want a BYD very badly. A lot of people to blame here, Government for propping up a subpar product, unions for going too far with demands, aging and complacent workforce, lack of reinvestment, executive greed, piss poor repair record… Damn I want one of the Chinese EV’s. Let free market be free.
Well too fucking bad UAW and NADA both supported trump and now here come the leopards to eat their faces.
Trump pisses off our closest ally Canada and now they have given a toe hold in NA to China, and continue to boycott America products and tourism. The tourism alone has taken away 1.3 billion so far this year.
Chinese cars are coming and there’s nothing these fucks can do about.
Fuck them.
It’s wild people are still surprised about union corruption…
Corporations and the government have an incentive for corrupt unions, so they’re not going to reign in the problematic ones.
It’s on the voting members of every union to keep their own union in line.
They literally just vote for whatever benefits their industry directly.
Military was the same way, I got lined and my direct chain walked a very fine line talking about if we wanted to vote for someone that would expand the military meaning more slots for promotions, or someone that would reduce by attrition and no one gets promotions for four years.
It’s a real thing and should be obvious to anyone, which again is why it’s wild people don’t know why it keeps happening.
When resources are scarce people get selfish.
We fight that by ensuring everyone has enough so they don’t have to feel selfish, then we can out otw the minority who will always be selfish.
UAW and NADA both supported trump
Where are you getting that from?, UAW endorsed Harris and Biden also put a huge tariff on Chinese EVs and harris seems like she would’ve continued that.
UAW was very spilt on endorsement, but extremely together supporting trumps tariffs.
NADA is full on maga.
