QUOTE(toesuf94 @ Feb 20 2008, 04:20 PM)
and let's not forget that at the end of the day - the purchase of a Japanese car ASSEMBLED in the US still benefits the Japanese economy - not ours. All it does is increase the trade deficit. Here is how to better understand: go to a hobby shop and buy a model kit made in Japan. The kit has parts that were made in Japan by a mold run in Japan, that was made by a japanese mold maker. The mold was drafted and designed by a Japanese engineer. Now, pay yourself $10.00 per hour to put it together, and there you go. You have now proven how much a Japanese car "assembled" here benefits our economy. Yeah, the dealer level also contributes on a local level, but that is the full extent of it.
American cars built over the border in Canada and Mexico still use a large number of parts built and assembled here in the US.
Are you kidding me? Japanese cars assembled in the US typically use over 75% US/Canadian parts...similar numbers to Big3 branded vehicles and higher than many built in Mexico (have you read the sticker on a Ford Fusion?). And how does a vehicle using 75% US/Canadian parts, employing assembly workers in Ohio or Kentucky or California or Illinois or Indiana or Michigan or Georgia or Mississippi or Tennessee or Texas, employing designers and engineers in California or Michigan and delivered and sold by Americans NOT benefit our economy? More than 80% of the transaction price of an American-assembled Japanese brand car or truck stays in the US....how is that not a benefit to the US economy? How is a 100% imported plastic model akin to buying a 75% American full-sized vehicle?
QUOTE(FUTURE_OF_GM @ Feb 20 2008, 11:50 PM)
Don't forget that those lower paying 'assembly jobs' from foreign manufacturers displaced MANY great paying 'assembly jobs' from Detroit manufcaturers.
And don't forget that those "lower paying" jobs are filled by people who would be paid FAR LESS if those jobs were not offered to them. If these jobs were so low paying, why would Toyota get 100,000 applicants for fewer than 3,000 assembly jobs in Texas? Because people just want to work for Toyota at any cost? No...because they're better paying than they would otherwise find in that area.
Sure, those jobs may be relocating jobs from Virginia or Kentucky or Michigan, but did anyone think that those Big3 jobs may have been OVER paid? C'mon....$100,000 a year to assemble vehicles when college graduates with years of experience can't find jobs paying HALF that much?
^Hudson need I remind you that you are on a GM board.^
Have you ever taken economics, aside of where the car is built money is going across the big pond. What good is that? Oh yeah it helps Toyota fatten there bottom line.