I know for a FACT the Big Three are pulling our legs...

[Hobarticus]

I saw it firsthand, in China last year.

While traveling by car, I saw US models that I'd never seen before: Fords, Chevys....you name it.

I asked my handler, what was going on with these cars, and he told me that these cars were made in China under license, but not available for sale in the US.

I asked, why not?

He said that China has higher mileage and higher pollution standards than the US does, and while these cars are engineered by US automakers, they are only manufactured and sold in China.

I saw them with my own goddamned eyes. And these aren't little Matchbox cars; we're talking four-door sedans.

So the whole "we can't afford to make them, the technology isn't there yet, it's too expensive" blah blah blah is BULLSHIT.

[cliffordu]

1. Yep. And it aint the fault of the line workers or the UNIONS, either.

This is all about the lying scumbags that run these companies.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Why am I NOT surprised?

I say let them go into Chapter 11!

Damn them all to hell...

:nuke: :nuke: :nuke:

[Critters2]

9. Yeah. The Midwest doesn't need those manufacturing jobs.

Let's save some banks on the two coasts, because they're so well managed!

[rwheeler31]

3. Keep the blame where it belongs oil and gas.

[Hobarticus]

6. Why shouldn't we expect automakers to step up?

Regardless of how high oil and gas climb, why aren't the Big Three adapting their business model accordingly?

[jazzjunkysue]

21. Ask Shell, Chevron, BP, Mobil, Exxon for a bailout.

It's their lobby that has kept us in an oil economy.

[wallwriter]

4. Your assertion is not exactly accurate.

The standards for Chinese cars are much *lower* than in the U.S. They don't care about crash protection, pollution or fuel economy to the degree that we do. Think about it. Think about all the dangerous food products that come out of China because they have essentially no consumer protection. The same applies to cars. Anti-freeze in the baby food? Who cares? Cars that crumple to nothing in a crash? Who cares? The Big 3 are screwed up for all sorts of reasons, but the cars they are building and selling in China are crap.

[Hobarticus]

5. Not exactly the best counter, but nice try...

I never mentioned safety standards. That's another kettle of fish. The Big Three haven't been crying before Congress about our safety standards being too high; rather, they've spent a lot of money fighting higher mileage and pollution controls. Agreed?

Here, I Googled this in about a second.

"Although the domestic car industry is booming, China has relied heavily on tie-ups with global giants such as General Motors and Volkswagen and has long accused foreign partners of withholding advanced technology. China is increasingly reliant on imported crude oil.

"This is good for China," said Yang Fuqiang, chief representative of the Energy Foundation's Beijing office.

Though not particularly stringent, the new requirements are stricter than U.S. standards, which haven't been updated for more than 20 years, Yang noted.

American fuel efficiency standards are calculated using the average fuel use of the entire fleet sold by an automaker. In China, similar to Japan, the standards require that each model sold meet the criteria, Yang said"

This article's from 2004. Until you can do better, I stand by my assertions.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2004-10-08-china-fuel-efficiency_x.htm

[jazzjunkysue]

22. Chinese working standards and salary are probably unacceptable

here.

Chinese work long shifts 6-7 days/week, w/o benefits or protection.

That's why they can afford to make them there.

Just imagine the health safety standards in a chinese factory: Inhaling paint all day....

[Hannah Bell]

32. They're selling them there, to those workers, so it's not about "afford".

They could make them here & sell them for more.

Labor is < 10% of the cost of a vehicle.

[The Wielding Truth]

7. Do you think if we don't give them $25 billion, they will survive and

prosper, and millions in related jobs won't be out on the street?

Do you think that this is being done to break the unions and get the corporations off the hook for pensions and health care?

If they go chapter 11 will that hurt sales? If they fold and we no longer produce vehicles, can we survive as an independent nation?

[Hobarticus]

8. No, yes, yes, and yes.

The bailout is a necessary evil. I think it should come with a whole laundry list of conditions, however, and I'm not buying their sob story. Giving them the same bailout over and over again without finally calling shenanigans is absurd.

[The Wielding Truth]

11. We have seen the Steel mills, textile mills, and tech jobs leave.

The auto industry is one of our only bedrocks of independence. If we lose this and we have a national disaster how will we retool ourselves without the large manufacturing infrastructure?

[AdHocSolver]

14. Those jobs, including auto jobs, have been sent overseas by corporate executives.

Several years ago I worked for a company that brought Chinese engineers to the U.S. to train them to run a factory that this American company was planning to build in China.

Last year, I read where the same company was going to expand their Chinese factory, at the same time that they were laying off hundreds of American workers.

Your post sounds like you believe the nonsense that American companies are losing jobs to "foreign" competition. I have news for you. The "foreign" competition are the foreign subsidiaries of the same companies that are laying off Americans because they can't "compete"...with themselves.

The fact is that these corporations are abandoning America for the new markets opening up in Asia as the people of Asia accumulate wealth from making and selling their junk to Americans. The corporations see America as a dwindling market (of course, since the corporations have been eliminating jobs here at a feverish pace), and are looking to profit from new markets in newly industrializing countries.

As usual, the economists, pundits, and politicians are behind the curve in understanding what is going on with the economy. They still are working with an "Alice in Wonderland" economic model that has no relation to reality.

[The Wielding Truth]

24. Okay, but shouldn't we keep enough industry to maintain in case

of a national emergency?

[AdHocSolver]

29. That question you should ask all of the CEO's who are sending the jobs overseas!

I am all for setting up trade conditions and tax laws to bring most jobs back to America. This country will become nothing more than a banana republic if most of the products we consume continue to be imported.

Get rid of NAFTA, the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank, and all the other alphabet soup cartel agreements and corporate-run international agencies that have made it profitable to screw America and most of the rest of this planet.

[bertman]

36. Great point, AdHocSolver; however, I disagree with your assertion that the economists,

pundits, and politicians are behind the curve in understanding what is going on with the economy. Many of the economists and the politicians DO understand what's going on yet choose to yield to those who pay their way--the same corporations who are shipping America overseas. As for the pundits, well who knows? They are mostly shills for the corporate media so you're not going to hear them talk about U.S. mega-corps abandoning America for the burgeoning Asian markets. It just ain't polite conversation, you know.

It's always the same: follow the money.

[AdHocSolver]

39. You are correct, bertman. It doesn't require a high IQ to see the massive plundering of the U.S. ...

taking place right now with these phony bailout schemes.

These politicians, economists, and pundits have to be aware that these "bailouts" won't help the economy. They are merely a last great effort at thievery before the country nosedives into another "great" depression.

In fact, these bailouts not only won't help the economy, they are guaranteed to hasten the collapse of the "real" economy.

The real economy is the demand for goods and services and the jobs that provide consumers with the money to pay for those goods and services. In other terms, the economy is the circulation of money. When people stop buying, for whatever reason, the economy contracts.

The stock market is a total fraud run by greedy hucksters, like the people who ran Enron, where the middle class is allowed to gamble away their life savings. Only a very small number of people are allowed to win big in the stock market, so as to keep the suckers pouring their money into it. When the house of cards is about to collapse, the corporate insiders sell their stock, exercise their stock options, take advantage of their "golden parachutes", or whatever scam they are working, and bail out.

The government bailout is frosting on the cake to take the suckers for another ride with the help of the politicians, economists, and media pundits.

"Save yourselves by giving us more money before the inevitable economic meltdown occurs.", say the Wall Street and financial crooks. So the politicians give away the U.S. Treasury while serving themselves up a bunch of pork barrel projects. The public, already in a panic says, sure, take what little we have left. Just save us...to the crooks.

What I should have said in the post you replied to was that the economists, politicians, and pundits are selling snake oil, and the public is lapping it up. However, it was time to get off the internet.

[This One]

10. What about a government receivership?

Not exactly a bankruptcy but a way to replace the morons that run these companies. Flying in on private jets to beg for money? WTF? Were they trying to create a PR disaster?

[Greyhound]

46. Yes/No. SOP is to create a no-lose proposition for themselves and that's what they've

done here as well. First and foremost, all proposals must be presented or sold as a binary option.

No bailout, let the American branches fail and eliminate the liabilities and the unions.

Bailout, use the "dire economic conditions" to justify the elimination of the liabilities and the unions and return to business as usual for a few years until round 2.

Just watch what happens over the next few weeks, They will block any attempt (if they are even proposed) to find a compromise or conditional settlement.

The ensuing reorganization or bankruptcy will include a separation of the international facilities from the domestic so that those new factories in China, Russia, India, and the older European plants will be out of bounds to any claims.

American corporations have been hollowing themselves out for decades now. Once the final abandonment happens, and it could be very soon, certainly within the next 10 years, we will find there are no assets to speak of left within the reach of our laws.

Remember that IBM built it's first facilities in China in the 70s, this has been coming fro a long time.

[AdHocSolver]

12. An important condition for a bailout: Not one dime can be used to build factories overseas.

In the financial sector, corporations getting bailout money are already using this "gift" to buy out competitors.

A few years back, GM spent over a billion and a half dollars to build a Buick plant in China, which is very profitable. This was being done at the same time GM was closing factories in the U.S.

Without stringent conditions, there will be nothing to stop the current management from using bailout money to build more plants in China. After all, they are making huge profits over there. Additionally, I don't doubt that GM pays little or no taxes on those profits.

What a sweet racket!

IIRC, when the U.S. bailed out Chrysler in the 1980's, the executives responsible for the thievery and the mismanagement were removed as a condition of getting the bailout. (This is when Lee Iaccoca was brought in to run Chrysler, and he turned the company around.) Replacing the current GM management should be a prime condition for any bailout.

If the same crooks and incompetents get the bailout money, they will use it to send jobs overseas as they have doing been up till now.

[Seldona]

15. Great post.

The banks are already mismanaging this bailout money in a major way, and that needs to stop. Starting off with demanding concessions with the car makers lets Wall Street know the free hand-outs are over.

We have got to stop letting these people walk all over us.

[moondust]

18. Ah yes... The corporate tax cut/welfare model.

Use the taxpayer's money to build more facilities in overseas cheap labor markets. What a deal!

[progressoid]

13. ...

I'll probably get flamed for this...

But there is one thing that China has that we don't. Ultra cheap labor.
I'm not trying to defend them or bash our labor force, but labor costs are a big factor in the equation. And the big 3 (and the RW)are going to want to play that card for all it's worth.

[Greyhound]

47. Less than 10%. n/t

[Joe the Liberal]

16. I say let them fail. nt

[bluecollarcharlie]

42. I say you should go to hell!

[lithiumbomb]

17. let's do some research.

Let's take Ford first. In china they sell:

Ford Mondeo. The closest in class in the US is the Ford Fusion. Fusion available as a hybrid for 2010. We are getting the Mondeo in 2011 or so.
Ford Focus (International). The US and Canada have a facelifted 1st gen Focus. We will get the same model as everyone else in 2011 or so.
Ford S-Max MPV. I'm not sure if this is going to be part of Ford's new lineup for the US. A good match is the Mazda5 MPV, sold in the US today.

Plus a version of the 1980 Ford Transit and the current Ford Transit. That's it. You can check their website.

http://www.ford.com.cn

Ford plans to do one better by bringing the Fiesta to the US as well. Not sold in China.

Chevrolet:
Chevrolet Aveo, you can buy one here.
Chevrolet Captiva, Saturn Vue is the same vehicle.
Chevrolet Epica - Formerly sold branded as a Suzuki in the US. But if you want a mid-size sedan the current Malibu would be a better choice.

That's it.
http://www.chevrolet.com.cn/

Buick:
Easily GM's largest Chinese brand, 300k+ sold per year. Many built in China.

Enclave: Built in US and exported to China, iirc.
Park Avenue: Built in Australia, sold here as the Pontiac G8.
LaCrosse: Same under the skin as the US model. Built in China.
Excelle: Some old GM-Daewoo models. You don't want these.
GL8: The old late 90s GM Minivan. Built in China. You don't want this either.

http://www.buick.com.cn

So I'm not sure what magical car they have in china that they are hiding from us...

[Hannah Bell]

33. you missed some:

Shanghai GM was founded on June 12, 1997 with 50% investment each from Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation and General Motors.

Cadillac
CTS
SLS
SRX
Escalade
XLR

Buick
Regal - Opel Insignia

Chevrolet
Sail
Corsa

Saab
93 Sports Sedan
93 Convertible
93 Sporthatch
Turbo 225

SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile is a joint venture between General Motors and Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) of China and Wuling Automobile Co.

Models

Windside
Light
Wuling Sunshine

The Etsong Automobile Co is a small scale manufacturing concern that comes under the SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile part of SAIC.

Models
Lande CA1020
Lande CA6440
Lubao CA6410
Lubao CA6410

Ford
Fiesta
Demio

[lithiumbomb]

37. i know. :)

I only had so much time. :) Huge presence over there.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

19. Higher pollution standards? China?

If by "higher" you mean "many more parts per million", I'll believe it.

If by "standards" you mean "a reason to buy off corrupt officials", well, ok.

But I wonder if those cars really meet US pollution standards, safety standards, etc.

Why did the Chinese government force so many drivers to not drive during the Olympics? Because the cars were so clean?

Anyway, yes, we have the technology, and we build good cars here. But we also build a lot of oversized, overpowered bling because that's where the big profits are. And our government gives tax breaks to buyers of huge SUVs, giving them a nice incentive to buy large. Fix the tax issue, and a lot of the big SUV market will vanish.

:hi:

[HEyHEY]

30. Took long enough for someone to point this out

When my buddy was in China his 18-year-old fixer didn't even know what the tianemen square massacre was.... like I'm gonna believe another guy about pollution standards.

[Hannah Bell]

34. Ahem:

"China enacted its first emissions controls on automobiles in 2000, equivalent to Euro I standards. They were upgraded again in 2005 to Euro II. More stringent emission standard, National Standard III, equivalent to Euro III standards went into effect on July 1st 2007.<4> Plans are for Euro IV standards to take effect in 2010. Beijing introduced the Euro IV standard in advance on January 1st 2008, became the first city in mainland China to adopt this standard.<5>"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_standard

http://www.automotiveworld.com/AEM/content.asp?contentid=65589

[Celebration]

20. we also have CRASH STANDARDS

It's true that they can produce cars that pollute less and get better gas mileage. But we have strict crash standards as well. Some people want to relax those.

Do you?

[Gman2]

38. Yes, I do

perfect safety is a fools errand. We need to build lighter. Much lighter. And get SUV's off the road. Special lanes for those in trucks. And strict laws about merging across that lane. Small, light, sporty cars are possible today. They wont go up against a barge though.

[bluecollarcharlie]

43. So what do you do about all the older cars on the road?

[Romulox]

23. OP is beyond ignorant. China does not have the same consumer protections the US has.

[ContinentalOp]

25. Total B.S.

The way I understand it, companies are only allowed to operate in China under a kind of "joint venture." What that means is that Ford can come in and sell their cars but only if they open up a factory, hire Chinese workers, etc. all under the supervision of the government. They can't simply import American made cars. So that's why you see different models that we don't have here.

The idea that China has higher pollution standards is totally laughable. They may get better mileage though, precisely because they have lower emissions standards. We would all get better mileage on our current cars if we simply removed all of the emmissions controls. Their gas is probably different too right? Don't different formulations give different efficiency?

[AdHocSolver]

40. Technical correction. There is no conflict between high gas mileage and reduced emissions.

The technnology that improves gas mileage is the same technology that lowers emissions. Electronic fuel injection, computer controlled ignition, variable-valve timing, five and six gear transmissions, and computer-control for everything all improve gas mileage while reducing emissions.

Increasing gas mileage alone reduces gas consumption and thereby reduces total emissions. We would not get better gas mileage by removing emission standards. We would merely get more pollution.

Such claims by the auto companies is pure bull manure. I have owned cars and repaired cars for years. I know the technology.

At the same time, reducing vehicle weight would improve gas mileage significantly. The big three could have redesigned their big vehicles to have less weight and so get better gas mileage. They chose not to do so even as gas prices were rising.

Moreover, insurance industry statistics show that the big SUV's and trucks are more dangerous to their occupants and to those around them. The cabins of those vehicles are too flimsy to support the weight of the vehicles so that the fatality rate for such vehicles, should they tip over in an accident, is much higher than for a "normal" size and weight vehicle.

Back in the 1990's, GM developed the EV1 and then the EV2 electric vehicles. They were leased to drivers in California to test them out on a large scale. The people who drove them loved them. Many wanted to purchase them. The project was so popular and successful that GM recalled all of the vehicles and destroyed them. GM then sold the battery technology developed for the electric vehicles to an OIL company.

If that doesn't tell you where GM sees its interests, and it is NOT in producing more efficient, cheaper to own, and less polluting vehicles, I don't know what will.

[bluecollarcharlie]

44. Oh give it up. ...

....you look for any excuse to bash GM, and then when that gets blown away you turn to something else.
If you just hate GM say it. But don't let your blind hatred ruin the nation.

[ContinentalOp]

26. Also, who was your "handler"?

When I was in China we had some kind of official tour guide who told us a lot of questionable stuff.

[Profprileasn]

27. tech

Why don't we stipulate they use the money to retool factories to make more fuel efficient cars? And see the planes they have..

[ColbertWatcher]

28. This needs to be reported in the news every night.

Is there any way to get some buzz going to do this?

Are there any YouTube videos showing US model cars in foreign countries and extolling all the features we aren't allowed to have?

Any articles that we can make a top hit on google?

[TheKentuckian]

31. They are capable of producing more viable cars

but have had exactly zero reason to do so until the last year tops. We have nothing mileage standards, we don't invest in R&D, no one gave a crap about mileage, and big greed runs the show.

[SmileyRose]

35. The big boss man said the same thing just coming back from China

They had to have a "minder" follow them around their Chinese factory tour and the car had a Ford sticker on it, got upwards of 35 mpg in the city and was about the size of the new Taurus (large)

the boss man was rather pissed regarding Ford's claims they can't do that here - though in fairness, the Chinese government does subsidize manufacturing there. edit - and the pollution was really awful.

[JJ]

41. Wow, I had no idea

Found this to back that up. A NY Times article from June 2007.

"China’s first fuel standard, 30.2 miles per gallon for the typical car, was imposed in 2005, and will be raised to 36 miles per gallon in 2008."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/weekinreview/10basics.html

[bluecollarcharlie]

45. Do you really think that

just because a secretive,controlling, dictatorial,muderous and corrupt country tells you that they are going to do great things means that they are going to DO great things? Not even Pollyanna herself would be that unwise. And this was DATED BEFORE THE OLYMPICS? The one where they wouldn't even tell you the age of the female gymnasts?