"Made In America" Creating Jobs, Great ABC Piece

[Bringmepie]

Most Amercian cares are made up of between 60-80% foreign parts these days. I don't think there's any easy solution when it comes to "buy American." I do my best when I can. I will definitely shop at a local business vs. a big box store. In fact, I will often go out of my way to do so. Not always easy though.

My last Chevy, a '96 Cavalier, was made in Ontario, maybe even at the plant near Rex. My 2008 Honda Civic though was assembled largely in the U.S. with 60% North American parts. Whether they were from Canada, Mexico or U.S.? .. I don't know, except that the transmission was made in Japan (yes, I have a Japanese tranny in my car). I suspect the more complex a product is the less likely it will be made entirely in the U.S. But like Phranchk and others have mentioned it's sometimes difficult to know where the profits are going. I know one of the problems the Italian textile industry is having right now is that they have a well established brand but Chinese competitors are using sweatshops in Italy to make the wool cloth then sending the material home for the final products to be made at a lower cost or just using sweatshop labor in Italy to make the suits, etc. They can still slap a label that says it's 100% Italian wool in the meantime to gain the benefit of the country brand.

 

[Rex]

yes, I think Cavaleirs might have been made in the same plant they make the Impalas (Oshawa GM Plant) My old Grand Am was made in Michigan. To be honest, I'm not sure which plant my Sunfire was made at.

 

[Bringmepie]

Everyone loves throwing the term "sweat shop or slave wages" around. Let's look at the flip side or what I call "mansion wages."

This is the term for union scale where it costs a company "insert number here" times more than it should to produce a product or service.

Smart and profitable companies came to the conclusion that any chance for selling their product or service was becoming lower and lower as the "mansion wages" scale became higher and higher. Hence the reason why things started to be produced overseas.

I hear you, but would you volunteer yourself or your children to work 80+ hour days in poor conditions with no prospects for advancements? It's better than starving I suppose but.. really?



I think a lot of anti-union sentiment in the U.S. is because of the adversarial relationships between unions and big business in the U.S. Companies fought the unions tooth and nail to keep wages as low as possible. When they could they would support immigration to help keep the supply of labor high to drive wages down. I haven't heard much of it lately, but when I was in college during the 80's and "Japan, Inc." was the big scary threat to U.S. labor we studied how during the post W.W.2 occupation their was support for trade unions to work in partnership with management with the firm for the overall good least workers turn toward communism. You rarely hear that kind of talk in the U.S., like all the rest of the political discussions everyone's always taking polar opposite sides nowdays instead of looking to find middle ground (trade unions are not always the answer to be sure, but if you take care of your workers you'll have a better, happier workforce).

 

[LordKOTL]

yes, I think Cavaleirs might have been made in the same plant they make the Impalas (Oshawa GM Plant) My old Grand Am was made in Michigan. To be honest, I'm not sure which plant my Sunfire was made at.

I had a 2000 Sunfire GT (same platform as the Cavalier) and was an enthusiast of that model. From what I gathered, there were 3 plants for the J-platform cars: One in Ontario, one in Lordstown, Ohio (where mine was built), and one in Mexico. The transmissions of the cars varied: both veriosn of the automatic were hydra-matic designs, and were american at least in design. The manual transmissions were either Isuzu for pre-2000 cars and Getrag (german-design) for 2000 and newer. I know the paperwork on my car stated that my transmission was actually built italy.



The easiest way to know is the 1st digit of the VIN (All GM cars share the same VIN systrem). "1" is american made. "2" is Canadian made. "3" is Mexico made. "4" is American made for export.

 

[Rex]

I'll check my VIN when I head to work then. Mine is an 01 Sunfire. As much as I didn't want it when I got it (Small car, Big man) The thing has been amazing, and indestructible (knock on wood) almost at 200,000 miles

 

[LordKOTL]

Well, I know mine was strong enough to shoot the flywheel through the transmission at 100k miles, and was also strong enough to snap an axle at the drag strip (granted the axle was defective). I loved my Sunfire--was my first brand-new car.



Either way, of the three cars I owned ('91 Lemans, '00 Sunfire GT, '08 G6 GXP), the last two were american-built. The 1st was Korean (Re-badged Daewoo).