Caterpillar to install factory in China
Another US business relocating some of their business overseas. Not terribly out of the ordinary, right? PISSED reminds us of the significance, though:NEW YORK (AFP) – Caterpillar, the world's largest manufacturer of construction equipment, will build a factory in China to produce mini hydraulic excavators, the company said in a statement.
Construction will begin in Wujiang, near Shanghai, at the end of 2010 and the facility should be ready in 2012 to begin production of mini excavators of less than eight tons, the company said Tuesday.
Didn’t I see the Messiah at the Caterpillar plant stating that the stimulus would keep jobs here, and they could rehire? Even Caterpillar officials said so. Ooops.So I did a little digging, and sure enough, PISSED was right:
Obama: Caterpillar to rehire if stimulus passes
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said Wednesday that heavy-equipment maker Caterpillar has informed him it will rehire some of the thousands of workers it has laid off in recent weeks if Congress passes an economic stimulus bill.
...
But Obama said the company told him Wednesday it would hire back some of those workers if the legislation passes. As House and Senate negotiators worked to reconcile differences between competing versions of the legislation, Obama spoke during a visit to a highway construction site here just outside of Washington.
Someone remind me again how building factories in mainland China is going to keep American jobs? Even the CEO of Catepillar disagreed with Øbama's assessment that the stimulus would save jobs at Cat, and we can see why in the above story. All the "stimulus" in the world doesn't compete with lower wage costs, no union interference, and fewer regulations (the jury's still out on whether kickbacks will go up or down, although cronyism is expected to continue as planned.
Yeah, I know, a politician lied. Water's wet, sky's blue, yadda yadda yadda...
That is all.
4 comments:
I have to wonder, though, if and how much Caterpillar looked into building that factory in a right-to-work state; Toyota recently restarted construction of a car factory in Mississippi, which is of course a RTW state. I know there's a big difference between restarting construction and starting from scratch, though.
Health Care Reform, Health Care Reform, Health Care Reform.
If you use your Google-Fu JayG, you'll find that somewhere in the debate over Health Care Reform Caterpillar said that it would cost them about $100 Million more the first year the law was in effect.
China already has government paid health care and it's probably more, ahem, efficient than what we'll see.
I think this is less a union issue than it's a government interference issue. Although of course the two aren't completely separate.
Well, the EPA is involved, too. Caterpillar's international brand of larger engines, MAK, doesn't have to be hamstrung under the EPA's ridiculous emissions standards, which require that all American diesel engines produce only sunshine and rainbows for exhaust. MAK can supply American-designed engines to American vendors for use outside the US. Caterpillar simply can't build these engines under the current EPA rules, which are by far the most stringent in the world. With a plant in China, they won't have to, and they can still be the only quasi-American large engine manufacturer left in the world.
When the WTO treaty was signed, China was allowed to designate such equipment as “strategic”, allowing them to charge 30% on imports, so it is much cheaper to build them there. I understand Larry Summers signed off on this for the U.S. It’s worse, though. China requires technology sharing that will allow other plants to build clones of these excavators for export to other countries. It was explained thus somewhere else on the net.
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