Chinese drywall...

[AxleIke]

................................

 

[DaveInDenver]

Gotta love a free market.

This is exactly the kind of thing I refer people to when they get to whining about gov't regulation over here.

Please explain. Would the market be better served if something was gov'ment imposed such that there was no competition? I don't care at all for Chinese knock-offs, but protectionism isn't the solution. Anyway, we do have lots of intervention, patents, tariffs and yet the practice continues. Companies have to accept that there's always someone who wants to take advantage of your hard work and stay one step ahead on quality, innovation, service or whatever it takes to stay in business.

 

[nakman]

Here in my world some of our best customers are in defense, and their projects all fall under ITAR. That means we can't outsource to anyone else (who isn't also ITAR compliant), definitely can't send anything over seas, can't even email prints, it all has to be done via SFTP. Another market for us is medical, particularly items that are FDA regulated- again, these products can't be done outside the US if the US has its fingers in them in some other way, particularly once a product becomes FDA regulated, you can't just change how you produce it... so in some way, government intervention has helped keep things domestic.

Of course the counter to both is defense spending is way too high and the health care industry is even worse, but I'll contend outsourcing some of the production over seas isn't going to solve that.. would more likely just further line the pockets of the "well lined."

 

[DaveInDenver]

so in some way, government intervention has helped keep things domestic

Everything I do falls under ITAR. The way things are done here compared to the commercial world have deep differences and if there weren't national security implications that change the value of some things, I'm fairly sure no one would want to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a video card for your computer that is half as fast as the one you get for $50 at Microcenter, despite the fact that it would keep working if you put your PC in a running microwave that's placed inside your deep freeze. Fer goodness sakes, even brand new vehicles make a 10 year old Pentium II PC look pretty cutting edge.

 

[AxleIke]

........................

 

[leiniesred]

Lin and I have decided that China is trying to kill us with their products.

Theory: China is selling us dangerous and defective products on purpose. Lead poison the kids to drop IQ's a little more over here in USA. Sell us Harbor freight tools that slip on bolts and skin my knuckles. Sell us cheap bolts that snap off and break my truck/tank/bridge/crane. Poison us with the drywall too. Why not? USA keeps buying.


Anyway, We are always on the lookout for made in USA products. We will often put down the made in China product, and go without while we mail order the made in USA version.

 

[nakman]

Hummers could soon be made in China...

AP: Chinese Manufacturer To Buy Hummer
By Bree Fowler, AP Auto Writer
Manufacturing.Net - June 02, 2009





DETROIT (AP) -- General Motors Corp. took a key step toward its downsizing on Tuesday, striking a tentative deal to sell its Hummer brand to a Chinese manufacturer, while also revealing that it has potential buyers for its Saturn and Saab brands.

GM has an agreement to sell its Hummer brand to Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co. of China, said a person briefed on the deal.

The Detroit automaker announced Tuesday morning that it had a memorandum of understanding to sell the brand of rugged SUVs, but it didn't identify the buyer. A formal announcement of the buyer was to be made Tuesday afternoon, said the person briefed on the deal. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the details have not been made public.

Sichuan Tengzhong deals in road construction, plastics, resins and other industrial products, but Hummer would be its first step into the automotive business.

GM said the sale will likely save more than 3,000 U.S. jobs in manufacturing, engineering and at various Hummer dealerships.

As part of the proposed transaction, Hummer will continue to contract vehicle manufacturing and business services from GM during a transitional period. For example, GM's Shreveport, La., assembly plant would continue to contract to assemble the H3 and H3T through at least 2010, GM said.

The automaker also said Tuesday that it has 16 buyers interested in purchasing its Saturn brand, while three parties are interested in the Swedish Saab brand.

Chief Financial Officer Ray Young told reporters and industry analysts on a conference call that GM is continuing to pursue manufacturing agreements with a new Saturn buyer.

GM would like to sell the money-losing Saturn brand's dealership network, contracting with the new buyer to make some of its cars while the buyer gets other vehicles from different manufacturers.

At the same time, bridge loan discussions with the Swedish government are progressing, Young said.

GM, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New York on Monday, is racing to remake itself as a smaller, leaner automaker. In addition to its plan to sell the Hummer, Saab and Saturn brands, GM will also phase out its Pontiac brand, concentrating on its Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC nameplates.

The company hopes to follow the lead of fellow U.S. automaker Chrysler LLC by transforming its most profitable assets into a new company in just 30 days and emerging from bankruptcy protection soon after.

But GM is much larger and complex than its Auburn Hills-based rival and isn't up against Chrysler's tight June 15 deadline to close its deal with Fiat Group SpA.

Sharon Lindstrom, managing director at business consulting firm Protiviti, said the companies pose different challenges. But as with Chrysler, she notes that the Treasury Department made sure many of GM's moving parts were in order ahead of time so a quick bankruptcy reorganization might be possible.

"They had a lot of their ducks in a row because the terms of the government financing forced them to get all the parties to the table in a very, very short period of time," Lindstrom said.

Separately, the German government said Tuesday it paid out the first €300 million ($425 million) in bridge loans to GM's Adam Opel GmbH division. The loans are part of a deal to shrink GM's stake in Opel and shield it from GM's bankruptcy protection filing in the U.S.

Canadian auto supplier Magna International Inc. and Russian-owned Sberbank will acquire 55 percent of Opel.

A sale of the Hummer brand had been expected. Chief Executive Fritz Henderson had said in April that the automaker was expecting final bids from three potential buyers within the month.

Critics had seized on the rugged but fuel-inefficient Hummer as a symbol of excess as GM's financial troubles grew and gas prices rose. Sales at Hummer, which is known for models with military-vehicle roots, have been in a steep slide since gasoline prices rose to record heights last summer. For the first four months of this year, Hummer sales are down 67 percent.

GM nailed down deals with its union and a majority of its bondholders and arranged the Opel deal in order to appear in court Monday with a near-complete plan to quickly emerge with a chance to become profitable.

The government has said it expects GM to come out of bankruptcy protection within 60 to 90 days. By comparison, the judge overseeing Chrysler's case approved the sale of its assets to a group led by Italy's Fiat in just over a month. Some industry observers think Chrysler could emerge as early as this week.

During Monday's hearing, GM attorney Harvey Miller stressed the magnitude of the case and the importance of moving GM through court oversight as fast as possible. He noted that the automaker only has about $2 billion in cash left.

"If there's going to be a recovery of value, it's absolutely crucial that a sale take place as soon as possible," Miller said in his opening statement.

The automaker wants to sell the bulk of its assets to a new company in which the U.S. government will take a 60 percent ownership stake. The Canadian government would take 12.5 percent of the "New GM," with the United Auto Workers union getting 17.5 percent and unsecured bondholders receiving 10 percent. Existing shareholders are expected to be wiped out.

U.S. Judge Robert Gerber moved swiftly through more than 25 mostly procedural motions during the automaker's first-day Chapter 11 hearing.

Gerber set GM's sale hearing for June 30, putting it on a path similar to that of Chrysler. Objections are due on June 19, with any competing bids required to be submitted by June 22.

Gerber also gave GM immediate access to $15 billion in government financing to get it through the next few weeks, and interim approval for use of a total $33.3 billion in financing, with final approval slated to be ruled on June 25. The funds are contingent on GM's sale being approved by July 10. Gerber also approved motions allowing the company to pay certain prebankruptcy wages, along with supplier and shipping costs.

The sheer size of GM makes it a more complicated case than Chrysler.

GM made twice as many vehicles as Chrysler's 1.5 million last year and employs 235,000 people compared with Chrysler's 54,000. GM also has plants and operations in many more countries, meaning it will likely have to strike separate deals to navigate the bankruptcy laws of those places.

Henderson said GM has learned a few things by watching Chrysler's case.

"Certainly the court showed that it can address 363 (sale) transactions in an expeditious fashion," Henderson said at a news conference Monday. "Particularly in our case with what will be a very large 363 transaction."

GM's filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection is the largest ever for an industrial company. GM, which said it has $172.81 billion in debt and $82.29 billion in assets, had received about $20 billion in low-interest loans before entering bankruptcy protection.

Fowler reported from New York. AP Auto Writer Dan Strumpf in New York and Associated Press Writer Joe McDonald in Beijing contributed to this report.

 

[Hulk]

Went from a Humvee, made for the US military, to a consumer vehicle made for the public, to a Chinese-owned company? How the mighty have fallen.

 

[subzali]

In my opinion it doesn't require government intervention to make sure our products are safe. It requires the due diligence of the American people to THINK before they buy. Problem, to me, is the lack of education.

I'm trying to remember the specific example - I think it has to do with the logging industry. There is a worldwide organization that monitors and certifies lumber from certain forests to make sure that quality control is maintained and that sustainable forestry practices are used in the production of that lumber. But IIRC it wasn't sponsored, driven, and isn't associated with our government or any other government. It's a combination of individuals, consumers, companies, and shareholders that have come together and forged a "third-party" oversight agency. I'll try to find the details - Jared Diamond talks about it in "Collapse".

I'm just taking Isaac's statement and extending it to mean that we are going to rely on our government to do our thinking for us. That idea scares me if taken too far. Here's a hypothetical situation: our government decides to do something about products Americans buy to take care of the American public's health and safety. Someone comes up with a definition of "healthier" or "safer" to mean "less fattening" because of a concern about general American obesity. So the government starts to limit the import of "fattening" items from other countries because they are "concerned" about the American public's weight problems. So my favorite Grecian cheese goes from $2/lb. to $8/lb. because there's less of it available because it's on the list of "fattening" items. Now the government is preventing me from making a conscious decision to buy this "fattening" item because they are "concerned" about my "health" and "safety". I know this is a silly example, but if you trust too much to the government I just have a concern that just such silly examples might actually be true some day.

Now I understand completely this is not even related to lead poisoning in kids' toys or harmful products in household drywall, I'm just sayin'...

I just think it would be better if drywall or toys were regulated not by the government but by a third-party organization compiled of those like the timber industry above. I don't know.

 

[DaveInDenver]

No Matt, you DO know.

BTW, something that has not been touched on is the nature of imports and exports. Particularly in our current system. With everything we buy from other countries helps perpetuate our government spending. You know how you hear our Treasury bonds are bought by investors? Those are sold in U.S. dollars and guess how they get those dollars? By selling us stuff, to which we send them money. They take that money, which is useless paper, and buy our exported stuff. That might be machine tools or Cadillacs or services that we are good at. But a lot of the time it's just Treasury bonds. So ever wonder why despite all the rhetoric about safe toys and stuff that the government does not really seem to be very keen on actually doing anything about it? They are almost always reacting to a public outrage or to some watchdog group's warnings.

If they did anything substantial to limit Chinese and European imports then the money to constantly roll over debt dries up and with it a major way they support all those multiple trillion dollar deficits full of pork. Imagine if China did not have hundreds of billions of dollars coming in and the government actually relied on all of our taxes to finance itself. As it is taxes consume around 20% of the wealth created in the country and up coming budgets are going to increase that by unreal amounts. Now what if half of the money to finance the government went away?

 

[treerootCO]

Paper money? Like these?

 

[DaveInDenver]

LOL!

That's Charles Hamblin (I think they spelled it wrong as Hambin, but hard to see in the photo). Charles Hamblin was a Federal Reserve board member in the middle 1910s.

I've seen some of the others. The $100 has John D. Rockefeller, the $50 Paul Warburg, the $2 J.P. Morgan, the $10 McAdoo (who incidentally was Sec. of Treasury when Hamblin was on the FED board). I would have thought the Amero would have Montezuma, President Polk (who was in office during Mexican-American War), Santa Anna, Bob and Doug. You know, important people in North American history, rather than obscure FED people.

 

[DaveInDenver]

BTW, that picture on the back is from a painting that shows Wilson signing the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

 

[corsair23]

Now the government is preventing me from making a conscious decision to buy this "fattening" item because they are "concerned" about my "health" and "safety". I know this is a silly example, but if you trust too much to the government I just have a concern that just such silly examples might actually be true some day.

Actually it is not a silly example...Situations similar to your "silly" example are already occurring now in states like CA and NY. It is starting with schools to keep the kids "healthy" and branching out. If Obama is successful in his push for Nationalized Healthcare it will get worse...I don't think it takes too much of a stretch of the imagination to see the government banning unhealthy foods because "they" are paying for your healthcare now

It amazes me how many people seem to really think the government has its own money, and that they will be getting something for free. Well, I guess some technically will be...

 

[Groucho]

OMG! Here we go again!

Not only will they say what we can and can't eat (due to taxing stuff so high that middle/lower and poverty class Americans can't afford it), but our slave wages will be paying for homes for the slaves (us).

I am not surprised that many folks on the board see these types of things, whether for the first time (possibly Radar), or for a long time (Opie). What I am surprised at is the countless people all over the place who, as Dave said, have no clue about how it all works. Just another reason not to send your kids to public schools, and throw out the TV. We are (intentionally by "them" or unintentionally but working out in "their" favor) being lulled into a state of mind where we do not recognize that we are not our own keeper anymore. Loss of liberty.

Not for me!

 

[AxleIke]

...............................

 

[AxleIke]

My apologies. I've removed my posts. These arguments often end with me pissing a bunch of people off, and I really don't want to offend people and lose friends in this club just for the sake of a pointless opinion.

Better that I keep focused on what we all mutually love: the wheeling!!

Cheers guys!

 

[subzali]

Isaac, I wasn't attacking you and I didn't miss your point. I guess I was just searching for an alternative besides the government, probably because it seems like lately everyone has been turning to the government for help when (at least the way I see it) there are other options. But you're probably right, a third party isn't all too much different in the long run so I guess you end up with no good solution. Add to that the fact that, as you said, there are a lot of morons out there and you're really not left with much.

I would just like to believe that rather than having knee-jerk reactions to poor decisions like buying millions of square feet of drywall only to find it's defective, we could start getting ahead of the curve and realize that there is a lot of crap coming into our society and somehow it has to stop. In my industry we (and other engineering companies) plain DON'T buy Chinese steel and pipe for certain projects. I also hear on the radio ads educating people about Boar's Head turkey (for example) rather than eating some cobbled together mixture of who knows what passed off as turkey. The bad stuff is coming in from all fronts it seems, and there are small efforts here and there to get ahead of it (like I mentioned above). I guess I don't like resorting to a pessimistic view of life (maybe that's naivite) and saying that there's no way out of it. I'm still searching for a way out and a way to get ahead.

I agree with you about the bailouts. I know I don't know really anything about economics, but it seems to me that even if a huge company fails there are always other companies out there who are standing ready to clean up the mess. Again, they made money on people's willingness to gamble with (or be plain ignorant of) interest rates. I think it was a lack of education as a whole. I don't know how you fix stupid.

 

[DaveInDenver]

My apologies. I've removed my posts. These arguments often end with me pissing a bunch of people off, and I really don't want to offend people and lose friends in this club just for the sake of a pointless opinion.

Better that I keep focused on what we all mutually love: the wheeling!!

Cheers guys!

I know I piss people off with the socioeconopolitical posts. Oh well, what good is it to have an opinion that no one ever hears? For example, I'm certain that Hulk and I don't see eye to eye on a lot of politics and funny thing is it never seems to make a lick of difference over beers or talking about Toyotas and radios and music. It would get awfully dang boring if all we ever did was argue about how bad IFS is anyway. Just my $0.02, I don't get offended when you or anyone offers something off topic that is personally genuine, unique or thoughtful. I think friendships around here are much stronger because we talk about those other things in life.

 

[Groucho]

Forced to or want to for a higher price tag?

In my industry we (and other engineering companies) plain DON'T buy Chinese steel and pipe for certain projects.

I don't know how you fix stupid.

Matt,
I wonder if you speak of engineering companies who are REGULATED not to by material from outside the U.S.? For example the airline industry. We fabricate parts for the airline industry that has nothing to do with the operation of the planes/helicopters in any way, but we have to certify that the material is completely U.S. made.
Or are you speaking of high end projects that demand expensive certified material. Don't misinterpret what I am saying, I can have the Chinese steel I use certified for just about any purpose, the Chinese aren't that selective. They want all of the pie. BUT there are things that will sell at higher prices because MADE WITH US STEEL was in the description.

Only the companies who are regulated or possibly ISO certified require those material in our industry. The engineers might draw it up that way, but when it comes to the bottom line the buyers and the officers might decide Chinese steel isn't bad, which is what we deal with every day.

Can't fix stupid. You can just help it along so that you don't become infected.