Yesterday, we had a post about far-reaching plans of GM. They wanted to sell exactly 17,335 made-in-China cars in the U.S.—by 2011. And triple that audacious number (51,546) by 2014. Or so they say in a (supposedly) confidential 12-page presentation to members of Congress. Trouble is, nobody really knows who will make the cars.
Gasgoo says today, “Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (Group) (SAIC), GM’s Chinese partner, said it hasn’t got such information from GM yet.” Mei you! Never heard of it. Could it be that someone just wants to rattle the UAW’s cage? If that’s the case, then the colleagues in Shanghai blew their cover. Or, less sinister, but more likely, does the left hand have no knowledge of the actions of the right? Or maybe, the cuts are so deep that they sent the P.O. by slow boat to China?
with the dreadful amount of US treasury bonds the Chinese already hold I doubt the Obama administration is all that happy about GM intentionally, directly boosting the coffers of the Chinese in such a blatant manner. At worst sending jobs to Canada or Mexico is acceptable but to replace Western jobs directly with Chinese jobs?
Does GM want to be the Walmart of the US car industry?
Audacious number? Is that sarcasm? These are such small numbers that they’re hardly worth talking about.
A million plus would be an audacious number.
On the jobs front, bottom line is that the U.S. needs to do a better job of figuring out what a viable U.S. economy would look like, and then better preparing its people for skilled work in this economy. Persistently large trade and budget deficits and out of control healthcare and legal spending suggest that this hasn’t been happening.
Focusing on jobs per se will just create a bunch of undesireable, inefficient jobs. This is a proven route to failure.
GM bailouts subsidizing job exports:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-l-borosage/whats-good-for-general-mo_b_202706.html
@ BS
Keep an eye on this story for us. It could well be the first time something has been denied during the story’s first appearance, only for it to be confirmed a few days later.
This would not constitute a reversal of the usual trend of “reversals” however.
Mind games or water torture?
Michael Karesh I am sure the audacious comment was sarcasm. I can’t see why this trial balloon of a statement is anything to even notice. I mean GM already has Korean cars in its mix at a far greater volume. They suck and don’t sell. So what does it matter if they start importing from China, Vietnam, or Antarctica? The cars will still suck and not sell.
AWD-03 Especially since this is BS, yeah, it’s sarcasm.
I haven’t seen the original document. Any chance these are monthly figures? GM can’t profitably sell anything at the above volumes.
This really doesn’t surprise me. GM has been moving in this direction for years now. It’s even been said here a bunch of time, moving the HQ to China and shipping cars from there. This has probably been a plan for a long time, GM is just great at not communicating with itself.
That’s not a lot of cars. They could ship tooling over there and start making them in a years time. Maybe they are planning to send over the Chinese Buick’s, they sell in pitiful numbers like that. Do they sell any models over there that are identical to the ones they sell in America and would meet crash regs. They could just dump in a federalized engine and then ship them in here. American Malibus mixed in with Chinese ones, I bet some people wouldn’t even notice it on the sticker. Or God forbid Volt’s coming from China, they might make a dime on them if they did that.
Does GM want to be the Walmart of the US car industry?
Yes they do and they kind of already are.
@Karesh:
Like they care. “Saving” those redundant jobs means winning their votes, and the votes of their friends and all who support them.
Unless they plan on selling cars at Ferrari prices, it would make no sense to pay the costs of federalizing such a small number of cars. There’s no way to make money on that.
Of course, this is GM we’re talking about here. Honestly, I’m not sure what it’s supposed to mean, except that it’s a lie, in that they plan on selling far more than that, but that they can’t admit it.
Then again, if someone else starts running the joint, all of this planning won’t matter anyway, because their new overlords are going to make all of these sorts of decisions. Until we see where GM’s ownership ends up, I would assume that all of these plans are irrelevant, because the current group of planners will have no power to make them stick.
TonyJZX :
May 13th, 2009 at 2:33 am
with the dreadful amount of US treasury bonds the Chinese already hold
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Good news: the entire amount of American debt that the Chinese has accumulated for the last 30 years is only 1/3 of Obama & Co.’s deficit for year 2009. So, they are insignificant to the American economy.
Bad news: guess?
@ 97escort
Thanks for the Huffpo link. For me, this was also an interesting article;
Some Auto Manufacturers Bailed Themselves Out By Switching To Wind
US entrepreneurs are out there somewhere. Ha, who knew that?
Michael Karesh :
May 13th, 2009 at 4:56 am
On the jobs front, bottom line is that the U.S. needs to do a better job of figuring out what a viable U.S. economy would look like, and then better preparing its people for skilled work in this economy.
——————————————–
You are putting it too lightly.
The bottom line is that car assembly is a job that doesn’t require much education. Anyone can do it with very minimal training. Chinese workers will be glad to do it for US$5/hour with no benefits.
Maybe African workers will do it for US$0.50/hour.
What is that picture ? One congressman, one auto executive, and one wall street banker ? (Obviously, not in that order.) LOL
Does GM want to be the Walmart of the US car industry?
That would be a fantastic achievement for GM: Being the Walmart of anything.
Walmart does not burn tax money.