Demonstrations in Bangkok have been put down with a brutality not expected from the Land of Smiles. The stock exchange is on fire. Thailand instated a news and power blackout, making the number of killed and wounded hard to assess. Japanese car makers have long been invested in Thailand. Now, they are worried about long-term implications.
Toyota relocated its Bangkok office to a suburb, says The Nikkei [sub]. A week ago, Toyota had announced the closure of a plant near Bangkok.
Honda halted operations at car and motorcycle plants in Thailand today, The Nikkei [sub] reports. Yesterday, Honda’s Bangkok office, has been relocated to a temporary location outside the city. Honda shares fell in Tokyo on the news.
Other companies, such as Ford or GM-Daewoo have plants in other provinces and are not yet affected.
Wonder what this does to Ford’s Asian Production Strategy for the Global T6 Program – the forthcoming replacement the two old Ranger programs a) the NAAO-Ranger, aka P150, and b) Mazda-B-based non-NAAO-Ranger …
Thailand-export production threat was a strong lever to use against the UAW … indeed, the P150 Twin Cities producton was supposed to end by 2011 … but if Thailand blows-up, where will the T6 be produced?
Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico or even Canuckistan come to mind.
Why you worry about that?
That’s not the plan though. AFAIK even for Brazil there were plans to stop production of the Ranger (in Argentina) and S10, and replace them w/ pickups imported from Thailand. Making Thailand a sort of worldwide pickup producing hub.
Nissan for example did it briefly when they launched the new Frontier. They imported it from Thailand and continued producing the old model in Brazil. Eventually they had to produce locally as the market rejected them and didn’t buy the old domestic Frontier nor the new imported one.
Pickups this size (not car derived like Strada, Montana, Saveiro and othe less bought examples) are expensive. The cheapest is the single cab Ranger that goes for around 52K reais (roughly 29K US dollars). This means they sell to a public more educated and less forgiving of keeping old and new lines together (as car makers here love to do). They can pay and prefer to pay high for double cab diesels (that are used as passenger cars). These are only let out the door for a minimum of around 39K US dollars. And I don’t know what this public would think of Thai trucks.
This news though has probably given them pause. And honestly, I think the universe is telling them very strongly to re-think their strategy. At least in Brazil (and one would hope in US and elsewhere too). Maybe it will impede a (colossal/tiny/average-sized?) mistake.
Reason I wonder (not “worry”) is that Ford has a major investment in Thailand (AAT builds the engine and Ford Ranger/Mazda-B vehicles for every market outside the Americas) since the 1990’s …
Plus Ford plans to cease production of the P150-Ranger and to close the US-plant that produces it (don’t know what happens to the SKD plant in S.A.)…
Plus P150-Ranger in the US is still selling better than any competitor except Toyota… present annual rate of about 60k/yr for a truck that didn’t see an update in almost 10 years…
For the US-market: Some think that Ford will try to force customers into a light-duty version of the F-150 (some used to call this the F-100)… I don’t know where that plan stands, but if customers reject a light-duty full-size p/u because they want a stout compact p/u then Ford may have to address this and find a production source…
So, aside from S.A. where T6 will be produced somewere in some form, the AAT plant is the essential production source for the future T6 Ranger … if Thailand blows-up, Ford will have difficulty there…
No worry for me, just a summary of observations and musings…
Marcelo, agreed, that maybe is not the current plan. But if Thailand Chavifies itself (it’s what I think is going on there), then they’ll have to rethink.
@Robert.Walter: is it SKD in Argentina? I thought it was CKD. Also, you haven’t got the new facelift they did down here. It’s so well done (not judging on beauty) that it looks the part as a “all new” truck… until you see the same old interior.
Also, remember that Thailand is a major consumer of this truck as well.
Thailand should be a warning to other nations and corporate entities about what happens when you play footsie with populism instead of actually working to enable your lower- and middle-class:
* Keeping your lower- and middle classes reasonably empowered, such that they can share in propserity and have an opportunity to grow, is good. Sure, you might lose the ability to maximise wealth for the very rich, but as we’ve seen that’s not completely sustainable
* Disenfranchising them is bad.
* Disenfranchising them, but then letting some populist twerps play to them as a way to get votes, and then getting booted out because knee-jerk populism is a bad idea, is horrible. Now you have a bunch of upset people who had a taste of power.
The lesson should be especially apparent to the European extreme Right and Left, as well the Tea Party** in the US (and I’m sure that people thinking about curbing China’s middle class would do well to look at Thailand). There is a huge difference between socialism and populism***: the former is a kind of harm-mitigation strategy; the latter is letting the inmates rule the asylum. Playing to the latter is a dangerous thing, especially since the more extreme of populist policies generally don’t work.
** there is no American left wing.
*** note to Randians: there is a difference. If you can’t see it, it’s a forest-for-the-trees.
I doubt any Asian auto plants in the Southern US are considering pulling up stakes due to active Tea Party elements nearby. They stay put despite shrieking from the very real American left wing outlets that the sky is falling because rightward groups are engaging in exercises of speech and assembly.
We’re talking decades into the future. No, the Tea Party as it stands now is not a real concern.
The Tea Party’s problem—and it’s one shared by anyorganization, left or right, that leverages populism—is that the platform is not really workable. But there are elements of it that very much suit the agenda of people who want to get elected. So they’ll latch onto it, ride it into office, and pander to it.
The problem is that if you give that kind of rampant populism what it wants and then take it away, then the populist wings start acting like spoiled children. This is basically what the modern Tea Party is: a populist movement made up of people who are pissed off because they got their way for eight years and aren’t adjusting well to reality. Communism and Fascism in Eastern Europe played the same game, both pre-war and post-Wall.
Thailand’s Red Shirts are similar, but worse: they’re poor who, for a brief window, had representation under Shinawatra, who did well by them and them by him, even though he was largely self-interested. But his government had serious issues (real ones) and was removed by force. Had the governments before and after his been more willing to improve the lot of the poor this wouldn’t really have been a problem, but it came to a flashpoint because they had a brief taste of enfranchisement.
This is why you want to nip poverty and desperation in the bud, before some twerp leverages it into political power. The current race to the bottom that the western middle class is forced into isn’t helping.
This is basically what the modern Tea Party is: a populist movement made up of people who are pissed off because they got their way for eight years and aren’t adjusting well to reality.
Strange, I have sympathy to the Tea Party because I’m pissed off about what happened for eight years under Bush and is continuing under Obama.
If you want to say, “Oh noes, those people weren’t out in the street when Bush was proposing TARP,” sure, I’ll agree that stupid political solidarity plays a part with lots of people– just like no one is out on the street protesting Obama assassinating US citizens with drones, and otherwise generally engaging in continuing Bush policy on spending, TARP, and everything bailouts in general.
One of Thailand’s problems is that the people from outside the Bangkok elite felt that they couldn’t get ahead if they weren’t from the right area, the right schools, or had the right political connections. I certainly haven’t seen anything that Obama has done to make that better instead of worse.