Back on June 20, this blog entry about the impact of Chinese cars that might be imported to the U.S. 10 or 20 years from now stirred up 25 comments. Today’s New York Times Magazine carries an article on the same topic.
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OK, but did you see this New York Times article?
The Level of Discourse Continues to Slide
Speaking of Powerpoint, In the recent edition of Wired, David Byrne and Edward Tufte share some “opposing powerpoints.”
In his book “Lies and the Lying Liers that Tell Them: A Fair and Balance Look at the Right,” Al Franken surveyed journalists’ on various issues and compared the results to the general public. He found journalists were much more in favor about free trade and speculated it’s because their jobs aren’t likely to go overseas.
And as I type this, the three biggest employers in the region are working on ways to outsource more skilled labor to Asia because the wages for those jobs are less than 10% of the US. Although being able to afford a 737 is something I’ve fantasized about, this is not what I had in mind…
Recently in Germany, the maybe biggest shipping of industrial technology from one country to another:
About 800 Chinese workers deassemble 12 hours/6 days a week in just one year’s time a huge “steel manufacturing plant” (which employed 25 years ago 27.000 people) with a total weight of 250.000 t into its parts and send it in 3.000 ship containers to China, where they are put together to an more efficient plant again (the whole think looks rusty and rotten, but that’s how heavy industry tech looks, despite of this that’s where all the steel for cars, bridges, buildings etc. comes from).
Why they bought an old plant instead of building a new one? Cheaper (about EUR 700 Million), better quality (that isn’t made today anymore), and ready for production in about 3-4 years (vs. double of that time for building a new plant from scratch).
So it’s not just import, but also export…
Ooops, should probably read “factory” instead of “plant”. I’m improving my English…
As more and more high tech manufacturing as well as design and engineering starts getting offshored/outsourced, the only area unaffected so far seems to be that of show business (also, the only area of the economy with a trade surplus – net exporter). The obvious stuff – movies, tv, music, etc. And not so obvious stuff – marketing (brands), markets (stock exchanges), higher education, etc. If you understand this, you should be able to answer for yourself: “Where do you want to go today?”