[TheForge] Second Rate USA?

[Andrew Vida]

ries wrote:
> Cat has had a joint venture factory in Japan since 1962.
> Cat has had a joint venture with mitsubishi to make forklifts together 
> since 1972.
> Cat has a dozen factories in China, as well as factories all over the 
> world.
> So the globalisation of CAT is far from a new thing.

	Nor is globalization anything new.   Been going on for centuries, but 
its nature is changing and not all of it is good IMO.  I see nothing 
wrong with manufacturing Caterpillar equipment in China for sale in the 
east Asian markets and perhaps Australia.  But manufacturing it there 
for resale in the USA... that I have some problem with for several reasons.

	I think Honda, Toyota, etc. were very astute in opening factories in 
the USA for their cars to be sold here.  I wonder how sound it is to be 
sending those back to Japan for sale.  Might be OK, but I don't see it 
offhand, especially given the current costs of transportation.
> 
> But I wasnt saying that american companies were not global- Lincoln 
> Welder, for example, has many more factories in China, Europe, and 
> overseas than they do here-

	Lincoln almost went out of business "globalizing".  It took Don 
Hastings some 2 or three years to SELL Lincoln out of the debt that his 
predecessor (imbecile CEO) put them into.
> 
> What I was saying was that CAT still does make a lot of machines here in 
> the USA, and exports them to other countries.
> We were discussing whether ALL american manufacturing jobs were gone- 
> and I was simply saying, no, companies like CAT still do make things 
> here, big, heavy expensive things, and export them.

	Certainly this is so.  The problem is largely one of technology.  We 
can now produce with 10 people what once took 1000.  As with anything, 
the sword has two edges... probably helps more than it hurts, but that 
is small consolation to those who feel the pinch.  OTOH, in a free 
nation, those who are hurt are free to go out and invent a better 
mousetrap.  One of the things that I object to, though, is the crap that 
comes to us from China - particularly in the form of tainted foods.  I 
don't trust those people to the door where such things are concerned. 
They seem happy selling us contaminated foods every now and again.  THis 
used to be a big no-no here.  The attitude appears to have changed 
radically in the past 15 years.

> Similarly, there are a pair of John Deere 9030 500hp tracked (not 
> wheeled) tractors in the field across from me today. Those puppies, I am 
> pretty sure, are still made in Waterloo- but all the small John Deere 25 
> hp tractors are actually rebadged Yanmars from Japan. This has been 
> going on for at least 20 years or so.
> 
> Sad, but true, economic facts of life.

	Life isn't as simple as it once was.  It takes a lot more 
sophistication to succeed anymore - the downside of computerization in 
some ways, though given the rate at which we eat the planet, efficiency 
is now a real issue - more so than it had been even 20 years ago.