Interesting (and long) read on the Big 3

[runningman]

REASONS WHY GOVERNMENT SUPPORT FOR THE BIG 3 IS A MUST.

"The following was excerpted from the American Conservative.  This publication has never been what you would call "friendly" to unions.  What they have to say about the Detroit Three is quite interesting."
Please take the time to read it and maybe pass it on!
                                                                                 
PS:  This was published near the end of the Bush administration.
   Over the past two decades, each of the Big Three has been through extensive management changes, downsizing, and layoffs. Chrysler even became part of the German company Daimler, which could not make the acquisition profitable and eventually sold 80 percent of its interest to Cerberus, a private investment fund.
It is difficult to teach an elephant to waltz, but it can be done. While the Big Three have been slow to change, they have adapted well enough that they still hold half the U.S. market share. It is an amazing turnaround.
Consider quality. In 2007, Ford won 102 quality awards, including Auto Pacific's Best in Class for three models and Germany's largest auto magazine's Auto 1 of Europe Award for its S-MAX. Forbes awarded the 2008 Chrysler 300 "the highest-quality car in the near-luxury category" over the Audi A4, BMW 3 Series, Lexus IS, and Mercedes-Benz C Class. Of the 15 global finalists for the 2008 Motor Trend Car of the Year Award, the Big Three manufactured nine, the Japanese four, and the Europeans two. The 2008 winner was GM's Cadillac CTS, which Motor Trend described as "proof that Detroit can still build a world-class sedan."
As for innovation, General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler invest almost $12 billion annually on R&D, making them a major source of technology development. In 2007, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted these three corporations 1,030 patents.
James E. Malackowski, CEO of Ocean Tomo LLC, a merchant bank that specializes in intellectual property products and services, recently compared four of the green, clean, and energy efficient patent portfolios held by the Top 15 global automakers—emission control, catalytic converters, and related chemistry; fuel cells; hybrid/electric vehicles, mostly motor and battery innovation; and emerging related technologies, including solar, wind, and other green inventions.
GM has higher average quality and newer green technology and patents than the other 14 auto manufacturers combined. Together with Ford it holds approximately one-third of all green-technology patents and the related value. Moreover, GM has 70 percent of the patents in the emerging-technology category. This domestic share increases to 85 percent if Ford is added.
Finally, Ford owns 30 percent of all patents with a similar related-value measure in emission-control innovation. These Big Three technologies have great potential for stimulating overall U.S. economic and job growth and creating a greener and more fuel-efficient world.
There is much of value to be saved in this vital industry, but relief has been slow in coming.
When Wall Street recklessly gambled with borrowed monies and lost, federal aid was characterized as a "bailout." The present auto crisis was created by powerful economic forces, many beyond Detroit's control. Federal efforts to save the U.S. auto industry would constitute a "rescue."
The primary causes of the current U.S. auto-industry crisis are threefold:
- A financial freeze in which even well-qualified borrowers are denied credit to buy vehicles;
- Fluctuating oil prices that have driven the price of gasoline from less than $2 per gallon to more than $4 and then back to $2, all in less than 10 months;
- And a consumer panic that has cut retail sales to 15-year lows.
The failure of the U.S. Treasury Department and Securities and Exchange Commission to monitor, let alone regulate, Wall Street has created today's financial wreckage and the resulting consumer panic. And despite the obvious need for a far-sighted energy policy, the last four presidents and Congress have done little but encourage more drilling.
FACT:
The longer-term inability of America's auto industry to export competitive products has its origins in U.S. trade policies that accept closed foreign auto markets and the payments of massive export rebates by other governments to their automakers.
How can U.S. automakers be expected to compete in a world where German producers get a 19 percent export subsidy on every vehicle sold in the United States, China undervalues its currency by up to 50 percent, Japan keeps its auto market tightly closed, and the U.S. government allows South Korean automakers to sell more than 700,000 subsidized vehicles in this market annually, but tolerates Korea's restriction of U.S. imports so tightly that fewer than 7,000 American-made vehicles are sold there each year? The Big Three and the UAW are not at fault for these distortions of competition.

[runningman]

Part 2

The three overarching questions that President-elect Obama and the 111th Congress face are:
A) What will happen if the Big Three are not saved?
Federal inaction would be costly and destructive in ways America has not experienced since the Great Depression. The Center for Automotive Research—appropriately, CAR—projects that a 100 percent closedown of the Big Three auto producers would result in the loss of almost 3 million U.S. jobs in the first year. The majority of those losses would be Main Street jobs distributed across the country that depend on spending by the Big Three—steel, glass, and rubber producers and the 20,000 dealers, who are major purchasers of advertising in local newspapers, radio, television, and other small business services provided by lawyers, accountants, real estate contractors, and landscapers.
A 50 percent reduction in the Big Three's operations would be almost as costly. CAR estimates that 2.47 million jobs would be lost in the first year, 1.5 would still be unfilled in year two, and slightly more than 1 million in year three. The lost revenues from either scenario would devastate federal, state, and local budgets, creating further economic upheavals. CAR estimates that a 100 percent shutdown would cost $156 billion in lost tax receipts and increased transfer payments. A 50 percent shutdown would cost $108 billion.
Job loss is only part of the risk. The U.S. defense industrial base would be greatly weakened if the Big Three failed. The collection of machine tools, robots, production lines, and skilled workers of the auto industry gives the United States the capacity to shift quickly from domestic production to the manufacture of tanks, airplanes, and other war materiel as happened in World Wars I and II. "The foreign auto transplants are not a substitute, for they are mostly facilities for putting together kits manufactured abroad."
B)How much will it cost?
As for the cost of the auto rescue, it is impossible to estimate the final number. Certainly, $38 billion for an operational bridge loan is too little and will require supplements. GM alone has a cash-burn rate of $2 billion per month, and will use its portion of the first loans within months. Yet the earliest that GM says that it can produce its new line of vehicles is 2010. Inevitably, the automakers will be back for more, much like the banks and insurance companies.
As CAR has documented, however, the costs of inaction will also be great. Its estimates of a collapse, moreover, do not include the costs of shifting more than $100 billion of Big Three pension liabilities to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which is currently operating with a $10 billion deficit. Only about a quarter to a third of the Obama administration's proposed stimulus of massive investment infrastructure expenditures will be felt in 2009, half in 2010, and the remainder thereafter. As presently defined, it will have little effect on the Big Three.
They need more sales now. The fastest and surest way to stimulate such activity is for the federal government to give a massive one-to-three-year tax deduction for sales of U.S. vehicles with a high U.S. or North American content, such as 70 percent. This would help clear the dealer backlog and immediately put people to work. It also would allow taxpayers to get great bargains on new vehicles.
Some have suggested that Chapter 11 is the only viable option for the Big Three. But it would create an economic avalanche in which dozens, if not hundreds, of suppliers and dealers would be forced into bankruptcy. No institution other than the federal government is now able to provide the billions of dollars necessary for the industry to operate during reorganization. And at the very moment that these auto giants need to act quickly and be flexible, they would be constrained by a federal judge and trustees to get approval for even the most basic decisions. Those who advocate bankruptcy need only look at the cumbersome and costly Delphi experience, which is now in its fourth year.
C) What is the best way to execute the rescue?
Rescuing the American auto industry will require more than vast sums of public monies. Basic policy changes in trade and tax laws are essential. One of the most difficult, but unavoidable, challenges will be to end the Value Added Tax discrimination faced by the Big Three in both their domestic and foreign markets. Soon after World War II ended, U.S. trade negotiators agreed to allow the rebate of Value Added Taxes on their exports and the imposition of VAT equivalents on their imports of U.S. goods and services. Europe was rebuilt decades ago, but 153 nations now have a VAT, and its average rate is 15.5 percent. Japan has a 5 percent VAT, China's is 17 percent, Germany's is 19 percent, and France imposes 19.6 percent. The economic consequences to the Big Three and other U.S.-based manufacturers have been devastating.

[runningman]

Part 3

When a German automaker exports a vehicle into the U.S. that costs $50,000, for instance, it receives from the German government a 19 percent VAT export rebate, worth about $9,500. But when one of the Big Three exports a $50,000 vehicle to Germany, it must pay the German government a 19 percent, $9,500 VAT-equivalent tax at the dock. Thus the Big Three products are price disadvantaged in both markets. Moreover, these discriminatory VAT rules provide a powerful incentive to outsource production from the United States. In the Tokyo, Uruguay, and Doha trade negotiations, the U.S. Congress instructed
American trade negotiators to eliminate this tax disadvantage, but other governments refused to discuss the issue.
In addition to pressing for the adoption of new global trade rules to end VAT discrimination against U.S. manufacturers, the incoming administration should focus on eliminating the many protectionist national tariff and non-tariff trade barriers crippling the Big Three. India, for example, imposes a 100 percent tariff on imported U.S. vehicles. China's tariff rate is 25 percent.
Korea has long-run national anti-import campaigns that include targeting for tax audits anyone who buys a foreign car. Unless foreign economic protectionism is confronted immediately and at the highest levels of the U.S. government, the American auto industry cannot survive.
Three other principles are essential to the rescue:
First:
Taxpayers should receive substantial equity in these ventures, plus long-term warrants, whose purchase price is set at today's stock values. After all, we are taking the risk. When any public loans are repaid, the terms and conditions should require a sale of those stocks, hopefully at a substantial public profit. Taxpayers made almost a 30 percent profit on the Chrysler loans three decades ago.
Second:
Demands for a reduction in worker pay should be eschewed. The UAW and its members have already made massive wage and benefit concessions in recent negotiations. Delphi is only one example. Almost a century ago, Henry Ford paid his workers a then unheard of $5 per day so they could buy the products they were making, and the auto industry led the way in creating an American middle class. This rescue should not undermine broader efforts to provide secure jobs and benefits, nor should it allow the pitting of well-paid American workers against the penny-wage labor of other countries.
Without question, the UAW has often been smug, arrogant, and inflexible. But rather than punishing it by requiring reduction in its members' pay, we should expect the union to contribute to the rescue. It should enter into a no-strike agreement until the federal loans are paid and invest its $1 billion "rainy day" reserve, commonly called its "strike fund," in the preferred stock of the Big Three until the loans are satisfied. The rainy day has come, and if taxpayers are putting up money to save UAW jobs, so should the union.
While U.S. antitrust laws allowed the UAW to target one company at a time, those same laws prevented the Big Three from negotiating together on an industry-wide contract. Any rescue should permit the Big Three and UAW to negotiate an industry wage and benefit package.
Third:
Executive pay at the Big Three should be capped at some simple multiple of the average annual pay of Big Three workers, such as 10 or 15 to 1, with any bonuses being provided in corporate stock, at least until any federal loans are paid off.  Also, the Big Three executive pension funds should be required to have at least a majority of its capital invested in Big Three stock. The goal, of course, is to create a common incentive for labor and management to work together.
As of mid-November 2008, the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve had advanced $2 trillion to salvage the financial wreck created by Wall Street.  In late November, the FDIC announced that it was ready to loan another $1.4 trillion to stabilize the banks. The  administration and Congress seem to have no limits to their concern about Wall Street.
The Big Three automakers, their suppliers, and dealers are on Main Street. They employ millions of workers and provide essential goods for American consumers. If the Big Three fail, an economic tsunami will quickly roll across the United States, destroying jobs, incomes, and national confidence at historic levels. The challenges faced by the new administration at that point would be similar not to those faced by Franklin Roosevelt, but to those that confronted Herbert Hoover in the first years of the Great Depression.
In this instance, what is good for General Motors is good for America. 
__________________________________________
Pat Choate is director of the Manufacturing Policy Project. His most recent book is Dangerous Business: The Risks of Globalization for America.

[WINGR]

Well said, why can't they see this??? 

[dodgecharger-fan]

If nothing else, those last three points would go a long way to sorting things out.

[Ghoste]

That is an interesting article and well thought out, I'm not sure that some of his points would ever be taken to heart by all the parties that need to but...

[Mike DC]

 
Detroit will be saved when Detroit is ready to out-quality Japan by a good wide margin.  It's that simple.

     

[Green71R/T]

Just my opinion ,I think the horrible dealer experiences i hear about is the Big 3's biggest stumbling block to success.If they would treat their customers like long term relationships instead of trying to make a quick buck i believe they would be more successful.

[Ghoste]

Is that the dealers fault or the manufacturer?

[PocketThunder]

Part 3

When a German automaker exports a vehicle into the U.S. that costs $50,000, for instance, it receives from the German government a 19 percent VAT export rebate, worth about $9,500. But when one of the Big Three exports a $50,000 vehicle to Germany, it must pay the German government a 19 percent, $9,500 VAT-equivalent tax at the dock. Thus the Big Three products are price disadvantaged in both markets. Moreover, these discriminatory VAT rules provide a powerful incentive to outsource production from the United States. In the Tokyo, Uruguay, and Doha trade negotiations, the U.S. Congress instructed
American trade negotiators to eliminate this tax disadvantage, but other governments refused to discuss the issue.

This just does not make sense to me.  Why doesn't our Gov't charge foreign automakers this VAT tax for incoming autos? 

[Ghoste]

Because in the heart of capitalism and the free market economy, people pray to that mantra like a religion.  It's survival of the fittest-period.  In other countries, they believe in survival of themselves while the US blindly clings to the quaint notion that everyone else wants to be like them and they'll all play by the same rules in the interest of capitalism.

[Ghoste]

 
Detroit will be saved when Detroit is ready to out-quality Japan by a good wide margin.  It's that simple.

     

I don't think that would be enough; the media would also have to quit hammering the superior Japanese quality myth into the public perception before people would be open to even considering the US being able to "out-quality" Japan.

[Mike DC]

 


Detroit's record will change as soon as they want it to badly enough.  Do it consistently + do it with too large of a margin over Japan to ignore + do it for a decade before the benefits show.  That's all it takes. 




Here's the point that I think we overlook when excusing Detriot's problems: 

Making cars last for 150,00-200,000 miles is not a technological achievement, it's a management decision.  Either the top brass DECIDES to invest in making it happen, or they DECIDE not to.  They'll get the bad quality perception solved when they make it a high enough priority. 

   

[Green71R/T]

The manufacturers provide the sales and management training to the dealers.Therefore the manufacturer's set the tone for how the dealer's operate.Some dealers get the concept of customer service and repeat business but to me it seems to be the exception not the norm.

[b5blue]

First I would like to thank Runningman....THANKS! Next I agree! Thirdly the rest of the world builds better cars.....FOR ME TO POOP ON!!! I see NO 40 year old Jap cars...Much less cool ones. (Yes I kicked 240Z's with a Vega GT!) 

[Mike DC]

 
Who said anything about sports cars that still look cool after 40 years? 


Detroit is struggling to convince the public that they can build an econobox sedan that lasts 6 years.   

 

[b5blue]

Econo? I'm talkin I been kickin imports for 38 years and counting and laffing my butt off....and doing it with all 3 of the big 3. Put 200K on some of them too! (OK not the Chevys  ) Bottom line is they have kept us out of their market and we didn't. If Toyota had to deal with the same thing here that the big 3 do there, the picture would be completely different. I really don't get your point....6 year econo box? Your talking to a guy that rather pay 30 grand for a old MoPar and run it into the ground then pay 30 grand for a Toyota new. It's all good, I don't care who drives what, but the field should be level, and the rules the same, if we are gonna start comparing, they haven't been for 40 years.         

[Mike DC]

 
What is "kicking import butt?" 


I'm talking about keeping the Detroit companies in black ink and making a product that doesn't embarrass our country.  Selling a few more cars overseas won't fix the quality problems that run off american buyers, and it won't get Detroit's eyes back on the ball about where the future of the industry is headed.

[b5blue]

Well Mike it's like this, I stopped buying imports in the 80s, all I can tell you is American cars have done me fine. I have not had any of the boogabos others gripe about. They gave me service far past what I expected. When they did malfunction they still got me home, some kept going albeit "limping" till I could repair or "get repaired". Total costs for buying and repairs, running expenses ect. all fine. AKA kicked butt, "6 years", some were over 6 when I bought them. I've watched friends buy new, wear out and replace imports (due to high cost of repairs) all wile I keep racking up more miles. I don't get your point. My American cars if anything made me proud...to be American. So yea some kicked import butt by saving me money, some kicked butt by performing well enough to keep some A-hole from causing a wreck, others just good old fashion kicked that imports butt in a race. Sounds like you imply the American car company's can't make a "good" car, I've counted on them and they came through for me for at LEAST the last 20 years. (by the way my Chargers been doing all 3 of those things for quite some time now)   

[426HemiCharger]

I'm sorry but if Chrysler goes out of business its their own fault.  I asked them to accapt a Charger design I created and I got a form letter with a policy that states in frank terms " Your the customer, you don't know anything, we can't do anything you say to do, too bad so sad"


Well, Chrysler I told you so. Who's to blame here huh?

[Mike DC]

Well Mike it's like this, I stopped buying imports in the 80s, all I can tell you is American cars have done me fine. I have not had any of the boogabos others gripe about. They gave me service far past what I expected. When they did malfunction they still got me home, some kept going albeit "limping" till I could repair or "get repaired". Total costs for buying and repairs, running expenses ect. all fine. AKA kicked butt, "6 years", some were over 6 when I bought them. I've watched friends buy new, wear out and replace imports (due to high cost of repairs) all wile I keep racking up more miles. I don't get your point. My American cars if anything made me proud...to be American. So yea some kicked import butt by saving me money, some kicked butt by performing well enough to keep some A-hole from causing a wreck, others just good old fashion kicked that imports butt in a race. Sounds like you imply the American car company's can't make a "good" car, I've counted on them and they came through for me for at LEAST the last 20 years. (by the way my Chargers been doing all 3 of those things for quite some time now)

 
I know what you're getting at, but I don't wanna start debating whether domestic or foreign cars are better with a series of personal anecdotes.  I could give you more than one case of getting 200+ out of an american vehicle myself too, but that's not the point.  The bottom line is the overall trend:  American cars have lagged behind the japanses cars for decades in reliability.  They have radically closed the gap in recent years, but it's still too little and MUCH, MUCH too late.  The public's mind has been made up and Detroit earned this bad image honestly.

What I am saying is that making an automobile last for 150-200K is not some huge technological achievment.  The vast majority of the issues are just the degree of compromises being made at the component & assembly stages.  All brands compromise but some do more than others.  These are MANAGEMENT DECISIONS, not engineering achievements.  

Detroit has almost always won out over imports in term of cool and fun and trendy categories.  And they make some of the fastest/most powerful/strongest stuff too.  Detroit will stop losing to Japan in quality as soon as they DECIDE to.

[runningman]

First I would like to thank Runningman....THANKS! Next I agree! Thirdly the rest of the world builds better cars.....FOR ME TO POOP ON!!! I see NO 40 year old Jap cars...Much less cool ones. (Yes I kicked 240Z's with a Vega GT!) 

  Most of you know that I work for Chrysler so I am just a little biased    My dad, dad's mom and my mom's dad all retired from Chrysler so we always had Chrysler products in our driveway.  We really haven't had any issues with our vehicles except in the 80's with an Omni.  We have gone through many changes over the past 14 years that I have been working for Chrysler.  I believe we had around 80K UAW members employed when I started and the latest figure I have seen stated around 27K before the latest round of buyouts that ends next week.  We had representatives from Fiat in our plant on Thursday and they were pretty impressed with what we are able to accomplish with the current manpower.  We have 10 people running our 3.7 block machining line while they said a comparable line of theirs would require about 25.  I think we started with numbers in that range when this facility opened about 9 years ago. 

[426HemiCharger]

Runningman that is the problem, all the UAW workers, they're the tick on a deer. They'll suck the money out and screw Chrysler for years!!

[Mike DC]

 
I think the UAW itself is more uncompromising than the individual workers in it would choose to be. 


Show me one autoworker who wouldn't gladly accept a pay cut in exchange for being assured his job another decade. 

   

[runningman]

That is the attitude with the majority at work, we have no problem doing whatever it takes to keep everything going.  Pay cuts are coming along with other concessions....