Why did the WTO and Free Trade Agreements decimate American Industry

[crazytown]

Last edited Sat May 11, 2019, 10:50 AM - Edit history (4)

when over the same period, German Industry has gone from strength to strength, WTO and all?

How about what the German’s call the Mitbestimmung - the legal right of workers to participate in management of the companies they work for? From the Board where 40% of Directors must be worker representatives, to the factory floor, business is required to consult, inform and negotiate on every significant decision.

So here’s the question, would GM have moved it’s plants over the border to Mexico, if the UAW had had a right to participate in those decisions? Volkswagen has kept production lines at home. You won’t read about the next Mercedes SUV, shipping from brand new plant in Bulgaria.

[watoos]

1. and Germany is much more unionized than the U.S.

Private sector unions make up like 6% of the US work force.

Americans work more hours, get less vacation, make less hourly wages than German workers.

[crazytown]

2. Son an Apples to Apples Comparions,

German Industrial Wages are 40% higher. The tax system claws that back but returns it in healthcare and retirement income.

[beachbum bob]

3. US tax structure for starters

which gave benefit to corporations to offshore everything, the "anti-union" sentiment that is promote media wide, the ridiculous cost of the DOD and the US healthcare industry.

working people don't stand a chance in america

[shanny]

4. +1

[beachbum bob]

5. ignorance in america on the tax code couldn't be worse than it is

I believe corporate lobbyist spend like over $5 billion a year in Washington, do the math. How much is that for each of the 528 congress and senators?

The return on that $5 billion is in the TRILLIONS. All in the tax code and govt spend

[vlyons]

6. Corporate capitalism doesn't give a damn about anything except

the next quarterly profit report. They don't care about workers, consumer safety, the environment, nothing.

[crazytown]

7. Germany has corporate capitalism.

Business didn’t ship the jobs to Romania.

[moondust]

8. "codetermination"

Basically "participatory management" where labor is a bit more than wage slaves to be exploited by management and shareholders for maximum profit. Labor is unlikely to vote to offshore their own jobs or suppress their own wages.

In 2016 Theresa May talked about implementing some of these ideas in the U.K. but I haven't heard anything about it since then.

Codetermination in Germany

[crazytown]

9. I doubt the Worker Representatives on the Board

would see themselves as wage slaves. The proof of the pugging is the eating.

[riverine]

10. They didn't. It is a populist myth. Post NAFTA auto makers streamed into the US South.

If NAFTA killed US automakers why did so many Euro/Japanese/Korean auto makers move to GA/AL/SC etc?

Automation killed/moved millions of jobs.

[crazytown]

11. While GM was winding down the Cruze in Lordstown

it was ramping up the Blazer assembly lines in Ramos Arizpe.


In 2016 both Lordstown and Ramos were producing the Cruze. GM had to decide where to put the Blazer. They chose Ramos, and left Lordstown on death row.

[riverine]

12. Mexico has the most liberal trade policies in the world

An auto made there can be shipped tariff free to Japan for instance.

That same auto made in the USA has heavy Japanese tariffs - thanks to those idiots who killed President Obama's TPP.

[Humanist_Activist]

14. That doesn't seem to be helping them much, on top of that, it took until this year for them...

to finally have the right to organize.

https://www.vox.com/2019/5/1/18523972/may-day-2019-mexico-labor-reform

[Humanist_Activist]

13. I thought they did that to manufacture cars where they are going to sell them...

i.e. build plants across the ocean to save money in shipping overseas. Granted they targeted states with the weakest worker protections open their plants at.

[riverine]

15. Well sure they want to be near buyers.

Location and the lack of tariffs are driving factors on where to build plants.

Direct labor is less than 5% of the cost of an auto.

Mexico also trumps the U.S. on free trade. It has agreements with 45 countries, meaning low tariffs for exporting globally. That, along with low labor costs, convinced Audi to build an SUV factory in the state of Puebla. The German automaker will save $6,000 per vehicle in tariffs when it ships a Q5 to Europe, compared with building the same vehicle in the U.S., says Sean McAlinden, chief economist at CAR.

Audi also sells the Q5 in the U.S., where tariffs on cars built in Mexico were dropped under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-your-next-car-could-be-made-in-mexico/

[Martin Eden]

16. My 2016 VW Golf was built in Mexico

Nevertheless, Germany does have a much better model for inclusiveness and consideration for the industrial work force.

In the USA the real problem is a highly dysfunctional political system which concentrates wealth and power in fewer hands at the top.

I was an opponent of the trade agreements because the playing field isn't level when worker benefits and environmental protections are so unequal.

However, we should want a higher standard of living for people in poor countries. Germany has done a much better job at maintaining their own standards within these free trade agreements.

[former9thward]

17. "Volkswagen has kept it's production lines at home."

Ahh, no they didn't. Volkswagen has factories all over the globe including one in non union Tennessee.

it has 61 production plants and factories in fifteen European countries, along with six countries in the Americas, Asia, and Africa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Volkswagen_Group_factories

[crazytown]

18. Of course VW has set up plants to service other continent

The reference to keeping production at home was about the EU. VW, as not open a new EU location outside BRD since reunification in 1992.

[former9thward]

19. Untrue.

Just a quick glance at my link shows plants opening in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Portugal and Spain -- all after 1992. You said they keep production at home. Now you say the EU. The fact is the majority of their plants are outside of Germany. They have been happy to take advantage of the WTO.

[crazytown]

20. I accept. your point.

My Memories were false. I would still argue there is a sudden end between setting up plant to service new markets (after the fall of the communism for example) and shifting production across a boarder, then importing most it back into the communities you abandoned.

GM ain’t in Mexico to sell vehicles to Mexico.