Tariffs: Saving American Jobs Since...Wait, What?

[Dave70968]

Harley was dead in the 80s, Reagan put a import tax on motorcycles over 800cc so they could compete. That's why you see Honda making 750cc cruiser bikes. Harley is JUNK. Outdated, overpriced, and protected to stay in business. I agree with tRidoit, we employ cheap labor, buy from countries where the people are poor, and want there products for nothing.

I spent most of my formative years in Centerville, OH, a suburb of Dayton. C'ville PD bought a whole new fleet of Honda bikes for their motorcycle officers. A bit of time passed, and somebody got the bright idea that "we're an American PD, we ought to be riding American bikes." So they replaced the whole fleet again, this time, with Harleys.

To a man, every officer liked the Hondas better.

Honda bikes are made just up the road from Dayton, in Marysville, OH (in fact, when I was doing my flight training, I landed in Marysville a time or two).

Idiots.

 

[Shadowrider]

See also: energy costs, transportation costs (remember, Austria doesn't have ocean ports), taxes (notoriously high in Europe), and that "~2½ times their annual wage" was an American number; it's going to be considerably higher in Europe (again with the taxes)....

But you already said shipping costs were cheap? Transportation is different?

And yes, at one of the companies I worked at our parent plant (the one we reported to) was based in Celle, West Germany (at that time). When the wall came down, man were they ever pissed! Their taxes shot through the stratosphere due to them having to bail out East Germany with basically nothing in return. No manufacturing capability to speak of, resources, infrastructure was a shambles, etc. Their taxation was already high due to their basically being a countrywide union. Their tech/engineering educational system was what amounted to a multi-year apprenticeship program AFTER they finished school. And they still had people working their entire career at a single company which used to be commonplace here. East had nothing resembling any of that.

 

[Dave70968]

But you already said shipping costs were cheap? Transportation is different?

And yes, at one of the companies I worked at our parent plant (the one we reported to) was based in Celle, West Germany (at that time). When the wall came down, man were they ever pissed! Their taxes shot through the stratosphere due to them having to bail out East Germany with basically nothing in return. No manufacturing capability to speak of, resources, infrastructure was a shambles, etc. Their taxation was already high due to their basically being a countrywide union. Their tech/engineering educational system was what amounted to a multi-year apprenticeship program AFTER they finished school. And they still had people working their entire career at a single company which used to be commonplace here. East had nothing resembling any of that.

I should have said road transportation to the port. Shipping costs by vehicle, from highest to lowest, are air > truck > rail > sea. Sea is so cheap, in fact, that going from the east coast of the US to the west coast, it's cheaper to put it on a boat and go through the Panama Canal than it is to go by rail, despite the extra distance.

 

[dennishoddy]

I spent most of my formative years in Centerville, OH, a suburb of Dayton. C'ville PD bought a whole new fleet of Honda bikes for their motorcycle officers. A bit of time passed, and somebody got the bright idea that "we're an American PD, we ought to be riding American bikes." So they replaced the whole fleet again, this time, with Harleys.

To a man, every officer liked the Hondas better.

Honda bikes are made just up the road from Dayton, in Marysville, OH (in fact, when I was doing my flight training, I landed in Marysville a time or two).

Idiots.

All of my family rode Harley Electra Glides, and when I married, the inlaws did as well. I was the odd ball out as usual, and my first was an RD-250 Yamaha screamer. Went to a 450 Honda, Yamaha YZ 250 Ice Racer for short courses, then ventured into the GT 750 water buffalo for a drag racing spree, and finally settled into a Gold Wing.
It only took letting a relative to ride a gold wing one time and they sold those harleys.
I've always said that Harley spare parts business would be the greatest business to be in as all one would have to do is drive on the shoulders of highways and pick up the parts that vibrated off........

 

[MacFromOK]

I have a neighbor that has been a motorcycle mechanic on the side for around 40 years.

Shortly after we first met, (mid '70s) he said if you like to tinker with stuff, get a Harley... if you just want to ride a bike, get a Honda.

 

[dennishoddy]

In the 1980s, American steelmakers needed 10.1 man-hours to produce a ton of steel; now they need 1.5 man-hours (see chart above), says Joe Innace of S&P Global Platts. Most American steel is now made at super-efficient mini mills, which use electric arc furnaces to turn scrap metal into steel. (Traditional integrated steel mills make steel from scratch, feeding iron ore and coking coal into blast furnaces.)

Some mini-mills need just 0.5 man-hours to produce a ton of steel, Innace says. Increased productivity means today’s steel mills don’t need as many workers. Steel industry employment peaked at 650,000 in 1953. By the start of this year, U.S. steelmakers employed just 143,000.

Someone should tell Trump about Voestalpine AG’s steel plant in Austria, which reveals the reality of steel production and jobs. A Bloomberg News story from June 20, 2017 offered a fascinating look at how a modern plant can now produce high-quality steel with few workers. The plant in Donawitz, a two-hour drive from Vienna, needs all of 14 employees to make 500,000 tons of steel wire a year. The same mill in the 1960s would have needed as many as 1,000 workers to produce a similar amount albeit of lesser quality.

“We have to forget steel as a core employer,” Voestalpine CEO Wolfgang Eder told Bloomberg. “In the long run we will lose most of the classic blue-collar workers, people doing the hot and dirty jobs in coking plants or around the blast furnaces. This will all be automated.” Voestalpine long ago concluded it couldn’t compete with the low-cost blast furnaces of the Chinese and others. So it has invested in technology to reduce costs while competing to make high-quality niche products. The so-called U.S. mini-mills have done something similar to stay competitive. Tariffs will let those mills raise prices and profits, but they won’t add much more than a token number of new jobs.

The policy point is that Mr. Trump’s tariffs are trying to revive a world of steel production that no longer exists. He is taxing steel-consuming industries that employ 6.5 million and have the potential to grow more jobs to help a declining industry that employs only 140,000.

This post is the exact reason that steel production went overseas. The unions, just like GM had huge unfunded retirement expenses, and they opposed technology, knowing it was going to cost jobs. Eventually it killed them, short story.
Every major manufacturing company in the world has had to deal with emerging technology that increases production yet reduces the workforce.......in the actual people on the floor.
Technology generates new jobs in the programming and specialized maintenance of the new tech as well as those that are planners record keepers, etc.
No, it won't get back to the numbers of floor workers like machinists and steel workers, but it will bring good paying jobs back to the US.
Trumps assumption is that if we need steel, aluminum, batteries, etc in a chaotic or world upset, we have the production and means to produce it here and not have to go to other countries to get it. I agree.

 

[Shadowrider]

I should have said road transportation to the port. Shipping costs by vehicle, from highest to lowest, are air > truck > rail > sea. Sea is so cheap, in fact, that going from the east coast of the US to the west coast, it's cheaper to put it on a boat and go through the Panama Canal than it is to go by rail, despite the extra distance.

That's really hard to wrap your head around. I mean I can see it due to certain temporary economic circumstances, but not long term.

 

[Shadowrider]

And FWIW, Harley has come a long way since the AMF days. They're pretty solid actually, but still no Honda or BMW.

 

[Rooster1971]

All of my family rode Harley Electra Glides, and when I married, the inlaws did as well. I was the odd ball out as usual, and my first was an RD-250 Yamaha screamer. Went to a 450 Honda, Yamaha YZ 250 Ice Racer for short courses, then ventured into the GT 750 water buffalo for a drag racing spree, and finally settled into a Gold Wing.
It only took letting a relative to ride a gold wing one time and they sold those harleys.
I've always said that Harley spare parts business would be the greatest business to be in as all one would have to do is drive on the shoulders of highways and pick up the parts that vibrated off........

I’d rather have a 1965 Elecra than any others you listed put together. It was made from American metal in America.

 

[Dave70968]

That's really hard to wrap your head around. I mean I can see it due to certain temporary economic circumstances, but not long term.

Economies of scale, plus the boat can get up to speed and stay there for almost the whole trip; even trains have to slow down or stop frequently.

Information courtesy of my sister, who is a business process consultant and had BNSF as one of her biggest clients. Even they admitted they couldn't compete with sea on price over the long haul. Their big advantages are speed and the ability to service inland terminals. Trucks are faster yet, and even more flexible, and air owns the speed race, at tremendous cost.

One of these days, somebody--probably Burt Rutan and Richard Branson--are going to give us suborbital ballistic shipping, and we'll have a new definition of speed...and an even bigger increase in cost.