this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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What?
We make about 150,000 vehicles a month in America...
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DAUPSA
We sell about 150,000,000
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA
If Biden if fucking over every other American to "protect" a few thousands jobs....
That's a bad choice.
For damn near everyone except the executives of companies who make most of their vehicles in Mexico anyways.
Like, if Biden is doing this to protect jobs, it's protecting jobs that went to Mexico decades ago.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/889529/mexico-automotive-production-volume/
This isn't a few thousand jobs, auto manufacturing in the u.s. employs millions and millions more work in services or industries dependent on it.
Also union auto jobs keep wages high for other unskilled labor as it puts upward pressure on employers as they compete for workers, eg. Amazon may have to increase wages to compete with a unionized auto plant that got a raise with the recent negotiation, otherwise people might choose to work there. If that auto plant goes under though, or moves over to China, then there's a surplus of workers who need a job so amazon can lower wages cause they know they're desperate, this is how the middle class collapses.
Globalization encourages a race to the bottom for wages which hurts workers. That's why free trade deals like NAFTA/USMCA will have minimum wages put on auto manufacturing, and why it's better for cars to be manufactured in Mexico then in China, where no such minimum wage exists. Chinese cars aren't cheaper because their manufacturers are more efficient, its because their workers are more exploited.
We do need to transition away from gas cars, ideally to public transit, but absent that we can encourage EV adoption with subsidies and discourage gas car purchases with taxes without destroying the middle class.
So why dont we have tarrifs on the ones that are produced in Mexico too?
That's the problem with "moderates" you can't argue with consistent logic.
You have to fliflop back and forth and sometimes argue the exact opposite.
If this is to protect US jobs, and that's a good thing, why don't every foreign country have tariffs? Why let American corporations send the jobs to Mexico?
Have a look at that NAFTA replacement agreement. There's provisions in there specifically to put upwards pressure on Mexican wages.
Wow, can we get anything like that for American auto workers?
We have that. They're called unions. Of course, that's also at risk, since half the population seems OK with breaking union power.
Mexico is not China.
It is in our best interest to have a stable and economically improving neighbor on our southern border.
Your all or nothing / black or white view of the world is extremely childish & naive. Simple solutions to complex problems are just how politicians manipulate those who don't want to think to hard. Stop pretending that global trade policy is a simple solution arena & try thinking a little harder.
No it makes sense...
Neoliberals care about executive pay, not worker pay.
So they make up bullshit reasons about why American job less is only bad if it's executives losing profit, not about workers losing jobs.
Everything makes perfect sense except when youre trying to explain about how it's for the best interest of American workers, most of whom aren't auto workers.
Political extremists, such as yourself, are exhausting.
It's like talking to a religious fanatic, there's no reasoning with someone who's made a decision based on emotion instead of logic.
Yeah, shit like that.
Calling someone "an extremist" for caring about average Americans more than billionaires.
It's got to be exhausting constantly flip flipping. Trying to act like Republicans are the worst thing ever, except progressives.
Somehow if people get more help than you think they deserve, it has to loop back around and be worse than republicans.
You can lose to republicans all day every day, but if progressives beat you just a few times, you'll never get political power back.
Neoliberalism is extreme as fuck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Boys
Did you read my full comment or just the first sentence, cause I did go on to explain why I think manufacturing in Mexico is better. Ideally cars would be manufactured in the u.s. but I'm not going to let the good be the enemy of the great.
Also along with the minimum wage as part of the USMCA there is also better union provisions for Mexico in it as well which allows the UAW to try and organize Mexican auto workers with independent unions to raise wages.
https://www.wardsauto.com/industry-news/uaw-reaching-across-border-support-mexican-auto-workers
You can't do that in China because there's only the CCP associated state run unions with little negotiation power by the workers to raise there wages.
Just a small correction: The sales numbers are 15 million, not 150 million.
2nd correction: that 15 million number is for ALL car sales the number for NEW car sales is less than 1.5 million.
Thanks. I thought that still seemed really high.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates about 1 million people in automotive manufacturing (including parts manufacturing) and 2 more million in sales (including auto parts sales, 1.5 million excluding sales) that's a lot of people concentrated in rust belt swing states who would see job instability by foreign vehicles entering the market at race-to-the-bottom prices and quality.
https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iagauto.htm#iag31cesnsaemp.f.p
If you expand the scope to all manufacturing jobs (because auto manufacturing doesn't exist in a vacuum and actions taken to affect the auto industry will also have some effect to most if not all manufacturing industries) that grows to about 13 million jobs
On an unrelated note, they also indicate about 200,000 unfilled job openings in manufacturing every month indicating the industry has a desire to grow but lacks the humanpower to do so.
https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag31-33.htm