Chinese Willies?

Jason_15

if that's true I won't replace my VHE with another Weil, I'll go elswhere.

Dave Palmer_3

say it ain't so

heard again today that Weil/McLain is closing US foundry's and will be casting sections in China. Am I the only one who's heard this? Is the US going to be a third world country by the time my kids are grown? Out source everything to save a buck? Dave

todd s

Weil

It may be a rumor, I was told-last week- that they are going to be moving the sheet metal and training to the Carolina's but the foundry was staying put. I hope its not going to China, but maybe the crooked black fittings they produce will mate with crooked boiler tappings?

t. tekushan

chinese iron

You would think that shipping heavy cast iron sections from China would be cost prohibitive. But a friend of mine works at a fitness equipment supplier and these really heavy cast iron free weights come from China at a price that isn't that much higher than scrap value! This must mean they have a virtually negative value when they leave China's shores. When are we going to wise up? When there is no industry left in the U.S.? An economy based on burger flipping is unsustainable. What are the accountants going to count?

Furthermore, what is the quality? Cast iron isn't as sophisticated a metal as the laminations we need for high quality transformers in my business, but if these are any indication, the Chinese lams are impure, inconsistent, and improperly annealed. They are a small fraction of the cost of those coming from the US and Canada. The low cost is useless to me because I can't make a living making products that don't work properly. How can others?

Cast iron exposed to the heat of a furnace is under great stress. When are these sections going to fail? Sooner rather than later is my guess.

michael_15

outsourcing

You know, I hear that in some countries in the Middle East they import foreigners to do service jobs since the locals are so "beyond" manual labor. That's what wealth does to you sometimes, I guess.

-Michael

Alan(CaliforniaRadiant)Forbes

Port of Oakland

has been buying their cranes for container ships from Shanghai, China. Hard to believe that they can build them to the same spec's. there and ship them over here for less than an American manufacturer.

http://www.portofoakland.com/newsroom/pressrel/pressrel_28.asp

To Learn More About This Professional, Click Here to Visit Their Ad in "Find A Professional"

Unknown

We do that here in the US. Go to an urban burger king, or to a hotel resort, and at least half the employees will be foreigners imported specifically to do the job they are doing, right here in the US of A. So even service industry jobs are being affected.

Fact is, America's standing of living relative to the rest of the world is not sustainable. We're pricing ourselves out of every possible market, and we no longer have a stranglehold on innovation either. Globally speaking it just doesn't make any sense whatsoever to pay someone $50k/year to do something here when someone else would give their left arm to do it for $15k (yes, these are made up numbers). And that truth is what is pushing industry away.

Something's going to give, and I think it'll be us having to scale back our lifestyles to be more competitive, at some point. It's not a pleasant idea to those of us here, but we can do it and still be one of the most luxurious countries in the world to live in. We're going to have to get over this idea that we all have a right to as much as we want all the time, though.

To Learn More About This Professional, Click Here to Visit Their Ad in "Find A Professional"

Jaitch

let's not forget the enviornment

First let me say that I am a HUGE fan of clean air and water. Do you think outsourcing to other countries may have anything to do with the idea that the waste from these factories dosen't need to be documented in triplicate and be treated in an "approved" manner? It's another cost of doing business here in the US, and while it's grounded in an EXCELLENT principle, many companies would probably rather outsource to somewhere where the environmental constraints are not so stringent, and end up with a product coming into the States without a great deal of the environmental baggage that many of the US made products carry.

Just a theory - JOHN

Ken D.

China

The Chinese don't have to worry about The EPA, OSHA, IRS, FTC, liability lawyers, and any one of the myriad of other things the US companies do. China uses slave labor, child labor, is expempt from the Kyoto treaty, gets huge tax breaks from the US government to steal our jobs and knowhow. How far do you think trial lawyers would get in China? They have the most dynamic industrial economy in the world today. That coupled with a 3 million man armed forces spells disaster for the rest of us. Taiwan as well as South Korea and the rest of the South Pacific are going down. The Chinese have not forgotten, nor forgiven Japanese atrocities in WW2. The US will be powerless to stop the onslaught as our industrial base that won us WW2 will be long gone. Blame Wal-Mart? Try the American citizens that will buy price, rather than value every time. All this under the guise of "Global economy". Think the Europeans allow this? I find it hard to believe the French will give away their livelihoods as we have done. The Chinese government subsidises the Chinese companies in a big way. Many of those companies are owned wholly or in part by Americans. Nothing new here. Guess where Hitler got the money for his war machine? How about a novel idea; Buy American! Oh, by the way, the huge airliner that Airbus unveiled recently, was and is subsidized by EU government money. Boeing uses it's own funds and financing from private banks. Free market? It depends on your definition of free.

eleft_4

Bob Forand

Castings from

Castings from third world countries have been imported to major manufacturers for some time now. I know of a specific boiler company the recieves castings for their boilers from Iran as well as other foreign countries. We are fools if we don't believe this is already being done..Bob

Ken D.

Castings

Of course it's being done and has been for quite some time. The problem is can we afford to be so dependent on foreign suppliers when so many of them want us dead, no matter what the reason? During WW2 we supplied the entire world and that is the main reason we won. The Axis powers could not make good on their losses where we could. That is what industrial capacity can do. Just in machine tools, which is most important, most are made in Asia (China's back yard). Can we protect those supply lines? I'm concerned about what will happen when -not if- China flexes it's muscles. Will we be able to tool up to supply our military needs? How about raw materials? China controls the Panama Canal as well as other choke points in the world. Our poiticians? Rome is burning while Nero fiddles.

Ken D.

Hitler

A good book on Hitler's financing is "Who Financed Hitler" by a brother and sister team. I believe their name was Post or Pohl or something like that. Germany was a targeted economy for investment just as China is today. British, French and American companies and individuals invested and out right donated to Hitler's government. Sound familiar?

eleft_4

John R. Hall

They are in the rear view mirror

I don't believe in alarmist thinking -- realist. Keep an eye on the Chinese economy. It has a direct effect on the shortages/cost of raw materials and the prices of energy in the U.S. Did you know there are more Internet users in China than the U.S.? True.

Ken D.

Al

You're right. The point is that the playing field should be levelled.If US companies have to abide by rules and regulations, so should everyone else if they want access to our markets. It is illegal to use slave and child labor here. Some US companies attempt it but are prosecuted when found out. Their products are not permitted to be marketed, they are levied heavy fines or criminal charges or both. Most US companies do not receive government subsidies as most of foreign companies and investments do. It would be the same if you were a plumber or HVAC company, who was required by law to be trained,licensed, certified to do a quality job in harmony with all applicable codes and foreign companies are permitted to do the same work as you, but ignore all laws, codes, certifications and licensing (which is in our future, I believe). That would not be fair, would it? Would it not be great if we as company owners could use children or slaves to do our work at a fraction of the fair wages paid to adults and not pay for benefits? Send kids to remove asbestos without concerning ourselves with OSHA,EPA or the Labor Dept.? Think of the money we would save! Bhopal would not have happend in the US. Safety costs money. Costs that are passed on to the end users in the form of higher prices. Oh, it's OK for the poor in India to suffer as long as we can save a buck. I am all for "free markets" as long everyone is on the same page of the rulebook.

Unknown

Ken,

We are the largest market for chinese goods. We are nearly single handedly fueling their entire economic growth.

This is why capitalism and democracy are powerful; when the chinese are selling us stuff, they probably don't want us dead. As they gain economically, notice their government changing. Slowly, but it is changing, and for the better.

I know a lot of people out there seem to think that democracy only happens when you blow things up, but plenty of countries over the last one hundred years have made transitions without america invading and changing things for them. It changes because the people finally see what it means to have a government of, by, and for them. This happens as they get educated, and they get educated to handle jobs beyond factory line-work.

This is an inevitability for any economy trying to keep pace these days. Sure, chinese governmental policy and behaviour isn't great now. So we can treat them like the enemy, put an embargo on chinese goods, and keep them poor and desperate, or we can show them how to grow, help them grow, and quite possibly avoid the largest, bloodiest war the world has ever seen a few years down the road as their people get educated, trained, and their country has something to LOSE, namely, our business.

This is a global economy, we all have nukes, and it makes sense to play nice even if the field isn't completely level right now.

To Learn More About This Professional, Click Here to Visit Their Ad in "Find A Professional"

eleft_4

eleft_4

Ken D.

Rob

Good points. I maintain that strategic industries such as machine tools, steel, shipping,etc. should not be left to foreign powers as is now the case. With a billion people, once China gets fully industrialized and are the big boys on the block, they will not need our business. The Chinese citizens have absolutely no say over their government at all. When was the last free election in China? It is a one party communist regime. China has been threatening Taiwan for years and the US is the only reason they have'nt moved on them yet. Once China is sufficiently strong and the US is sufficiently weak, Taiwan is going down, as well as most of the Pacific rim. Recent news item from the AP has demonstrations by Chinese citizens attacking the Japanese embassy with rocks and bottles to protest Japan's brutality over the Chinese in WW2. Since the Chinese government does not allow demonstrations, the fact that this was pulled off indicates Bejiing's complicity in it. Japan is not safe as I mentioned before, China has not forgiven nor forgotten the Rape of Nanking among so many other atrocities. Don't expect any European countries to get involved, Nato or no NATO. I was a history major in college, so maybe my world views are shaded by my studies. The US was to Germany what China is to the US today. The difference is the US was not and is not a totalitarian society. so many things that are going on today happend in the past. Only the names have changed.

Unknown

I understand what you are saying, but even if china becomes the worlds #1 superpower and we are #2, we are still a huge market. They would be fools to poop where they eat, which is a very similar motivation to why we have maintained good relations with them as well. Economics are powerful motivators and as yet in modern history we have not seen too many cases of people deciding they would rather have a lucrative market destroyed rather than maintaining trade. I am not worried at all about that. Also I do still believe that as they continue to increase their prosperity, their people will waken. I don't think it's possible to achieve one without the other.

Japan should be worried. Perhaps if they had ever apologized for their atrocities they could start mending relationships with China. They haven't even done that. If they can't even do that much, then I'm afraid I don't have a lot of sympathy for whatever may happen.

Learning history is important, but things have changed a lot in the last century in ways that have never before been seen either. There has never been an interconnected world economy like this, there were never weapons on both sides of a potential conflict that could utterly destroy each other in mutually guaranteed destruction, there has never been an uprising of democratic principles like the world has seen (and it's kind of infectious, if you haven't noticed!) and these are not small factors to consider.

To Learn More About This Professional, Click Here to Visit Their Ad in "Find A Professional"

Paul Brockfeld_2

Weil-McLain foundry not moving

The rumor that the W-M foundry is going to China has been ging around for some time. Official word from W-M is that the assembly plant is going to the Carolinas but the foundry is staying in Michigan City.

Cosmo_3

3rd Reich had a lot of money schemes

They would buy raw materials from Eastern European Countries like Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, etc and pay for this stuff not with cash but coupons. These coupons could only be spent on obsolete German War weapons, machinery, trains, planes, buses, in effect selling junk at a high price and using the profits to build newer Tanks, Planes, Industrial machinery, uniforms, etc.


Cosmo Valavanis
Dependable PHC Inc

Ken D.

China

Japan never apologized outside of a few halfhearted non - apology apologies. Japan does hold a large amount of our dept and is a very large supplier so an attack on them is not good for us. Does anyone agree that the astronomical trade deficit, especially with China, along with an equally large budget deficit and dwindling industrial base is not good for America? Douglas Brinkley in his exhaustive history of Ford Motor Company "Wheels For The World" wrote that if "China should ever break off trade relations to the US, The Big Three automakers would be devastated". Big time. The US automakers buy from China too. Almost every city and municpality -including the Feds- are all but bankrupt. One reason is more money flows out of the country than flows in. Another reason is people are not making as much, so therefore, are not paying as much in taxes. The country's largest employer is government. Not good. The largest private employer no is no longer General Motors with good paying jobs, but Wal-Mart with low paying jobs. This means too many people are working and not producing anything and and many are not earning a decent living. Retailing has replaced industry. The problem is that there are only so many consumer dollars out there. When a new Wal-Mart or Home Depot opens up, many other like stores close. So very few jobs are actually created, only moved around. For our businesses, the less our customers have to spend, the less they spend with us. How is any of this good for anyone, but the Chinese?

eleft_4

.

Mark Eatherton1

The silence is deafening...

I'm wondering what Ken Secor thinks about this, what with his recent foray into China, and being the all American Weil/McLain kind of guy.

Open ears are waiting Ken...

ME