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Japan's Cash For Clunkers Program
The Japanese Government is limiting the number of models made by the Big 3.....So much for Free Trade!!!!!
http://www.detnews.com/article/20100203/AUTO01/2030405/1148/rss25
http://www.detnews.com/article/20100203/AUTO01/2030405/1148/rss25
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Comments
-Rocky
It's nice that you think Japanese should buy 100,000 Malibus every year, but that's simply not practical nor desirable for the overwhelming majority of the country.
In Japan, consumers were recently offered cash for clunkers but were required to buy made in Japan cars. Our US trade reps and WTO and US politicians should have been screaming foul but did nothing.
If you ever wondered how the USA has been sold out to foreign interests over the past decades this action illustrates exactly how we've all been sold out by our own politicians.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2009/12/us-cars-excluded- -from-japans-cash-for-clunkers-program-/1
I doubt if few Americans were made aware of this by our multi-national corporate owned media.
Had our own government been fighting and demanding for fair and equal trade for American products for these past decades, we'd be exporting them many more of our cars instead of the one way street that has persisted and exists.
It is our own government that has worked against America and American workers and industry.
Europe is much more open to American cars, and they barely sell there, too.
My point is I as an american am sick and tired of it being a one way street on these free trade agreeements and this type of stuff is why I'm so strongly opposed to "Free Trade" as we know it!!!! :mad:
-Rocky
It is fair to say that most Americans will no longer be saying "my son's generation will do better than mine".
Regarding the Japanese car market - if it was wide open to American cars of all sizes, I would bet my life it would have a negligible-at-best impact on domestic production. They simply don't want almost all of what we make.
-Rocky
It all comes down to the product matching the people. Their product matches American people more than American product matches Japanese people. How many cars have the big 2.5 designed for the Japanese market? Zero. Remember when a Toyota badged Cadavalier was made and sold in Japan? It was a flop.
Force people in domestics, and face a political backlash that no party would dare touch.
Perhaps now you understand why I'm strongly opposed to the free trade agreements as they sit. One way street and biased advantage for foreign countries. This along with currency manipulation is one of the many reasons why this country lost millions of jobs. Sure everyone likes to blame the UAW for the Big 3 ills but they weren't the only reason why GM went sick. Japan, isn't the only country where we have unfair trade agreements. Look at China :mad:
-Rocky
They are uncompetitive because they don't meet the typical needs of a japanese consumer.
What did Toyota do when they first brought the Cornet to the US in the 50s? They bombed because it wasn't designed for our roads. They left the market with the exceptoni of the Land Cruiser and came back with better cars.
Now they design cars just for the US market and so does Honda. The camry and Accord we get here are not like the Camry and Accord the rest of the world gets. They are larger cars with softer suspensions designed for our roads. Europe gets a smaller tighter Accord and the Camry in the rest of the world is different too.
If GM and ford and Chrysler had bothered to design cars for the Japanese market then they could have gotten a foot hold there and actually maybe sold some cars over the past few years. Now Ford has gotten a good market going in Europe with cars designed for Europe. They should be able to tweak those cars and create a niche in the Japanese market with say the Fiesta, Ka and Focus.
Which US-built cars would the Japanese buy in numbers great enough to support dealer and service infrastructure?
GM is making some great cars, but still has some duds. And none of them are really suitable for the Japanese market. I will easily say they'd rather have an Opel (a company that can design competent smaller cars) than a Chevy if they went GM...how would that help the US?
The Japanese clunker deal is meaningless - as there's virtually no sales network for American built cars in Japan to begin with.
There's a lot of unfair trade out there - especially with China...I just don't see this worthy of being upset.
That is just not true. Yes you need more education now then you did 40 years ago but a basic factory job isn't worth 40 plus dollars an hour. It just isn't. I am not saying it should be a minimum wage job but it 15-25 an hour yes that is where it should be.
I make more money adjusted for inflation then my dad did at my age. Now in five years if I am not making 25-30 percent more then I am now then I won't be making as much as my dad did as he had his master at that point. Put the time line out another 10-15 years from now and I need to double or triple what I am making now. By that time my dad had his own business and until the oil market collapsed in the late 80s he was doing very, very well.
My Brother in law is in the same shape as me and so are several other friends I graduated college with. All of us in our late 20s to early 30s.
-Rocky
So if you wave a magic wand and the import tariffs go away, what can GM sell in Japan and Europe tomorrow in meaningful numbers? Remember, it's the NA GM lineup, not Opel cars.
trucks - no
body on frame suv - no
anything with a V6 - maybe but not a great numbers
Ask yourself, if gas is $5/gal, which GM vehicle would you own?
-Rocky
-Rocky
The most efficient fleet in the world, or in the US? Are you aware of some of the vehicles sold in Europe?
I don't think Japan's market is large enough to impact production enough to make an entire vehicle class more viable. Remember, even if it is open with zero barriers, you still have very competent domestic makers to compete with, ones who understand the type of small car the Japanese Joe Sixpack wants.
-Rocky
-Rocky
Of course, there's not going to be a Chinese cash-for-clunkers program anytime soon.
-Rocky
The people stamping their feet saying China has too much power of us forget that we have power over them as well.
When you owe 100,000 dollars to the bank and can't pay then that is a problem for you.
When you owe 100,000 million dollars to the bank and can't pay then that is a problem for the bank.
Same situation we have with China.
New imported vehicle sales in Japan, including cars made abroad and imported by Japanese automakers, jumped 16.9% in February from a year earlier to 14,433 units, posting a year-on-year increase for the fourth month in a row, an industry body said Thursday.
For decades (but now ending) the USA was the top dog market in the world for consumer products, and what did our leaders do to leverage that power? Instead of demanding concessions for open markets from our trade partners they did nothing. They gave away our nation and economy to China and Japan and every other country but failed the US people. I don't see it at all as unfair to state that many in Congress and our Presidents worked against the interests of the US people. By definition that makes them traitors.
Traitor def: 1 : one who betrays another's trust or is false to an obligation or duty http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/traitor