Siemens has some R&D in Canada, along with some manufacturing, along with some manufacturing in Mexico. Among other places
Heh heh! Got news for you - I'm in Virginia and got layed off - uh - laid off - uh - fired from a third tier supplier about three years ago when they replaced 5 American engineers with one Mexican Engineer (they were kidding themselves about the long-term results of that move, but the effect was the same for those that lost their jobs). In effect they closed up their U.S. design capabilites and sent MoTown a message that from now on, they weren't doing design work for free in order to win contracts (IOW, put the burden back on Ford/Visteon and GM/Delphi). Bill Putney (to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with "x")
Of course you do, Geoff. But you work for a motor industry supplier in Detroit. It's no different, for example, in the Midlands area of the UK where the local component suppliers get into a tizz when any rumours of car production reduction or change of supplier circulate. Every decision about car production becomes political. And there has been devastation in the UK, though now there is more car production than there has ever been, even if almost all of it is by 'foreign-owned' manufacturers. Maybe a lot of British suppliers lost business because of the relatively strong currency here at the time (blame somebody else), but maybe many were just plain bad and/or inefficient. And of course you see lots of GMs, Fords on the road in your area. Lots of employees and ex-employees get great deals. I was talking about the general American (and, indeed, international) car buying public. Using your dinnertable argument I would love to see more people in America buying Jags so that the workers of Coventry have a more secure job, but maybe I don't as the profits go into the pockets of a Big Bad American Capitalist Investor called Ford... It's a profitless (so to speak) exercise, playing the 'nationalist' card, which you can apply to every other good. Let's mention McDonald's as one example. Why are their toys all made in China? And maybe it's good to put money into the pockets of workers of poorer countries (because that's where they inevitably are) because it makes for a more stable world. That's why, for example, the EU sends lots of aid money to the poor countries of eastern Europe, whether they will join the EU or not. Personally I prefer the private enterprise route but the broad concept is similar. DAS -- --- NB: To reply directly replace "nospam" with "schmetterling" --- [..........]
