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Trouble for U.S. carmakers like Ford (F:NYSE) and GM (GM:NYSE) spell opportunity for foreign competition

Posted June 10, 2008

Trouble for U.S. carmakers like Ford (F:NYSE) and GM (GM:NYSE) spell opportunity for foreign competitionU.S. carmakers like Ford (F:NYSE) and GM (GM:NYSE) are suddenly selling more cars than SUVs and trucks. Accordingly, they’re shutting down truck and SUV factories. Even GM’s Hummer brand may be up for sale. Good news for the Chinese and Indian automobile industry!

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Baltimore — (TFN): This past May, Ford Motor Company’s U.S. sales fell by 15.9%. Adjusted for one extra selling day, they dropped 19%.

But something interesting happened. You see, light truck sale—including pick-up trucks and SUVs—fell by a solid 25.7%. Car sales actually rose by 2.8% as car buyers scared off by $4 gasoline settled for more fuel-efficient automobiles.

Go figure! The free market telling manufacturers what to produce! And all without government bureaucrats meddling!

There should be laws against this kinda thing.

Of course, consumer decisions that happen to coincide with cultural and political fads are rarely beneficial to everybody involved. If trucks and SUVs are not getting bought, they’re not getting built.

And you don’t need factories or manufacturing jobs to not build trucks.

Winnebago Industries Inc., citing high fuel prices and adverse economic conditions, will close the largest of its three plants in Charles City, Iowa, on Aug. 1, putting 270 salaried and hourly workers out of a job.

General Motors, too, is closing four plants in Ontario, Ohio, Wisconsin and Mexico.

Ford just relocated at least one more factory to Mexico.

Tune in to this video now!

Let’s hope the tree huggers are buying enough Chevettes to provide new jobs for the thousands of North Americans no longer involved in expanding their carbon footprints.

GM also indicated that it would be getting rid of its Hummer brand.

Now, I have to admit that the Hummer is probably the most obvious compensatory means of locomotion ever invented. It’s the automotive equivalent of a roll of nickels stuffed in your front pocket to create the illusion of grandeur.

Still, I was unable to understand the celebratory mood the announcement caused among the more liberal-minded TFN team members. I heard carbon footprint and Kyoto and climate change—and was told that my children deserve to breathe.

Which would suppose that the Hummer brand will disappear from the face of the earth.

But as things work out in a global economy, we’re looking at two options:

Hummer’s U.S. assembly lines get closed up and manufacturing jobs get shipped to the brand’s new Chinese, Indian or Arab owners—who’re far less concerned about my children’s ability to breathe than the American left.

Or the jobs may stay in the U.S. and only the profits go abroad.

To liberals, of course, this is a win-win situation. They can whine how evil corporations are shipping jobs abroad.

And factory closings will mostly affect those bitter little white Midwesterners Obama understands so much, who’d still have god and their guns to cling to.

No matter what, nothing can beat that good and moral feeling.

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Posted by J. Christoph Amberger · Filed Under Featured Video, US Stocks and Markets, Videos 

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