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General Motors plans to lay off 2,000 employees at two U.S. auto plants in early 2017, the automaker said on Wednesday.
GM's Lordstown, Ohio and Lansing, Michigan plants build slow-selling cars sold by Chevrolet and Cadillac. GM said it will furlough the employees when it cuts the third shift at both plants in January.
GM says the furlough is a response to what the company believes will be a continued shift from cars to crossovers and trucks. The Lordstown plant builds the compact Chevrolet Cruze, whose U.S. sales through October were down 20%. The Lansing Grand River plant builds the Cadillac ATS and CTS, whose sales were down 17% through October.
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General Motors to Lay Off 2,000 Employees in Ohio and Michigan
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TOO BAD YOU CAN'T BUY a voodoo globe so that you could make the earth spin
real fast and freak everybody out.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988.
(Score: 2) by quintessence on Sunday November 13 2016, @09:27AM
Well, we can start with the TN visas which are not reciprocal as far as I know
http://www.visalawyerblog.com/2010/04/06/tn_visa_lawyer_difference_betw/ [visalawyerblog.com]
and maquiladoras, which essentially give companies with large capital the benefits of US society without bearing much of the costs that other non-favored business have.
It also helped move multi-nationals to more prominence. I'd rather US companies stayed mostly in the US and dealt with the full consequences, or move to Mexico entirely and they can pay to deal with the problems in Mexico.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 13 2016, @07:37PM
> Well, we can start with the TN visas which are not reciprocal as far as I know
Close enough reciprocity. [canadavisa.com] Still, TN visas are insignificant. Only about 8,000 TN visas per year [tnvisasample.com] H1B does 130,000 per year.
> maquiladoras
Dead. They were something 15 years ago, but China drained off those ultra-low-skill jobs even from Mexico. [sciencedirect.com] Sure there are a few hanging on by their fingernails, but effectively its a non-issue. Mexico got screwed by NAFTA on that one, the gold rush for those border towns lasted about a decade and now they are ghost towns.
> It also helped move multi-nationals to more prominence.
Well, that cuts both ways, those companies are multinationals because not only do they have international sales, they also have international supply chains. US manufacturing output is up 70% since NAFTA. [stlouisfed.org] We are the 2nd largest exporter, after China. That's what multinationals have done for the US.
(Score: 2) by quintessence on Sunday November 13 2016, @09:01PM
Still, TN visas are insignificant.
Except per the DHS, Canadians are the majority of illegals in US now.
http://www.latintimes.com/canadian-immigrants-lead-world-illegal-us-visa-overstays-according-first-ever-dhs-367906 [latintimes.com]
And it's not like Trump hasn't spoken to H1B visas. And while Canada has improved significantly over the last decade, it wasn't quite that easy to immigrate into Canada even shortly after NAFTA was signed.
Sure there are a few hanging on by their fingernails, but effectively its a non-issue.
You looking at a 10 year span from when NAFTA was signed, ignoring the effects it had on US manufacturing in the interim, and only looking at a very different world now.
Per wiki:
Between 1995 and 2000, exports of assembled products in Mexico tripled, and the rate of the industry’s growth amounted to about one new factory per day.
Since globalization and physical restructuring[citation needed] have contributed to the competition and advent of low-cost offshore assembly in places such as China, and countries in Central America, maquiladoras in Mexico have been on the decline since 2000: According to federal sources, approximately 529 maquiladoras shut down and investment in assembly plants decreased by 8.2 percent in 2002 after the imposition of countervailing duties on Chinese products, not available in North America, that were part of the electronics supply chain.[9] Despite the decline, over 3,000 maquiladoras still exist along the 2,000 mile-long United States–Mexico border, providing employment for approximately one million workers, and importing more than $51 billion in supplies into Mexico.
And especially with consideration of TPP, you are looking at a rehash probably with Viet Nam.
US manufacturing output is up 70% since NAFTA.
Per your graph, US manufacturing was on the uptick prior to NAFTA, and doesn't tease out which parts were directly attributable to NAFTA.
That's what multinationals have done for the US.
Except the largest employers in the US are still small businesses.
The vast majority of trade agreements essentially function as gimmes to multi-nationals while leaving other businesses in the lurch. If we are talking about free trade, then let's do free trade instead of deals that are written with the interests of multi-nationals in mind.