Remember when cars drove the US economy?

Most of the Chinese companies will bankrupt.

The chart is units or profits? China is possibly the least profitable source of cars on that chart.

I don’t think the US has ever been a major exporter of cars, because what the big three want to build is too big to be relevant much of anywhere else in the world.

Steve

5 Likes

Like most US car companies have and probably will again? I live and travel around Asia, US cars are almost non-existent. I see more French cars than American cars

2 Likes

True but very few of the Chinese car companies make any money.

My guess is that China will have more manufacturers survive than the US. Both will have benefited from Govt handouts.

1 Like

So what? China measures things differently. Employment and jobs rank higher than profits. Maybe not how you think it should be, but there it is.

2 Likes

Another way of showing US car OEMs long-term business strategy is to look at domestic market share.

GMs response to this rather alarming 50 year decline in market share was to cut 14,000 jobs in 2015 to save an estimate $4.5B by 2020 while repurchasing $10.6B of its stock between 2015-2018. GM bought back $10 billion in stock since 2015, double what job cuts will save - CBS News

Not sure how stock buybacks help GM compete with foreign companies but I can see how they might distract stockholders from caring about the long-term declining business performance.

People keep telling me how stock buybacks are good for the economy but I just don’t see it.

3 Likes

GM received a $49.5 billion taxpayer-funded bailout from the U.S. government

1 Like

Excellent numbers while the roof caves in.

It is not a vacuous opinion. Playing for tomorrow matters more than today.

Goofy with all our experience you must have known how business works.

In college down in Houston age 19 a local pizza restaurant set up a bar in a blighted area of the city just off the corner of campus. No one from the student body visited for the first week. So the 23-year-old bar owner offered free beer. We all showed up. That following week the bar was empty. So he offered free beer again on Saturday. He went out of business on Sunday.

No, they in fact don’t.

Stop building strawmen. You are smarter than that.

2 Likes

That is the irony.

20/20

I remember a psychiatrist decades ago who immigrated around the time the others did from Ireland. it was a group of doctors in the early to mid 1960s. He was a quiet man who thought he had complete control. God did that backfire. I won’t get into how bad his story is. From flake to criminal.

Brains? What you do matters more than your IQ.

As of 1919, Indiana boasted 172 companies building cars or car parts in more than 30 cities and towns. The automotive belt included Kokomo, Marion, Anderson, New Castle, Muncie, South Bend, Fort Wayne, Auburn and Indianapolis.

“Hoosiers loved cars so much because the auto industry put a lot of food on a lot of tables,” notes Drew Van De Wielle, curator of collections at the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend.

Several Hoosier models attracted a national following for their sleek lines, bright colors and reliable engines. Among the more popular: Auburn, Cole, Cord, Duesenberg, Marmon and Stutz. In 1909, Indiana ranked second only to Henry Ford’s Michigan in the number of cars produced.

The most successful of the classic carmakers was Studebaker Brothers, based in South Bend, which had been making carriages and wagons since 1868.

Flakey stuff

No one has ever said stock buybacks are good for the economy. Think first of what the economy is. It is not the business. People do not think it is good for the business either.

You don’t see it? There is nothing to see they way you are looking at it.

That worked for real estate in China. Any parallels?

I can think of one difference. RE had higher and higher sales prices over a longer period of time.

EV manufacturers by the hundreds in China are losing money. We are not talking next year things might be bad. Things are bad now.

Do any of you want to compare Chinese CEOs to American CEOs on a bottom-line basis?

Units.

That’s odd. I can’t even remember the last time I saw a French car in the US. A Citroen? A Renault? A Peugeot? On the other hand, I see Fords/GM/Jeeps every day.

DB2

Teslas are everywhere here. I have a neighbor down the road with the Cyber Truck. Less than a mile from me. His house is probably over $1 million.

Real estate is different. It was promoted by local governments because they made most of their money from land sales. They had an incentive to keep the industry rolling long after the demand had been satisfied.

By contrast, China has managed to take over many industries by embracing a jobs-over-profits model. Solar panels: 80% of them in the world are made in China, They dominate the LCD screen business. China is called “the World’s Factory” because it has more manufacturing output than the next 9 countries combined. 2/3 of wind turbines are made in China, and you can be sure their nascent aircraft industry is losing money, but 10-20 years from now Boeing and Airbus will be feeling the pain.

I’m not saying this is necessarily the best way to organize an economy, but they’re been hugely successful at penetrating high growth high dollar industries for the past 30 years, and “cars” looks like it will be the next one to fall. Because auto industries are such an important domestic industry in so many countries: the US, Germany, England, France, India, Mexico, Brazil, etc. people are taking notice. When it was an industry that didn’t exist yet (solar panels, flat screens) it wasn’t such a big deal. Taking down the auto industry has many officials worried.

2 Likes

Renault mostly but sometimes Peugeot. I should modify that, i do see more Teslas than French cars but then I don’t see any Fords/GMs etc. As for EVs, BYD and Tesla are 1 and 2. But also see Porsche, Hyundai, BMW, MG (now part of a china group), Polestar.

But outside of Tesla, it seems most American manufactures have left or just leaving a small amount of business to rot in the Asia markets.

Where do you live, jdc?

DB2