I looked up the actual words that our President said in a press conference that this out of context quote came from.
Here it is.
Look, countries cannot continue to take advantage of us on trade. The number are out. Over the last couple of years, and over the last many years — but over the last couple of years, this country has lost $800 billion on trade with other countries, the biggest one being China. Eight-hundred billion dollars. A hundred fifty-one billion with the European Union. They don’t take our agricultural products, barely. They don’t take a lot of what we have, and yet they send Mercedes into us, they send BMWs into us by the millions. It’s very unfair, and it’s very unfair to our workers. And I’m going to straighten it out. And it won’t even be tough. Okay? Thank you.
Just thought it might be helpful to read the entire statement in context.
Seeking the original source of a statement is something I often do when I see a “another outrageous statement” clickbait from CNN or the like. Usually, when taken in context, the statement is not so outrageous.
Early on Honda was owned and operated by Mr Honda and like Henry Ford 50 years earlier he was in total control. Once he set his mind to building and marketing a world class car there was nothing to stand in his way, I understand he even fought his government’s trade commission to build cars. Can any car company operate that independently these days? Coincidentally I saw where Dell was going public again.
Regardless, what is the part of the statement that you have fault with? Over the past 20 years many of our products have been made somewhere else and then imported back to us. And who benefits? Oh sure we were told the consumer benefits from lower prices. Do you buy that? Go to any Menards or Lowes or Home Depot and take a stroll down an aisle. Turn the package over and see where it was made now. It used to be made in the US. I’m finding it hard to find fault with the general idea. How about call centers and software? Or oil filters and car parts. Ross Perot warned about that giant sucking sound with manufacturing going elsewhere with the trade deals and he was right. We were sold out and ask who benefited? Then some say that ship has sailed. No going back, but at least someone is attempting to rebalance the equation a little to our favor, and all people can do is blindly find fault like lemmings.
I remember the late 1950s and the 1960s when the U.S. had a favourable balance of trade. We Angliva exported more than we imported. When the “Eisenhower recession” hit the nation in 1957, auto sales were down. Dealers needed less expensive cars to sell so that they could stay in business. Pontiac dealers were provided Vauxhall Victors, Buick dealers began selling Opel Rekord, Ford dealerships had the English Ford Anglica and Prefect models. Some Chrysler/Plymouth dealers sold Simcas as well. There was also some arrangement between Studebaker and Mercedes Benz which allowed Studebaker dealers to handle the Mercedes Benz.
Except for the Mercedes and Opel, none of the other European imports mentioned above held up very well. In fact, of all the imported cars, the only ones that could compete with the U.S. made cars in quality were the Mercedes Benz, Volkswagen, Opel, and the Swedish Volvo PV544. Whether or not the Mercedes Benz was of better quality and reliability than the Cadillac back then can be debated, but the Mercedes Benz was more tastefully styled than the finned Cadillacs. The only American made luxury car that had good styling back then was the 1961 Lincoln in my opinion.
U.S. manufacturers had the momentum back in the late 1950s and had the toughest chassis and engines of any cars produced on the planet. However, the quality of the materials and the bodywork left.a lot to be desired. The VW Beetle exuded more quality of assembly than a Cadillac or the Imperial made by Chrysler Corporation. I remember a family friend who bought a new Imperial in 1959. On the trip home from the dealer just after purchasing the car, the left rear door caught fire due to a faulty power window mechanism.
I think the quality of U.S. cars has improved greatly, but the Cadillac does not have the prestige value of the Mercedes Benz. As Tom McCahill noted back in the early 1960s, “Riding behind that three point star (Mercedes Google ornament) gives more prestige to some people than if they had won the Nobel prize for Caterpillar raising”.
The years back then have kind of blended together but it must have been around 1958 or so. We were at the local Shell station getting some fishing supplies or something and there was a guy from New York with his diesel Mercedes. He said he had driven all the way from NY to Minnesota for either $3.50 or $7.50 (can’t remember). At any rate he was impressed and I was impressed and thought I gotta have one of those some day. I think they were pretty solid cars back then.
Then sometime around that same time we saw the ambulance heading out of town and got on our bikes to investigate. A mile out of town a guy in another Mercedes had missed the turn, headed down the embankment and killed himself on the steering wheel. I can still see that flat MB steering wheel where he ended it all. So I guess I kind of didn’t think they were so great anymore. Of course no belts then, or padded dashes, or recessed steering wheels. That was Ford a little later and with the collapsible steering column.
Actually, the MB driver might have been better off with a 1956 or later Ford. In 1956, Ford introduced the recessed hub steering wheel and offered optional seat belts, padded dashboard and padded sun visors. Ford quickly found out that safety didn’t sell cars. Buyers switched to other manufacturers whose cars presumably did not crash.
Yup!
Shortly after the Hyundai Excel and the Yugo hit the US marketplace, Consumer Reports tested both of them, and the test results were so dismal that CR recommended buying a used, 3-4 year old American car for essentially the same amount of money as those two newcomers, but with the advantage of getting a more reliable, more durable vehicle with the used American car.
Instead of putting tariffs on imported cars, let’s put a luxury tax on all cars over a certain price–say $75,000. This would give the purchaser bragging rights and would really define a luxury car. More revenues would probably be raised this way than with tariffs.
Well excuse me @B.L.E. I continue to overlook the issue with this forum dropping the footnotes from my posts. In an effort to be as concise as possible I posted the wikipedia footnotes 1-c, 17-a,c&d and 43-e. You might check there for the details…
Most–if not all–of the cars that sell in that price range of $75k+ already have a gas-guzzler tax imposed on them. When looking at the Monroney stickers on both Rolls Royces and Bentleys, I was shocked at the amount of that tax.
While I don’t recall the exact amount, my recollection is that both makes had gas-guzzler taxes of at least $4k placed on them. The 2019 Corvette comes with a $2,100 gas guzzler tax!
During the Reagan presidency, we imposed a stiff tariff on Japanese motorcycles with 700cc or larger engines. This caused a new class of 699 cc motorcycles to be introduced, and also caused Honda and Kawasaki to start building some of their models in the U.S.
This was done to allow a nearly bankrupt Harley Davidson to get back on its feet.
Europe seems to be basing car taxes on CO2 emissions while Japan continues to use engine displacement and vehicle weight which was used across Europe until recently
The state of Mississippi continues to use displacement and weight in taxing vehicles but the greatest portion of automobile tax revenue is from the ad valorem
Well not to continue this partisan discussion, but it was announced today that Germany is considering reducing or eliminating the 10% import tariff on US cars when faced with us increasing the 2.5% tariff on their cars. So who is the lazy or crazy one again? You have to be very precise in your search though or you end up with yesterday’s exploding head news articles. We just might end up with no tariffs either way so Mercedes is saved.
About the only time I ever read those magazines is when I have to kill time in the doctor’s waiting room, and they are the perfect weapon to kill time with. When I do read these, it’s usually the message from the editor that’s most interesting.
New technology such as hybrid cars interests me a lot more than a advertorial masquerading as a test drive of the latest 450 horsepower German luxury car does…
And I stand by my opinion that it’s better to hear it straight from the source rather than letting CNN tell you what they “really said”.
It’s not that hard to do, when you see a headline quote, cut and paste it into google and find the original unedited transcript, and read it along with the stuff that CNN edits out, including the question that the person quoted was answering in the first place.
Context is everything.