General Motors To Lay Off 2,000 Workers at Two US Plants (reuters.com)

General Motors plans to lay off 2,000 employees at two U.S. auto plants in early 2017, the automaker said on Wednesday. From a Reuters report:GM said it will furlough the employees when it cuts the third shift at its Lordstown, Ohio and Lansing, Michigan plants in mid-January. The Lordstown plant builds the compact Chevrolet Cruze, whose U.S. sales through October were down 20 percent. The Lansing Grand River plant builds the Cadillac ATS and CTS, whose sales were down 17 percent through October.An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a Washington Examiner report, "Trump has already criticized General Motors for reports that it would shift some production to Mexico, a plan that the company hasn't confirmed and didn't allude to Wednesday. The incoming Republican president also has said that he would impose a 35 percent tariff on the products of former U.S. subsidiaries that moved out of the country. When Ford announced the opening of a new factory in Mexico earlier this year, Trump called it an "absolute disgrace" and pledged to tax its imports to the U.S."

Comments

Re:Short Lived

[Oswald McWeany]

He's wanting to put tariffs on imported goods. Car manufacturers rely on imported goods. Detroit is about to get a whole lot poorer. Even if more parts were made domestically, retaliatory tariffs will make American made cars unattractive overseas. America could potentially lose most or all of its car industry. I suspect the design of cars will still be done by well trained engineers in the US, but the whole product will be assembled elsewhere to avoid extra retaliatory tariffs in the rest of the world.

(we did this whole tariff thing in the 1800's and early 1900's; abolishing it is what led to people getting wealthier)

Jobs vs. Stuff

[Tablizer]

Protectionism has mostly "worked" in Japan, at least in terms of jobs. They have a low unemployment rate compared to other countries. But many products are indeed more expensive because of it. Whether jobs or "stuff" is more important is a subjective choice.

Check out the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff consequence

[Streetlight]

In 1930, in order to raise revenue the Republican Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley increased import tariffs on 20,000 imports. Trading partners did the same for US imports and a trade war started. US imports decreased to about a third and exports decreased by about 61%. The US GDP was cut in half. Was this act the cause? Other things were going on, but the increase in tariffs is blamed by many economists as part of the cause of deepening the Great Depression. Since the end of WW II there has been a continuing process of reducing tariffs and though we've had ups and downs in economic progress the trend has generally been up.

In this particular situation, if GM decides it can't make the Cruze economically in the US and the tariff would make it price uncompetitive then it could just stop making the car. Not only would no US workers make the car and dealers not have it to sell and make a profit, but there would be no Mexican workers making it either. This would be good news for foreign car makers producing similar sized cars made overseas. Another option is to build the car completely using robots. GM knows a lot about industrial robotic car assembly.

Economics is complicated and dramatic, swift changes in policies can have many unintended consequences.

If I thought Trump would do what he said

[rsilvergun]

or could for that matter I might want to get on the Trump Train. Lord knows H1-Bs have bit into my career mightily and I'll wager many /.ers can concur. But he's literally taken every possible position during the campaign. I wasn't expecting much from Hilary, but I knew what I was getting into. Just a tinsy bit of progress and things more or less holding together. With Trump I've got no idea, and I've got Mike Pence behind him doing God knows what to my daughter's access to Birth Control and health services...