What Are You Doing Right Now
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@Dashrender said:
So what, the media is full of it that the US doesn't manufacture anything anymore?
Yup. And things that are not made in the US are quite often assembled there so they are in US currency when sold anyway. Sure, China makes more things than anywhere else. They also consume more things and make the cheapest stuff. The US still makes tons and tons of the stuff that you actually would want to buy.
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Think about this....
Not only are the biggest "US carmakers" making their cars in the US (GMC, Ford and Tesla) but so are the biggest European car makes (Fiat, VW, Mercedes) and Japanese (Honda, Toyota.) Even the cars that we think of as being foreign are often made in the US.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Think about this....
Not only are the biggest "US carmakers" making their cars in the US (GMC, Ford and Tesla) but so are the biggest European car makes (Fiat, VW, Mercedes) and Japanese (Honda, Toyota.) Even the cars that we think of as being foreign are often made in the US.
I was just going to mention that. If you drive a car no matter the manufacturer chances are it was assembled in either the US or Canada.
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Lots of computers are made in the US (Dell, HP, IBM, Oracle all do some there) and more and more consumer electronics are (Google and Apple both have US manufacturing now.) Even the areas where the US is famously weak it is starting to manufacture more.
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Labor statistics (the ones that are available) seem to point to the US losing manufacturing jobs in the early to late 00's. That has turned around in the last three-four years. We are no where near where we were at our peak, but I don't think that is because of lack of jobs more that those are being moved to other silos.
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@Dashrender said:
@MattSpeller said:
Getting seriously tired of the CDN dollar being far below 1:1. It'd be OK if my salary went up 30% to compensate but it never seems to.
http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=CAD&to=USDWhy does it matter? Unless you mostly buy things from the US?
Canada has a huge export economy (oil, logs, cars, etc). Thus, low $CDN means our exports do really well because costs to produce are lower. Unfortunately for me what we export is not what I purchase nor how I make my living. Shopping on ebay for me is now ~40% more expensive after you factor in exchange and processing fees.
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I means that Canadians cannot afford their own wood and oil and American can gobble it up for cheap.
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It's worth noting that it's been a ~40% increase in only 2 years for online shopping. It's almost to the point now where big box stores are competitive again.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Think about this....
Not only are the biggest "US carmakers" making their cars in the US (GMC, Ford and Tesla) but so are the biggest European car makes (Fiat, VW, Mercedes) and Japanese (Honda, Toyota.) Even the cars that we think of as being foreign are often made in the US.
yeah, I knew that many had gone to local assembly lines in the US - seems surprising that labor was low enough to warrant that - though I guess tariffs can make that happen easy enough.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Think about this....
Not only are the biggest "US carmakers" making their cars in the US (GMC, Ford and Tesla) but so are the biggest European car makes (Fiat, VW, Mercedes) and Japanese (Honda, Toyota.) Even the cars that we think of as being foreign are often made in the US.
yeah, I knew that many had gone to local assembly lines in the US - seems surprising that labor was low enough to warrant that - though I guess tariffs can make that happen easy enough.
Tariffs and the high cost of shipping products from across the ocean. What blows my mind is that places like Nicaragua which are insanely low labour (bordering on free at under 10% US labour costs, sometimes closer to 5%) costs, low real estate costs, and nearby for easy shipping by truck, rail or ocean are not being flooded with opportunities considering CAFTA-DR means that there cannot be tariffs for selling into the US market.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Think about this....
Not only are the biggest "US carmakers" making their cars in the US (GMC, Ford and Tesla) but so are the biggest European car makes (Fiat, VW, Mercedes) and Japanese (Honda, Toyota.) Even the cars that we think of as being foreign are often made in the US.
yeah, I knew that many had gone to local assembly lines in the US - seems surprising that labor was low enough to warrant that - though I guess tariffs can make that happen easy enough.
How many man-hours vs machine-hours goes into a car though? I doubt it is even comparable. There a lot of things going for US manufacturing, especially easily automated stuff like automobile.
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Speaking of which, if anyone is interested in going in on manufacturing investing in Nicaragua, let me know. I'd be very interested.
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@scottalanmiller that's a really cut throat business, I'm much more interested in the export business
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@scottalanmiller said:
Speaking of which, if anyone is interested in going in on manufacturing investing in Nicaragua, let me know. I'd be very interested.
What's your buy-in?
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@scottalanmiller "made in nicaragua" brings nothing to the table unless it's a country specific item of interest (local booze, smokes, food, etc)
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@MattSpeller said:
@scottalanmiller that's a really cut throat business, I'm much more interested in the export business
It is, no doubt. But there is an opportunity market here too. The labour is so low and CAFTA-DR just has not been leveraged yet.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Think about this....
Not only are the biggest "US carmakers" making their cars in the US (GMC, Ford and Tesla) but so are the biggest European car makes (Fiat, VW, Mercedes) and Japanese (Honda, Toyota.) Even the cars that we think of as being foreign are often made in the US.
yeah, I knew that many had gone to local assembly lines in the US - seems surprising that labor was low enough to warrant that - though I guess tariffs can make that happen easy enough.
Tariffs and the high cost of shipping products from across the ocean. What blows my mind is that places like Nicaragua which are insanely low labour (bordering on free at under 10% US labour costs, sometimes closer to 5%) costs, low real estate costs, and nearby for easy shipping by truck, rail or ocean are not being flooded with opportunities considering CAFTA-DR means that there cannot be tariffs for selling into the US market.
Is it possibly the drug lords? If manufacturing started being bigger there, eventually there would be a lot more money there, the people would start gaining some independence, etc. Would the cartels like that much?
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Speaking of which, if anyone is interested in going in on manufacturing investing in Nicaragua, let me know. I'd be very interested.
What's your buy-in?
No idea. I know that @eric is interested too. We've been talking for weeks on it. We'd have to put together a project proposal to figure out what the necessary buy in would be. This is not a Crazy AJ's local service thing, this would be leveraging Central American labour to provide products and/or services to the US primarily.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Speaking of which, if anyone is interested in going in on manufacturing investing in Nicaragua, let me know. I'd be very interested.
What's your buy-in?
No idea. I know that @eric is interested too. We've been talking for weeks on it. We'd have to put together a project proposal to figure out what the necessary buy in would be. This is not a Crazy AJ's local service thing, this would be leveraging Central American labour to provide products and/or services to the US primarily.
Call Centers... it worked well in other low labor places in the world.
