Originally posted by bxd20: <i>And who cares where the profits go? </i>
I care, and so should others in the US. Profits are what keeps a company alive and growing, making better product.
It's also the "spoils" of your hard work. In other words, paying off your assembly line workers is all well and good, but you needed to SPEND that money to have any chance of making any money. It gets you back to square #1.
The profits come back and are able to be reinvested in a cycle that feeds itself if properly cared for and grows your company.
Brian
Where do you think the profits come back to?
If Honda is making profit in the US, where is it going to invest that profit? In making more profit in the US. It doesn't hoard it in Japan. It's able to lower prices here to increase demand and generate jobs, or builds another factory here to make even more money. What do you think Ford does with their profits? They buy a foreign automaker or build another plant overseas.
Global companies traditonally spend very little of their profits in their domestic markets because their presence is already well-established there. Honda not only invests US profits back into the US but puts the majority of it's Japanese profits into the much larger and lucrative US market, adding further investments in our nation.
"Domestic" Automakers on the other hand have been putting their profits into Europe, China, and India to broaden their reach in an effort to beat the Japanese to the markets and neglecting new investments within the US at the cost of market-share leading to lost jobs.
Quote: My point was, people act like buying an American "made" Accord helps fellow Americans just as much as buying, say, a Contour. And it doesn't, period. More $$ pours into the US economy for something like a Contour than for an Accord.
Utter BS.
Both are built in the US, both are going to be taxed the same, both likely have equal amounts of domestic parts content, and both are bought at US dealerships.
BUT, the difference is that the profit that Ford makes on that car (let's assume they do, even though they haven't made profits on their cars in years) will be spent overseas, whereas Honda will likely spend that profit in the US on capital projects.
Ford hasn't built a US assembly plant in 40 years, with the exception of the AutoAlliance Plant which was a joint Mazda/Ford venture. They have renovated some (Dearborn, Norfolk, and KC come to mind) -- at the cost of jobs as processes were automated. They have built a number of foreign plants though -- including 3 in Mexico to produce "domestic" automobiles, 8 in Asia, and 4 in Europe -- none in the US though.
Honda alone has built 7 plants in the US in the last 20 years at an investment of over $5Billion. Toyota, Nissan, the rest have more than 15 more between them, all built recently.
Seems pretty clear who's investing their profit within the US.
