Richard, maybe as a neighbor over there in Eastern Wisco, and industry fellow, you have a better conduit, but I heard from employees at Trek that they were actually moving some manufacturing back to U.S. plants on some of their bikes.
R. On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 9:15 AM, Richard Schwinn <[email protected]> wrote: > The export of bicycle manufacturing to Asia is the "canary in the mineshaft" > for what has been a general trend over the past generation. Globalization > is a fact of life for our country, but we are practically the only country > that treats it as a norm as well as a fact. Our Asian competitors happily > stack the deck in favor of local manufacturers, because they recognize the > importance of exports to their economies. > For example, the Chinese supply manufacturers supply government-subsidized > materials to domestic manufacturers to make it easy for them to compete and > build jobs. For example, subsidized aluminum supplies for Chinese bike > manufacturers in the late 1990's crushed American manufacturers like Huffy > and Roadmaster within an 18 month period - creating lots of Chinese jobs and > increasing their economies of scale in producing aluminum. The increased > income tax revenues more than paid for the cost of supplying their > manufacturers cheap aluminum. > > They're doing the same thing today with carbon fiber. Outside of (and > because of) our war effort, carbon fiber is a pricey commodity in our > country. China, instead, uses bicycle production not only to build jobs but > to build their capacity in carbon fiber production that can ultimately be > used for their own military purposes when needed. Here's the fun part, > several fork manufacturers including Reynolds and True Temper opened joint > ventures in China, but were forced to use expensive US-supplied carbon fiber > benefiting only from cheap labor. As China has ramped up their own > subsidized carbon fiber-based products, these joint ventures are seeing > continued economic pressures. Reynolds already eliminated forks from its > product lines and True Temper just announced plans to end the supply of > composite forks. Now, only a few scattered domestic manufacturers remain, > while our expertise in this area has been almost fully transferred overseas. > What's more, China's economies of scale also allow them relatively easy > conversion to defense applications, while our falling production means we > lose our strategic military capacity. > > As long as we make the free market an object of worship instead of tool for > the public good, we are headed to world where we lose our real freedoms > because of our economic and military decline. > > > > _______________________________________________ > Bikies mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org > -- Pointlessly blogging at www.robindavies.us Try something new every day. _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org
