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Trump wants to stop Germans from selling so many cars here—where they're made.

EXEA189

Ready to race!
Location
Rocky Mountains
“The Germans are bad, very bad,” Der Spiegel cited Trump as saying to unidentified participants at a closed-door meeting Thursday with European Union officials in Brussels. “Look at the millions of cars that they sell in the U.S. Terrible. We’re going to stop that.”

VW, BMW and Mercedes-Benz are getting their turn in the crosshairs of U.S. President Donald Trump, who’s making a habit out of attacking the visible — and free trade-dependent — auto industry.

Trump’s singling out of German carmakers for contributing to the nation’s lopsided trade surplus follows rebukes of Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp. and attacks on America’s own automakers for shipping cars from Mexico. The rhetoric overlooks that BMW AG, Daimler AG and Volkswagen AG operate some of their biggest factories in the world in southern U.S. states, and the impact that putting a stop to imports would have on the thousands of dealers who sell German vehicles.
“The U.S. president doesn’t argue based on facts but instead comes to conclusions based on alternative facts like how many cars are currently parked on a New York road or at the Trump Tower,” said Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, director of the University of Duisburg-Essen’s Center for Automotive Research.

Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, acknowledged that the president said Germany is “very bad” when it comes to flooding the U.S. with cars, but insisted it wasn’t a dig at one of the U.S.’s most important allies.
Trump has complained repeatedly that Germany’s high trade surplus with the U.S. is hurting the American economy. In a Bild newspaper interview in January, Trump singled out luxury-car maker BMW and threatened it with a 35 percent import duty for foreign-built vehicles sold in the country.
“If you go down Fifth Avenue everyone has a Mercedes Benz in front of his house,” he told Bild, while lamenting the lack of Chevrolets in Germany. General Motors Co. has largely withdrawn the brand from Europe.
BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen declined to comment on Trump’s remarks. Combined, deliveries by the companies reached 1.33 million vehicles last year, according to data provided by Wards Automotive Group.

While the U.S. is the second-largest export market for German automakers and the manufacturers are adding or expanding Mexican production facilities, the U.S. remains an important source of their global production. More than half of the vehicles the German companies make in America are exported.
German auto factories are in Republican-leaning states, including the Volkswagen plant that makes Passat sedans and Atlas SUVs in Tennessee. In Alabama, Daimler produces more SUVs than anywhere else in the world and is in the midst of a $1.3 billion expansion.
The manufacturers have responded to earlier attacks with a mix of defiance and mollification. BMW Chief Executive Officer Harald Krueger, one of a small group of business leaders to accompany German Chancellor Angela Merkel on her visit to the White House, has defended the importance of free trade and noted that BMW’s biggest plant worldwide is in Spartanburg, South Carolina. That factory makes BMW the top exporter of vehicles from the U.S. by value.
Next to China, Germany is the biggest source of the U.S. trade deficit that Trump has vowed to narrow. The U.S. had a trade deficit of $68 billion last year with Germany.

Germany is far from alone in being lopsided with America with regards to autos. The U.S. had a $132 billion trade deficit with the world in terms of passenger vehicle sales last year. Imports of cars from Germany exceeded exports by $15.4 billion.
The German trade surplus rose to a record 253 billion euros ($284 billion) last year, and the U.S. trade deficit widened in January to the most since March 2012. In addition to drawing Trump’s ire, the German imbalance has sparked criticism by European Union leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, asked about the matter at the G-7 gathering in Italy on Friday, confirmed the gist of Trump’s comments but indicated they’d been exaggerated due to a translation error.
“It’s not true that the president took an aggressive approach when it comes to the German trade surplus,” Juncker, who was present when Trump made his remarks, told reporters in Taormina. “He didn’t say that the Germans are behaving badly. He said, ‘We have a problem, like others, with the German trade surplus.’ ”


https://www.google.com/amp/www.autoblog.com/amp/2017/05/26/trump-reportedly-calls-germans-very-bad-vows-to-stop-their-ca/

http://jalopnik.com/donald-trump-calls-germans-very-bad-vows-to-stop-germa-1795557376?rev=1495747998266&utm_campaign=socialflow_jalopnik_twitter&utm_source=jalopnik_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow
 
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XM_Rocks

Autocross Newbie
Location
Austin, TX
What about free markets? Ugh. The Germans have tapped into leasing as a way to move large amounts of volume and they make a superior product to most American cars. The funny thing about this is most American automakers are using foreign parts and assembling their cars outside of this country.
 

toledospeed

Go Kart Champion
Location
3rd rock
What about free markets? Ugh. The Germans have tapped into leasing as a way to move large amounts of volume and they make a superior product to most American cars. The funny thing about this is most American automakers are using foreign parts and assembling their cars outside of this country.

Exactly, there is no such thing as free markets. They are all engineered to benefit the elite, their corporations and their global agenda. Even the stock market is propped up by free money (ZIRP, TARP etc.). I still can't tell from day to day which side Trump is on and to whom he does his bidding. Does this statement apply to Mexico assembled and imported cars? Is he really for repealing or renegotiating NAFTA? Living in Ohio, it is so easy to see in hindsight that NAFTA and other trade agreements are crafted to benefit corporations, and not the people living here at least. The US GDP manufacturing losses have been replaced by trillions made by the TBTF financial behemoths via derivatives etc. Otherwise US GDP would have plummeted when all the factories and jobs went elsewhere. Some will say it is just well intentioned geopolitical engineering by the elite to level the playing field. But somehow, every time you look, the billionaire fat cats are getting fatter and the average Joe has to work harder for less. The elite are not subject to same rules of frugalness and sustainability that they preach to the masses. Too bad most of people all over the world don't realize they have been played hard by both parties as far back as the eyes can see. It is unfortunate, because real freedom and real open markets would be an amazing thing to witness.
 

The Fed

Old Guys Rule
Location
Florida
I like VW's because they make a product that no other car maker does. But I don't care about Germany or Japan. Germany started both world wars, and Japan tried to destroy our Navy. They also virtually wiped out our motorcycle industry. So why should I care if the price of VW's or other imports goes up 35%? I'll just buy something domestic.
 
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Sherifftruman

Ready to race!
Location
NC, USA
I still do not understand the issue with a trade deficit. We make some things, design some things, engineer some things as well as services like software, apps, etc. We sell those items of value and have money as a result. We then use that money to purchase things of value from each other as well as other countries. We have more consumers here, with more money, than any other country. It seems natural that we would have a trade deficit with all of them.
 

TheWombat

Go Kart Champion
Location
Vermont
I think the issue with a trade deficit is jobs, mostly. We shifted, globally, from a manufacturing/heavy industry centered economy, where prosperity in a given country was tied directly to its ability to manufacture durable goods, to a post-industrial, globalized economy where it actually was more profitable, at the macro level, to not make everything yourself, but to import it from where it was cheaper, and to avoid the heavy capital costs of maintaining and operating the actual production facilities. What didn't shift was employment, as the post-industrial economy requires both fewer people and more advanced skillsets than were necessary in the golden age of manufacturing.

In the old model, you kept your jobs and your prosperity by making more physical stuff and selling more of it than you bought. Today, you make your bucks by selling stuff that is either highly specialized, digital, or is generally disconnected from any actual production industry, like in finance or IP, or through service. In the old model, having a trade deficit was bad because it meant you were not able to keep the home fires burning at acceptable levels because no one bought your stuff, and that meant the factories were idle and workers were not getting paid. Today, though, we make money in so many different ways that whether the money is getting spent here or in China or in Timbuktu, it doesn't matter, there's profit to be made at every stage, for the right people in the right fields. Global capital flows are so much more active and widespread that any money "lost" by not, say, selling Chevrolets to Germans is made up for by guys from the UAE investing in Chicago real estate and Chinese engineering firms building dams in Idaho or what not.

Politicians, though, like a huge chunk of the nation, haven't really internalized the changes because it's a hell of a lot easier to run on a platform of "bring back the old school jobs your daddy and his daddy had!' than it is to say "Dudes, all y'all gonna have to get retrained and reschooled to do different stuff, and no, you can't be a coal miner or an auto worker any more, sorry," as well as having to sell the government investment that is going to be necessary to get our workforce up to global standards across the board, and not just in the elite havens on both coasts.
 

TheWombat

Go Kart Champion
Location
Vermont
I like VW's because they make a product that no other car maker does. But I don't care about Germany or Japan. Germany started both world wars, and Japan tried to destroy our Navy. They also virtually wiped out our motorcycle industry. So why should I care if the price of VW's or other imports goes up 35%? I'll just buy something domestic.

It's that first bit, though, "they make a product no other car maker does." Given my tastes, and where I live (which makes RWD a no-go), there pretty much no domestic alternatives to the Germans or the Japanese. With the exception of the Ford Focus and Fiesta performance models--cars with their own set of limitations that make them sub-optimal compared to the foreign competition--no one here makes anything like a GTI or an R. No one makes anything really like an S4 or a C43, either; Detroit makes some good (if designed by a refugee from a Tokyo whorehouse, like the Caddy ATS-V) RWD sedans, but in AWD? None of them--Ford Fusion Sport, the Challenger AWD, the Buick, whatever--match up at all with the Germans, if that's what you want.

I would find it very, very hard to find an American car, at any price point, that would work for me as well as an import. If I lived where I could have RWD, I _might_ be convinced to go with a ATS-V, or one of those (now discontinued) SSs, if I had to. Right now, where I live, if I was forced to buy an American car, I'd just get a Fiesta ST and pocket the savings.
 

The Fed

Old Guys Rule
Location
Florida
Read the history of Honda motorcycles (motorbikes?). You will see their importing their Honda 50's and 90's in the '60's was the beginning of the end for the U.S. economy. Blame Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon. They opened the door and Japan rushed in faster than Syrian refugees to Europe.
 
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TheWombat

Go Kart Champion
Location
Vermont
Read the history of Honda motorcycles (motorbikes?). You will see their importing their Honda 50's and 90's in the '60's was the beginning of the end for the U.S. economy. Blame Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon. They opened the door and Japan rushed in faster than Syrian refugees to Europe.

That's giving entirely too much credit to the Japanese. The entire US auto industry was based on the "magic economy" of the post-war years. No competition, dirt-cheap oil, and a vast market of consumers with wages artificially boosted by the above and the window where unions were able to actually get workers great deals on pay and benefits. It was, fundamentally, unsustainable, especially in a global economy, but even without globalization it would have collapsed with the first oil crisis in the early 1970s.

WWII gave the US a false sense of the durability of the mass production industrial economy. In reality, by the 1960s that model of economics was already gone with the wind.
 

EXEA189

Ready to race!
Location
Rocky Mountains
That's giving entirely too much credit to the Japanese. The entire US auto industry was based on the "magic economy" of the post-war years. No competition, dirt-cheap oil, and a vast market of consumers with wages artificially boosted by the above and the window where unions were able to actually get workers great deals on pay and benefits. It was, fundamentally, unsustainable, especially in a global economy, but even without globalization it would have collapsed with the first oil crisis in the early 1970s.

WWII gave the US a false sense of the durability of the mass production industrial economy. In reality, by the 1960s that model of economics was already gone with the wind.

?Ditto this, although I did learn to ride on a Honda 70 in 1970!
 
Location
St. Olaf
Europe actually is driving "American" cars. Ford, Opel, Vauxhall, even Volvo,
Jaguar and Aston Martin are or were owned by Detroit companies. They're
just less successful recent 20 years, probably due to too much cost-cutting.
Why GM had to sell Opel/Vaushall to PSA? Because GM's management never
understood how it works in Europe. Granted, same with VW in America.
European would even buy 'true' Amercan cars if they're better. They even
love Apple's computers and phones. Most of them run Windows and Android.



Germany started both world wars, ...
Germany started WW2, but are you sure with WW1? Wasn't it actually Austria?

:rolleyes:


Japan tried to destroy our Navy.
And who successfully destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Or Vietnam? Laos?
What about Iraq's chemical weapons? So America's bad?

:confused::confused:
 
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The Fed

Old Guys Rule
Location
Florida
Europe actually is driving "American" cars. Ford, Opel, Vauxhall, even Volvo,
Jaguar and Aston Martin are or were owned by Detroit companies. They're
just less successful recent 20 years, probably due to too much cost-cutting.
Why GM had to sell Opel/Vaushall to PSA? Because GM's management never
understood how it works in Europe. Granted, same with VW in America.
European would even buy 'true' Amercan cars if they're better. They even
love Apple's computers and phones. Most of them run Windows and Android.



Germany started WW2, but are you sure with WW1? Wasn't it actually Austria? Both. They were allies

:rolleyes:


And who successfully destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Or Vietnam? Laos?
What about Iraq's chemical weapons? So America's bad?

:confused::confused:
I thought we were talking about the Germans, but...they bombed us first. Unfortunately, Japan's culture would not allow surrender until it was clear they couldn't win. Did you forget the U.S. spent $10B for Japan's reconstruction? Look at them now, they're modern cities that put us to shame. Perhaps we should have used the money for our own infrastructure? And do you think if Japan or Germany had A-bombs first they wouldn't have completely destroyed the U.S.? We had more waiting in the wings if needed, and we did give Japan the opportunity to surrender before dropping the second one. If we were really bad we would kept going until there was no Japan or Germany left.

Vietnam, et. al., were completely different stories. We were defending against the spread of Communism or defending weaker countries. I never agreed with any of these "police actions" after WWII. So of course I think the U.S. should have kept out of them. Who appointed us the keepers of the world?
 
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TheWombat

Go Kart Champion
Location
Vermont
If only Congress (of either party) would ever approve the equivalent of a Marshall Plan for the USA. We paid to rebuild Germany and Japan because it was the cheapest and best way to keep both from falling into the Soviet orbit. We also reaped huge economic rewards, as virtually all the money we spent was turned around as purchases from US companies, contractors, and businesses. We also got a ton of consumer goods eventually, at good prices.

When we dropped the bombs on Japan, we had...none in reserve. We were expecting another by the end of the month or so, and maybe a couple thereafter, but they were hard to build, expensive, and we had no experience really in producing them as anything other than one-offs.

And we never had any real desire to eradicate either country, of course. Just their warmaking ability and their imperial ambitions. The USSR, on the other hand, certainly would have loved to totally eradicate the Germans, and then occupy the area, which again is one of the reasons why we spent $17 billion helping the Europeans rebuild. People with stuff and jobs and things like that were a hell of a lot less likely to be suckered in by the Bolsheviks. Also, they eventually could be rebuilt enough to form something like NATO, to remind Stalin and his friends that the Elbe was sort of the limit we'd accept.

As for cars, as the above poster noted, American cars don't sell elsewhere because American car companies don't bother to design specific models for specific markets. We've always expected everyone to buy our cars as they are, even though traditionally American cars have been designed specifically for the amazingly unique American market. The Japanese and Germans have long been tailoring models for the US market; their citizens don't buy our stuff because our stuff doesn't meet local needs. No matter how good a F-150 or a Silverado is, they aren't exactly going to sell in Tokyo or Reims.

Finally, to echo the above, there is no such thing as a purely national car company. They are all international, with workers everywhere. GM and Ford have extensive roots and presence in Europe already, Chrysler is part of Fiat, and all the Europeans and Japanese who sell cars in the USA have plants here. It's patently silly these days to talk about "buying American" when it comes to cars. Of course, it's pretty much silly to talk about "buying German," or "buying Japanese," either, when what you are really talking about is buying into a particular corporate culture, not a nationality.
 

Gawernator

Go Kart Champion
Location
Fremont, CA
What about free markets? Ugh. The Germans have tapped into leasing as a way to move large amounts of volume and they make a superior product to most American cars. The funny thing about this is most American automakers are using foreign parts and assembling their cars outside of this country.

It's kind of funny that the Ford Focus RS is made in Germany and the GTI is made in Mexico lol
 
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