Toyota Sings The Mercury Blues
As the Republicans in Congress, most notably the Senate, fixate on emasculating the stimulus package, stripping it and the country of hope for success in heading off the economic death spiral we are witnessing, I want to return to another recent example of the un-American activities and bent of the Republican Caucus of legislative geniuses. I refer to this same group’s actions and illogic in relation to the American Auto manufacturer bridge loan issue that roiled little more than a month ago and still percolates near the surface of our economic woes.
Remember how Richard Shelby, Bob Corker and a pack of GOP loons made their bones by preening against the American auto industry and trying to cram American autoworker and union wages down to, and below, the level of foreign transplant wages? Of course you do because you remember the big Republican "Lizard Lie" on the myth of the $73/hr wage rate. It was all predicated on the supposed superiority of the foreign automakers. The Republicans literally were willing to make the American auto industry grovel and beg, and even talk about killing them outright, based on their claims of the superiority of the foreign automakers.
So how are those vaunted foreign automakers, that are so much more brilliant and perfect than GM and the other American manufacturers, doing these days? Well let’s check in on Toyota, which along with Honda is the supposed gold standard to the lizard brained GOP. From the New York Times:
Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, said Friday that it expected to suffer a loss this year, thanks to rapidly declining sales around the world, especially in the United States. The company is expecting its first full-year operating loss since 1937 — 350 billion yen ($3.9 billion) — more than double its previous forecast.
The company’s 2008 fiscal year ends on March 31.
It widened its forecast for an operating loss on its main automotive business to 450 billion yen, or $5 billion, attributing the larger loss to both steep declines in global auto sales and strong gains by the Japanese currency, the yen, which lowers the yen-denominated value of overseas earnings.
Ouch; not so good.
So, times are bad for even the precious to the GOP Toyota, just like GM. So what kind of implications does this news portend for Toyota’s short and long term future? Ah, glad you asked:
“Toyota is going to get worse before it gets better,” said Tairiku Sakaguchi, an auto analyst at Shinko Securities in Tokyo. “The question is how quickly they can move to deal with inventory, excess production capacity and other problems.”
On Friday, Toyota said it was pressing forward with an overhaul guided by a special Emergency Profit Improvement Committee, which the company established in November.
Besides cutting costs by 10 percent, the company said it was canceling or postponing the construction of plants worldwide. It has already put off opening its plant in Blue Springs, Miss., that had been scheduled to begin production in 2010. Toyota executives said the factory would not be scrapped.
Well, well, well; basically the same issues that GM and, to a lesser extent, Ford are facing domestically. Go figure. Despite all the subsidies that states like those of Shelby (Alabama) and Corker (Tennessee) have spoon fed to foreign makers, despite all the effective subsidies in Toyota’s home market from protectionist Japanese policies, and despite all their supposed superior brilliance and efficiency, it turns out they are …. in the same damn boat. Again, go figure.
I know they are busy trying to destroy the American economy like they have tried to do to American auto manufacturing, but if they could take a few moments out for comment, I wonder what real men of genius like Bob Corker and Richard Shelby have to say now about their opinions on the relative worth of the American auto industry?
Thanks bmaz.
The worst part about this…It does not even “feel satisfying” for Progressives to know that we are right and the Plantation Caucus is so wrong.
It was about doing the right thing to save jobs by saving an industry.
No, it is not satisfying in the least. Although it may superficially come off that way, I take no joy in Toyota’s struggles, they are a proud and good company. My beef is with the lizard brain fools that had the gall to literally be willing to kill off GM under the false guise that foreign emblems like Toyota were so superior.
Oh, I know where your beef lies bmaz. The tone of your post does not infer any gloating whatsoever.
It’s just sickening to watch all of this when 39 out of 40 economists agree that infrastructure spending and saving auto manufacturing is the way to go. Not tax cuts or “foreign buyouts”.
Any David Addington sightings over the last two weeks? I’m concerned about Cheney’s Cheney.
Shelby and Corker are Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.
Fearless leader selects his own mis-advisors.
Par example, Larry Summer:
Lawrence H. Summers: The laws of economics are like the laws of engineering. There’s only one set of laws and they work everywhere. One of the things I’ve learned in my time at the World Bank is that whenever anybody says “But economics works differently here”, they’re about to say something dumb. [ p. 106 ]
There are no…limits to the carrying capacity of the earth that are likely to bind any time in the foreseeable future. There isn’t a risk of an apocalypse due to global warming or anything else. The idea that we should put limits on growth because of some natural limit, is a profound error and one that, were it ever to prove influential, would have staggering social costs. [ p. 109]
from the 1994 book FAITH AND CREDIT: The World Bank’s Secular Empire, by Susan George and Fabrizio Sabelli. At the time he said it, Summers was Treasury Deputy Secretary under Clinton. Robert Rubin was Secretary.
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/
Well, fifteen years later the earth endures! Summers is right, there are no natural limits to his profundity.
They were correct, given the current rate of contraction.
This is a dumb-as-a-rock statement. It is the same kind of logic used by the population growth people who say population growth is no problem because we’ll always be able to invent new stuff. It completely ignores the wrenching socioeconomic costs of those adaptations, and is a purely faith-based statement, not one based on science.
Bob in HI
well, that explains why nobody could have foreseen:
9-11
Iraq
katrina
the economic meltdown
I’m sure I left out a few things …
I guess we don’t have to worry about asteroids or anything else, either
cuz “THERE ISN’T A RISK …”
of ANYTHING …
causing the apocalypse
seriously, somebody hired this clown, after that statement ???
Subaru had an excellent year last year. They increased market share from 1.2% to 1.9%. They sold 491 more cars than they did in 2007. The only car maker to sell more cars.
That is weird, cheflovesbeer @ 7.
But then, I’ve owned two Subarus. GL station wagons. Very good snow cars, but after 5 years they have a tendency to turn into hangar queens. Not just my own experience, either. Consumer Reports said the same thing in their Frequency-of-Repair ratings for years.
These days, I buy Toyota, because both personal experience, and those same ratings, describe a company whose reliability over time is superior across their entire product line.
The bottom line is that absolutely everybody is being hammered, no matter how good or bad the quality of their manufactures, because the bottom has fallen out of the entire banking and credit system.
Of course, leave it to the Repukes to use this to try to destroy American jobs and the American middle class. They’ve pretty much done for that last already.
Next up – America’s formal entry into the Third World. Complete with revolving-door tinhorn dictatorships, nonexistent infrastructure, permanent economic depression, and chronic internal war. Brought to you by the Party of Personal Responsibility, the “Keep America Strong” party.
I buy American! Period!
That is exactly right, and is the point we have been trying to make here for a long time. Say what you will about the American auto manufacturers, and much of it is historically deserved, but they, especially Ford and GM, were well into the process of reinventing themselves when the bottom dropped out of the economy and credit markets. Yet they were fileted, gutted and humiliated by a bunch of Republican blowhards (and were not exactly supported by most Dems either I might add) in their callous and unyielding attack on America. They are doing it again in relation to the stimulus bill. It is really hard to understand how anybody thinks their attitudes and actions are worthy of anything but utter contempt, much less justifiable as an honest political position.
you know what I just realized?
if california uses a very restrictive pollution model that should actually help detroit
the reason is detroit will have to tool up and compete at those pollution protocol, foreign auto workers might look at california as a negative return
Pffft. Auto manufacturers, both foreign and domestic, are plenty used to dealing with California emission standards. California has led the way on many, if indeed not most, leaps in standards for decades. They inherently bring the industry along with them because so many cars are sold and distributed through there (especially for the Japanese and Korean manufacturers). Once a production line has to make so many cars for the higher standard of California, it is simpler and cost efficient to just make them all that way. This is a good thing because California will always have more guts and foresight than the limp minds in Washington DC.
Limp minds? Consider that Inhofe, former Chair of the Sen Energy Committee, is from Oklahoma; that state’s economic viability rests on oil and gas production.
Now that Boxer of CA is Chair, with her constituents pushing for alternatives on energy and the environment, the CA standards have an advocate at the federal level.
The contrast between Inhofe and Boxer kind of crystallize the vast chasm between the outworn, outdated, inaccurate, ideas of the GOP and the energy of the Dems.
Inhofe is like an old Remington typewriter.
Now, Boxer needs to be a Sun.
You’ll never know what they think cuz their too chicken shit to come out from under their rocks.
I want that guy who wrote the book “The Dow 36,000″ to do a round of the talk shows – please.
jh3
I have what may appear to be an odd question but if you don’t mind, I’d still like to pose it.
Can someone compare the annual salaries of the UAW employees (those that are working, exclude retirees) to the annual bonuses given to the leaders of CITI, AIG and the other financial institutions that received the bailout? What % of the annual payroll could be covered by the bonuses?
Thanks for your patience.
Sincerely,
Under the prime ministership of J. Koizumi (2000-06) Japan adopted Bush-Reagan style deregulation in the labor sector. Toyota and their subcontractors (as well as most other Japanese mfrs) hired many temporary contract workers who could be fired essentially at any time with almost no social safety net. Many have already been dismissed, but a huge number of additional dismissals will occur in March (end of the Japanese fiscal year) when labor contracts expire. This already is a large and growing social problem in Japan.
It is generally presumed (based on opinion polls) that the current govt will be turned out of office when the next parliamentiary elections are held (Sept 2009 at the latest), and a govt centered on the main opposition party (DPJ) will take power, but they will have a big mess to clean up.