Obama: "Build on our manufacturing boom"

[TheDev]

Point #2 in Barack Obama's 5-point plan for a second term is: "Build on our manufacturing boom.

What? Huh? There is a boom? and it for manufacturing? and Obama wants to build on it? What in the world is he taking about?

 

[ivwshane]

Point #2 in Barack Obama's 5-point plan for a second term is: "Build on our manufacturing boom.

What? Huh? There is a boom? and it for manufacturing? and Obama wants to build on it? What in the world is he taking about?

Do me a favor and look up manufacturing job growth over the last 30 years and then get back to us.

 

[glenn1]

Do me a favor and look up manufacturing job growth over the last 30 years and then get back to us.

Hint - it's down. link

 

[cybrsage]

Just another of his major lies that dems will fight tooth and nail saying the lie is true...

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Hint - it's down. link

Now now, that doesn't explicitly say "manufacturing".

Try this one instead!

 

[Juror No. 8]

Do me a favor and look up manufacturing job growth over the last 30 years and then get back to us.

LOL. "Manufacturing job growth". That's funny. You must mean the growth of jobs in the manufacturing of Big Macs and Whoppers.

Yeah, the fast food manufacturing sector is really booming under Obama!

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Do me a favor and look up manufacturing job growth over the last 30 years and then get back to us.

Ok, we looked up, and?

 

[LegendKiller]

LOL. "Manufacturing job growth". That's funny. You must mean the growth of jobs in the manufacturing of Big Macs and Whoppers.

Yeah, the fast food manufacturing sector is really booming under Obama!

Umm...that was never done as far as I know. Bush never had the CB reclassify nor, as far as I know, do any employment statistics include them. Stop the FUDD.

 

[monovillage]

It must have happened during the "recovery summer"!

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38654.html

 

[1prophet]

Here is the outline of your boom America, enjoy it while you sign up for your food stamps so you can complement the purchasing power of that booming job you have with cheap goods and services you have been brainwashed into believing you are entitled to.


http://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publications/UpdatedNotMadeInAmericawithPhoto.pdf


July 2, 2012


| Amy Traub



Why is it that America no longer makes things the way we used to? Between 1980 and 2011, the United States lost 7 million manufacturing jobs,http://www.demos.org/publication/no...-walmart-destroys-us-manufacturing-jobs#_edn1 many of them middle-class positions that enabled workers to support their families with dignity. Today, the nation’s largest employer is not a manufacturer, but mega-retailer Walmart – which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this week.


Walmart pays its associates just $8.81 an hour on average.[ii] In this economy, a quarter of full-time working-age American adults are not earning enough money to meet their families’ economic needs.[iii] While the decline of American industry was caused by a variety of complex factors, the actions of the nation’s biggest corporation and largest retailer play an under-estimated role.



As America’s biggest company, Walmart wields tremendous market power. Walmart could use this might to help build up the American economy, offering good jobs to its own employees, encouraging contractors to do the same, and helping to strengthen U.S. manufacturing through its relationships with its suppliers. Instead, Walmart has wielded its market power to eliminate good-paying manufacturing jobs and lower labor standards in the retail sector and throughout its entire supply chain. On this Fourth of July, here are 10 ways Walmart has facilitated America’s industrial decline:

1. Buying billions of goods that weren’t made in America.

The vast majority of merchandise Walmart sells in the U.S. is manufactured abroad. The company searches the world for the cheapest goods possible, and this usually means buying from low-wage factories overseas. Walmart boasts of direct relationships with nearly 20,000 Chinese suppliers,[iv] and purchased $27 billion worth of Chinese-made goods in 2006.[v] According to the Economic Policy Institute, Walmart’s trade with China alone eliminated 133,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs between 2001 and 2006 and accounted for 11.2 percent of the nation’s total job loss due to trade.[vi] But China is hardly the only source of Walmart goods: the company also imports from Bangladesh, Honduras, Cambodia, and a host of other countries.
2. Pushing U.S. companies to move their factories overseas.

With $419 billion in annual net sales, Walmart’s market power is so immense that the even the largest suppliers must comply with its demands for lower and lower prices because they cannot afford to have their goods taken off its shelves. Companies that used to manufacture products in the United States, from Levi’s jeans to lock maker Master Lock, were pressured to shut their U.S. factories and moved manufacturing abroad to meet Walmart’s demand for low prices.[vii]
3. Making it easier for other U.S. retailers to buy from foreign factories.

Walmart was a leader in sourcing goods overseas, establishing a centralized purchasing system, technological infrastructure, and linkages to foreign factories that other companies imitated and built on. While researchers find that Walmart still imports disproportionately more goods than other apparel retailers,[viii] its innovations accelerated the use of offshore suppliers by its competitors, speeding the loss of American manufacturing jobs.
4. Forcing layoffs among its U.S. suppliers.

Even when Walmart products are made in the United States, manufacturing jobs still get eliminated as suppliers cut costs to meet Walmart’s demands for low prices. A spokesman for the National Knitwear and Sportswear Association noted that producing goods for Walmart “forces domestic manufacturers to compete, often unrealistically, with foreign suppliers who pay their help pennies on the hour.”[ix] A Walmart spokesperson admitted that this was the point of the company’s efforts to buy domestic goods: “one of our big objectives was to put the heat on American manufacturers to lower prices.”[x] Even as manufacturing costs increase, Walmart demands that suppliers’ prices go even lower, a dynamic that helped push Kraft Foods to plan the closure of 39 factories and lay off 13,500 workers. [xi]
5. Promoting domestic sweatshops.

Layoffs aren’t the only way manufacturers contrive to meet the low prices Walmart demands. Walmart’s domestic suppliers lower wages, cut benefits, aggressively fight employee efforts to unionize and bargain collectively, and skimp on worker comfort and safety. For example, Louisiana seafood processor C.J.’s Seafood, which sells an estimated 85 percent of its processed crawfish to Walmart, has recently come under scrutiny for allegedly abusing employees working in the U.S. on temporary immigrant visas (known as guestworker visas).[xii] A complaint to the U.S. Department of Labor claims that the Walmart supplier “engaged in extremely coercive employment related actions, including forcing guestworkers to work up to 24-hour shifts with no overtime pay, locking guestworkers in the plant to force them to continue to work, threatening the guestworkers with beatings to make them work faster, and threatening violence against the guestworkers’ families in Mexico after workers contacted law enforcement for assistance.”[xiii]



6. Squeezing U.S. manufacturers out of business.

Walmart’s unrelenting push for low prices eats into the profit margins of its U.S. suppliers, often weakening companies in the process. Journalist Charles Fishman provides a vivid example: Walmart provided 30 percent of Vlasic Pickles’ overall business and insisted that if the company did not allow Walmart to sell a gallon jar of pickles for the ruinously low price of $2.97, they would stop buying Vlasic’s other products. “The pickle maker had spent decades convincing consumers that they should pay a premium for its brand. Now Walmart was practically giving them away.”[xiv] According to Fishman, Vlasic’s profit margin from pickles shrunk 25 percent or more. Nor is Vlasic alone in seeing its business cannibalized by Walmart: of the top ten companies supplying Walmart in 1994, four sought bankruptcy protection by 2006.[xv]
7. Discouraging American innovation.

By squeezing its suppliers, Walmart leaves companies without the resources to make new investments in research and development. And once companies become dependent on Walmart as a massive purchaser, their greatest incentive is to keep producing the products Walmart has decided to sell, making it unnecessary and unprofitable to innovate.
8. Driving competitors to squeeze manufacturing.

If discount retailers like Target and Kmart want to remain competitive with Walmart, they must demand similarly low prices from suppliers. As a result, the pressures pushing down costs and propelling the elimination of American manufacturing jobs are magnified.
9. Lobbying for policies that make it easier to move U.S. jobs overseas.

According to the non-profit Center for Responsive Politics, Walmart spent $7.8 million on lobbying in 2011 alone.[xvi] While this money was paid to influence a range of legislation, from promoting corporate tax cuts to opposing a bill to guarantee paid sick time to working people, trade policy was among the issues Walmart lobbied on most aggressively. In fact, Walmart has lobbied to make it easier to push American jobs out of the country for years, playing a key role in in lobbying for NAFTA in the early 1990s.[xvii]
10. Making growing inequality the accepted norm

Walmart has set the template for today’s economy: one in which increased economic productivity is not shared with working people, and the vast inequality that this creates is seen as normal. Today the six members of the Walton family who inherited the Walmart fortune enjoy wealth equal to that of the least-wealthy 30 percent of Americans combined.[xviii] These billionaires are the ultimate beneficiaries of Walmart’s push to cut costs, condemning retail employees to work in poverty and American factory workers to unemployment.


Walmart is the nation’s largest employer and one of America’s most profitable companies, netting $15.7 billion in profits in 2011.[xix] With the great resources at its disposal, Walmart could afford to take the high road, supporting good manufacturing jobs in America by allowing for higher wages and more investment in its supply chain and paying its own employees – from retail “associates” to warehouse workers and cleaning contractors – a living wage. That would set the template for a new American economy, one in which Americans might once again “make things” and also find greater dignity and stability in selling them.

 

[ivwshane]

Ok, we looked up, and?

Is it going down or up?

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Is it going down or up?

The trend is down.

 

[Spungo]

The trend is down.

Since Obama took office in 2009, the line is increasing. It dropped like a rock the entire time Bush was in office.

 

[monovillage]

Since Obama took office in 2009, the line is increasing. It dropped like a rock the entire time Bush was in office.

Yeah, it's really booming out there. Rah, rah, rah, let's all cheer the booming Obama economy.

 

[Moonbeam]

Hehehehe I see straight down and the in 2009 an upturn. I can't help but think that if a Republican had taken office in 2008 after a continuous democratic drop off the cliff, you folk wouldn't be cheering an economic wizard had been appointed.

 

[monovillage]

Hehehehe I see straight down and the in 2009 an upturn. I can't help but think that if a Republican had taken office in 2008 after a continuous democratic drop off the cliff, you folk wouldn't be cheering an economic wizard had been appointed.

Just a small question Moonie, is it booming?

btw the wife is playing MoP and really enjoying it.

 

[Dulanic]

Hehehehe I see straight down and the in 2009 an upturn. I can't help but think that if a Republican had taken office in 2008 after a continuous democratic drop off the cliff, you folk wouldn't be cheering an economic wizard had been appointed.

There would have been excuses and cheers about how we became a "service" economy and how wonderful it is and great for the country it is.

 

[Dulanic]

Just a small question Moonie, is it booming?

btw the wife is playing MoP and really enjoying it.

Compared to what it was doing, it's doing much better. But I agree "booming" is the wrong word. Huge improvement and no room for the right to bitch compared to what it was left at is better.

Posting this playing MoP right now too

 

[glenn1]

Compared to what it was doing, it's doing much better. But I agree "booming" is the wrong word. Huge improvement and no room for the right to bitch compared to what it was left at is better.

Posting this playing MoP right now too

Agreed, it looks like a dead cat bounce to me. It's obvious it began during Obama's term and thus it's fair for him to take credit, but the upturn isn't (yet) large or sustained enough to call it a boom. Here's hoping it will be.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Hehehehe I see straight down and the in 2009 an upturn. I can't help but think that if a Republican had taken office in 2008 after a continuous democratic drop off the cliff, you folk wouldn't be cheering an economic wizard had been appointed.

I wouldn't say that finding the bottom after diving off a cliff is a boom. More of a "splat"

 

[Engineer]

Jobs are picking up but it's not because of something Obama has done. Also, many of the manufacturing jobs are through temporary services. Toyota hires new employees for up to 2 years though a temp service before they even are considered for full time work. I wonder if the temporary workers (through services) are considered "service" jobs or "manufacturing" jobs.

Mexico jobs are coming back somewhat. My previous company had shut down 5 or 6 US plants and move them to 8 Mexico plants starting about 10 years ago. Now, every Mexico plant is gone and they have expanded or opened US plants again. Don't know about China but it's hard to compete with those wages/rules/etc.

IMO, those graphs above are exactly what is wrong with the decline of the US today. Middle class crumble should be the title of those graphs or "This is why we have a 47% that don't pay federal taxes" (along with steep tax cuts trying to make up for lost wages). It could go on and on but this is a big reason.

 

[Moonbeam]

I wouldn't say that finding the bottom after diving off a cliff is a boom. More of a "splat"

No, I agree, but I don't see finding a bottom after driving off a cliff to boom. All I see is a graph going down and now headed back up. I am not qualified to say what the data means in words. I see only down during Bush and up during Obama and up seems like the better thing.

 

[Engineer]

No, I agree, but I don't see finding a bottom after driving off a cliff to boom. All I see is a graph going down and now headed back up. I am not qualified to say what the data means in words. I see only down during Bush and up during Obama and up seems like the better thing.

But is that due to manufacturing coming back from being offshored or simply companies hiring because they overfired during the great recession? I suspect that they overfired and that offshoring is still taking factories with it offshore. I hardly see new factories with the exception of moving from one region of the country to another.

 

[Smoblikat]

Since Obama took office in 2009, the line is increasing. It dropped like a rock the entire time Bush was in office.

The chart must have been made on opposite day then.

 

[Auric]

Point #2 in Barack Obama's 5-point plan for a second term is: "Build on our manufacturing boom.

What? Huh? There is a boom? and it for manufacturing? and Obama wants to build on it? What in the world is he taking about?

Manufacturing has indeed boomed whereas the assumption of concurrent labour demand is false, as evidenced.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=34138850&postcount=79