Trump's China Tariffs Claim Another Victim: A South Carolina TV Manufacturing Plant

[esquared]

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-apos-china-tariffs-claim-223207045.html

"Element Electronics blamed tariffs on Chinese imports for its decision to shut down its manufacturing facilities in Winnsboro, SC, a town located about 30 miles north of the state’s capital. The plant, which makes Element TVs, will maintain a skeleton crew of eight workers, as it hopes the shutdown will be temporary.

The news is especially hard for Winnsboro and its surrounding communities because of recent job losses in the area, including the shuttering of a Walmart store, the closing of a textile mill, and the cancellation of plans to construct two nuclear reactors."

Hey guys, are you tired of winning yet.? Remember fat cheeto saying 'Trade wars are good, and easy to win'"

Too bad you guys have to take so many for the team. But hey, MAGA, right?

Remember to vote November 2018

 

[trenchfoot]

They're still going to vote Repub no matter what. The whole state could lose their jobs and the conservatives there will be told it was the Democrats that did it to them and they will believe it. Stuck on stupid, they're programmed to blame the Dems for all their ills even in the face of facts as the OP posted.

What really matters to them is guns, gays, godlessness and get the fvck out immigrants. Jobs? Who the fvck needs jobs? Just keep the damn government away from the government freebies that they get of which their own Repub politicians want to deprive them of.

Doesn't make sense? Why should they care? Why should anybody else? Just leave them the fvck alone because they obviously LIKE getting stabbed in the back over and over again by their own "conservative" politicians.

 

[zinfamous]

It was some brown immigrants that stole those jobs, though.

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

People tend to forget who screwed them over, or rationalize it over time to put the blame elsewhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy2CZRb_9XE

 

[Puffnstuff]

I just ran across this story on CNN and thought to myself how can they continue to support this administration.
https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/08/news/companies/tariff-job-cuts/index.html

 

[dank69]

Trump may have torpedoed their jobs but it will be a cold day in hell before they vote for a fucking Democrat. Time to ask master Hannity why it isn't Trump's fault, but Clinton's.

 

[HomerJS]

Trump may have torpedoed their jobs but it will be a cold day in hell before they vote for a fucking Democrat. Time to ask master Hannity why it isn't Trump's fault, but Clinton's.

Then, fuck 'em. They can stew in their own stubborn poverty.

 

[JSt0rm]

dang. I didnt even know you could buy a made in the usa tv

 

[JSt0rm]

those are some cheap tvs. Surprising they can do that in the us. Must pay those people 10 bucks an hour.

 

[hal2kilo]

dang. I didnt even know you could buy a made in the usa tv

Never heard of Elements TV either. Visio is technically a US company making flat panel TVs, but we don't make panels in the country as far as I know, so they spec to some manufacturer in China I guess and design the electronics. Still probably based on a chip set also made overseas. But heck, my Jeep Grande Cherokee has an Italian engine and a German tranny.

 

[Ajay]

Awesome, the economy is great, let's screw with trade and see how that goes. Morons. We have a blind fool leading the blind.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Being a former factory worker I feel for the affected employees.

 

[Amused]

Irony:

Trump on the campaign trail: "We don’t make television sets anymore, folks. We’d like to make them. We used to make them. You remember Sylvania, RCA. But those days are gone."

https://www.politifact.com/virginia...donald-trump-says-us-doesnt-make-tvs-anymore/

 

[mindless1]

1) Many years went by with the trade inequalities and you can't expect markets not to shift, or for the problem to be fixed over night. Were we supposed to keep watching manufacturing go overseas? See #2.

2) Element may be a bad player, it looks like they were importing finished TVs that were merely not assembled yet (IF even that) to avoid higher import duties and get large incentives. They take the "Made In America" stance for marketing but these are just low paid line workers with screw drivers and a few in QC, enough to eventually pad out a 500 employee requirement to get a government handout.

*Some Element Electronics televisions sold in the United States are Assembled in the United States from foreign parts and components. For a list of models Assembled in the USA, click here.

They would like you to believe that there are other TVs, and those are manufactured here, except their "list of models" is just a link to all the TVs on their site, and there have been questions about whether even that much is true, for example

Element receives at its Winnsboro factory pre-assembled televisions imported from China already in their final sale boxes

https://s.bsd.net/aamweb/main/page/file/d2b5fc1794cad27e65_rb4m6fpz2.pdf

Did Element's CEO Michael O'Shaughnessy have good intentions or was this just a way to get state funding? He doesn't seem to have a history of clean hands.

https://thinkprogress.org/walmarts-made-in-usa-televisions-are-allegedly-made-in-china-ebf3ae7cceec/

https://patch.com/south-carolina/columbia-sc/governor-commerce-silent-on-ponzischeme-lawsuits

Seems to me that in this case, the US is just indirectly closing a loophole that allowed a few to profit off near minimum wage labor and at great taxpayer expense, while deceiving customers. If the above is true then all they did is import ready-to-retail box TVs, open some, close them, and sell them, a token gesture to get some taxpayer money.

 

[esquared]

Irony:

Trump on the campaign trail: "We don’t make television sets anymore, folks. We’d like to make them. We used to make them. You remember Sylvania, RCA. But those days are gone."

https://www.politifact.com/virginia...donald-trump-says-us-doesnt-make-tvs-anymore/

Looks like they did a minimal amount of assembly to put that assembled in USA sticker on.
I would take assembled to mean the whole TV, not just the memory board.

"
Element Electronics is by far the largest. From a plant in Winnsboro, S.C., it assembles flat-screen TVs that are sold by Walmart, Target and other retail outlets. We tried three times to reach a spokesperson for the company but didn’t hear back.

The Wall Street Journal reported July 17, 2014, that Element doesn’t do much assembly work at the plant. The article said assembly-line employees open boxes with TVs shipped from China, inspect the sets for damage, unscrew a plastic panel and insert a Chinese-made memory board, and conduct mechanical tests. Then the television is put back in its box and shipped to retailers.

The TVs often are shipped in red, white and blue boxes that have a picture of Statue of Liberty and say "Assembled in the USA," a claim Walmart has vaunted in selling the sets. But the back of many of the sets bears small print that says "Made in China."

 

[JSt0rm]

Looks like they did a minimal amount of assembly to put that assembled in USA sticker on.
I would take assembled to mean the whole TV, not just the memory board.

"
Element Electronics is by far the largest. From a plant in Winnsboro, S.C., it assembles flat-screen TVs that are sold by Walmart, Target and other retail outlets. We tried three times to reach a spokesperson for the company but didn’t hear back.

The Wall Street Journal reported July 17, 2014, that Element doesn’t do much assembly work at the plant. The article said assembly-line employees open boxes with TVs shipped from China, inspect the sets for damage, unscrew a plastic panel and insert a Chinese-made memory board, and conduct mechanical tests. Then the television is put back in its box and shipped to retailers.

The TVs often are shipped in red, white and blue boxes that have a picture of Statue of Liberty and say "Assembled in the USA," a claim Walmart has vaunted in selling the sets. But the back of many of the sets bears small print that says "Made in China."

lol. fuck those guys.

 

[brycejones]

dang. I didnt even know you could buy a made in the usa tv

It isn't "made in the USA" its just assembled here from mostly imported components. Most of the value chain is still offshore.

 

[1prophet]

those are some cheap tvs. Surprising they can do that in the us. Must pay those people 10 bucks an hour.

Imagine if Trump was somehow able to get rid of minimum wage, unions, mandatory company health insurance, overtime, benefits, OSHA, EPA, labor laws etc. we can bring back all sorts of manufacturing like it was during the gilded age,

Of course the same people (many of the same people that demand 15 dollar an hour burger flipper wages with benefits) would cry bloody murder if he could do that but have no problem buying their cheap products under those conditions as long it isn't them working under those conditions so someone can get a cheap TV, DVD/bluray player or whatever electronic gadget is in vogue at the time.

 

[hal2kilo]

Looks like they did a minimal amount of assembly to put that assembled in USA sticker on.
I would take assembled to mean the whole TV, not just the memory board.

"
Element Electronics is by far the largest. From a plant in Winnsboro, S.C., it assembles flat-screen TVs that are sold by Walmart, Target and other retail outlets. We tried three times to reach a spokesperson for the company but didn’t hear back.

The Wall Street Journal reported July 17, 2014, that Element doesn’t do much assembly work at the plant. The article said assembly-line employees open boxes with TVs shipped from China, inspect the sets for damage, unscrew a plastic panel and insert a Chinese-made memory board, and conduct mechanical tests. Then the television is put back in its box and shipped to retailers.

The TVs often are shipped in red, white and blue boxes that have a picture of Statue of Liberty and say "Assembled in the USA," a claim Walmart has vaunted in selling the sets. But the back of many of the sets bears small print that says "Made in China."

Black Friday TVs in other words.

 

[Amused]

Looks like they did a minimal amount of assembly to put that assembled in USA sticker on.
I would take assembled to mean the whole TV, not just the memory board.

"
Element Electronics is by far the largest. From a plant in Winnsboro, S.C., it assembles flat-screen TVs that are sold by Walmart, Target and other retail outlets. We tried three times to reach a spokesperson for the company but didn’t hear back.

The Wall Street Journal reported July 17, 2014, that Element doesn’t do much assembly work at the plant. The article said assembly-line employees open boxes with TVs shipped from China, inspect the sets for damage, unscrew a plastic panel and insert a Chinese-made memory board, and conduct mechanical tests. Then the television is put back in its box and shipped to retailers.

The TVs often are shipped in red, white and blue boxes that have a picture of Statue of Liberty and say "Assembled in the USA," a claim Walmart has vaunted in selling the sets. But the back of many of the sets bears small print that says "Made in China."

If you check them out, they were increasingly assembling parts here in the US. That article is how they started out. 4 years ago.

They now had near fully assembled in the US TVs AND mostly imported TVs. They had to import parts. So? Many parts, such as panels, are not made in the US. Most TV manufactures do not manufacture panels.

And they employed over 500 people in one of the poorest, blackest counties of South Carolina at an above livable wage.

They were an upstart trying to bring back manufacturing to the US.

So they started out small and made cheap stuff. So what? They provided high paying jobs in a poor country and were trying to become bigger. Most companies start out this way.

 

[esquared]

^^^
Thanks for the additional info.
That makes the shutdown even more depressing. Hopefully they can get it going again

 

[JSt0rm]

If you check them out, they were increasingly assembling parts here in the US. That article is how they started out. 4 years ago.

They now had near fully assembled in the US TVs AND mostly imported TVs. They had to import parts. So? Many parts, such as panels, are not made in the US. Most TV manufactures do not manufacture panels.

And they employed over 500 people in one of the poorest, blackest counties of South Carolina at an above livable wage.

They were an upstart trying to bring back manufacturing to the US.

So they started out small and made cheap stuff. So what? They provided high paying jobs in a poor country and were trying to become bigger. Most companies start out this way.

black county you say? Trump wont care.

 

[Amused]

^^^
Thanks for the additional info.
That makes the shutdown even more depressing. Hopefully they can get it going again

Agreed. Unfortunately jSt0rm is correct. This was a majority black employee company in a poor black majority county that voted 59% for the Dems in 2016.

I would not be surprised if some of the parts on the tariff list were targeted to hurt this company. Trump is that petty and racist.

 

[mindless1]

So they started out small and made cheap stuff. So what?

So fraud on multiple levels. And they did not "made" anything!!

This is where our criminal justice system falls short, that we pursue petty crap but don't nail companies execs like this to the cross and then pound the nails in harder.

Anyone that worked there, I have NO sympathy for. This company was a joke and detrimental from the start.

If you don't bother to research who you work for and or support this crap, then you are part of the problem.

That is what it takes to make America Great Again. It definitely has nothing to do with Trump, rather it's on the citizens to make better choices, where they work, and what they buy. Nothing speaks louder than money.

 

[Amused]

So fraud on multiple levels. And they did not "made" anything!!

This is where our criminal justice system falls short, that we pursue petty crap but don't nail companies execs like this to the cross and then pound the nails in harder.

Anyone that worked there, I have NO sympathy for. This company was a joke and detrimental from the start.

If you don't bother to research who you work for and or support this crap, then you are part of the problem.

That is what it takes to make America Great Again. It definitely has nothing to do with Trump, rather it's on the citizens to make better choices, where they work, and what they buy. Nothing speaks louder than money.

Are you high?

Explain how it is fraud to buy foreign components and assemble TVs in America?

This company was thriving assembling low end, affordable TVs in America.

They were profitable, paying a middle class wage, and employing over 500 people in one of the poorest counties in South Carolina with a majority minority workforce.

Nothing you said above is true.