July 4 -6, 2017: Ford, GM and "Bloated Payrolls," and a North Korean Missile that Can Strike Alaska

 

7/4/17: Carmakers announce that June sales dropped for the sixth month in a row. Last year, American auto plants employed 211,000 workers, up 55% from a 2009 low, during the Great Recession. Ford announced in June it would move production of its Focus model to China. As The New York Times notes, “The company had previously planned to move the car to a new plant in Mexico, but canceled the project after meeting stiff opposition from Mr. Trump.” 

“Ford’s China move will not cost any American jobs,” reporters add, “because Focus production in Michigan will be replaced by trucks and S.U.V.’s.” But it won’t add any, either. Scaling back jobs is supposedly part of automakers’ efforts to “avoid bloated payrolls.” Detroit has also hired large numbers of low-wage entry-level workers to reduce expenses. 

Also: to reduce the American middle class. 

“These decisions are always tough, says Alan Batey, GM’s president of North American operations. “But at the end of the day we have to be disciplined about our production plans.” 

Making tough decisions is hard work and for that reason Batey earns $6,282,013 for the year.

Batey and others get paid to make the "tough decisions."

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7/5/17: President Trump insisted (in a January tweet) that a North Korean test of an ICBM capable of hitting the USA “won’t happen!” Note the exclamation point! That meant the man was serious!!!! 

On July 4, however, the North Koreans launch a missile that crosses that line, if just barely. They now have the capability to hit Alaska. 

Secretary of State Tillerson calls for global action, including stronger measures to be enacted by the U.N. Security Council. (The Trump administration hates the U.N. except when it needs U.N. assistance.) The missile fired on July 4 traveled 580 miles before splashing down in the Pacific but followed a 1,700-mile arc into space and back to earth. Trump’s advisers say the administration has laid down no red lines because “they would rather keep the North guessing.” 

Secretary of Defense Mattis says on Face the Nation that war with North Korea “would be probably the worst kind of fighting in people’s lifetimes.”

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7/6/17: Volvo, the Swedish carmaker, bows to the realities of climate change and announces all new models, starting in 2019, will be battery-powered electrics or hybrids. 

The American company, Tesla, which promises to build nothing but electric cars, surpasses Ford and General Motors in stock valuation. Change is coming even if Trump is too dense to see it.