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Good deal. There have been lots of similar stories lately about other companies doing same.
Rapidly rising wages in China + relatively stable wages in US can dramatically change the pain/gain ratio for manufacturing overseas.
From a lot of the analysis I've been reading, the clothing jobs are the ones that are probably not coming back, but a lot of these manufacturing jobs can come back because it just isn't cost effective or logistically convenient for a lot of other products.
Google "bad Carlisle tires" and you will see why they needed to get the he11 out of China!
I imagine this will be the start of a trend. Factories in China will substitute inferior materials in a product right in the middle of a production run *without* saying a word to the U.S. company.
They do this to make more money. They don't care about safety.
And the Chinese do everything they can to prevent the U.S. companies from learning of these shenanigans. They hide things from inspectors, lie, and cheat. Basically the U.S. companies only learn about these problems once the products have been imported to the U.S, and their customers start having problems.
Consumers are getting quite fed up with the poor quality and hazardous products coming out of China. Google the words...
Not Made in China
I toured Bridgstone a few years ago, Wartrace, and while we were told of productivity gains to come, the reality is other industries, such as auto mfg at Niassan were far more automated. I was shocked at Bridgestone (MIddle Tn plant) to see very little material movement automation as of approx 2008. But like I said, we were told of the improvements to come, and while excellent, they need all the new plants to be as automated as the Mexican plant you described. In many other sectors, that is the norm.
Automation will continue to bring work back to the states, but this won't translate into all that many jobs. Still, some is better than none. Your still gonna need office staff, maintenance, accountants and such, so the gains go beyond the production floor. I have seen a lot of stuff coming back from China at my shop. Even the easy work that China should have been good at... I think the list of problems are too great though. They are notorious for using inferior materials that clearly violate customer orders. China can make parts cheaper than I can even order the material for... That's because they make the products with the wrong materials to begin with!
I hope we can get our young men and women some decent jobs in the coming years. Good ol blue collar work, and I hope they are gonna get paid a fair and decent wage for it, the way it was years back. I can't think of one sector that has been kicked around harder these past 30 years in America. Maybe American pride and craftsmanship will find it's place in the budget for a change
I thought I would comment on the impact of the tire tariff imposed by the current administration but looked to see what the experts said...
'The tariffs did ultimately lead to a 30% reduction in Made in China tire imports from 2009 to 2011, but that didn’t mean 30% more tires were produced in the U.S. It just meant that 30% more tires were imported from Canada; 110% more from South Korea; 44% more from Japan; 152% more from Indonesia; 154% more from Thailand; 117% more from Mexico and 285% more from low volume provider Taiwan, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission.'
andywire, The wages will never return as quite frankly in the 50s through 70s, they were artificially high, since WWII had left Europe and Japan in ruins, global shipping was not a smooth process, so we had a mfg monopoly here. Now we must compete; we'll get more mfg jobs, but it will be at the low teen wage level mostly, perfectly fine for a 2 income family to live a modest lifestyle upon. And still miles ahead of the alternative jobs available for those who skip post-secondary education.
Worked and lived in China for 7 years. We always said when the RMB gets to 6:1 with dollar and oil is $100 a barrel a lot of the advantage of China is gone. Logistics is a huge issue, both cost and lead times as well as reliability. The Chinese will have to focus more on growing their internal market and especially quality improvements. They need a lot of environmental upgrades too as they can't continue with polluting as they have the past 3 decades. One critical issue for China is water. The great lakes may see a mfg rebirth because of the availability of water.
The carlisle's are garbage, they have given themselves a pretty bad name with their poor quality.
I've had a few car haulers over the years and every carlisle tire has grown an abcess, worn funny, lost a chunk of tread, or blown out. You're better off running LT tires of the appropriate weight ratings instead, as most trailer tires are made in china....although a few are starting to come back to the USA.
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