What Companies that Manufacture Products outside the U.S. to be imported back into the U.S. Don't Understand is...

Me, "What companies that make their products outside of the U.S. borders do not understand is that they are taking away U.S. Workers jobs. If these people can not find new employment, because they specialized in a specific manufacturing industry job their whole lives, where is the money going to come from to pay for imported companies products? It's a vicious cycle. If you take away jobs in the U.S. you are taking away purchases of your product.
Sure, not all U.S. Workers work in the manufacturing industry, but a lot did. If you couldn't afford to go to college, and even if you did, and it didn't work out, a production line job was an easy way into the middle class. It may have been boring work but it was a sizeable check. Now you take those jobs away, and you try and trane them for a service economy, well, some people just can't handle that.
For years people have been encouraged to buy American. Now our U.S. policy should be to hold on to whatever manufacturing we have left and to institute laws that if you sell manufactured products in the U.S., you have to build plants here to sell your product. Make it like government mandated Automobile Gasoline Miles Per Gallon: If you want to sell products here, a certain percentage of your product must be Made in America.
That is the fair thing to do. Each year, either up the percentage, or lower it, depending on how the economy is doing."



From article, "Trump Attacks BMW and Mercedes, but Auto Industry Is a Complex Target"

( Mr. Trump has criticized other companies and industries for moving production out of the United States at the expense of American jobs, such as appliance makers and pharmaceutical companies.

In his latest criticism of what he sees as unfair trade, Donald J. Trump has taken aim at German cars. Why, the president-elect asked a German newspaper, do so many well-heeled drivers in New York drive a Mercedes-Benz, while Germans buy so few Chevrolets?

That Mercedes-Benz in New York, for example, may have been made in Tuscaloosa, Ala., depending on the model. BMW has a plant in South Carolina that exports 70 percent of the vehicles made there, it says. And Germans might not buy many Chevrolets, which are no longer sold in Germany, but they buy plenty of Opels, which, like Chevy, is owned by General Motors.

BMW and Mercedes-Benz — as well as the Japanese carmakers Honda, Nissan and Toyota — employ thousands of factory workers in Alabama, South Carolina, Texas and other states. G.M. gets more than a quarter of its auto-related sales outside North America, while Ford gets a third. Chrysler was bought by Fiat of Italy. Cars of all types increasingly have Chinese parts.

Nevertheless, Mr. Trump has been making a series of ever-broader demands that the auto industry manufacture in the United States to sell in the United States.

After praising German manufacturing prowess, Mr. Trump threatened to impose a 35 percent tariff — he called it a “tax” — on every car that BMW imported to the United States. BMW should build the factory in the United States, Mr. Trump said, where it would benefit from his plans to slash corporate taxes.

The main question lies in what Mr. Trump and his trade advisers decide to do once in office, auto industry officials and trade experts said. Measures to force manufacturers to shift assembly to United States factories and to use more American-made parts could drive up prices for American car buyers and make American vehicles less competitive in world markets.

In some respects, Mr. Trump has a point. The United States has been more open to imports than other large automotive markets, with the result that cars shipped in from abroad represent a considerably larger share of the American market than of markets elsewhere.

European governments have effectively limited imports by putting pressure on vehicle manufacturers not to close high-cost factories or to lay off workers. The Chinese government requires foreign automakers to partner with local manufacturers and sometimes requires them to transfer technology to Chinese companies.

BMW’s largest factory anywhere in the world is in Spartanburg, S.C. It employs nearly 9,000 people and exports 70 percent of the vehicles it makes, BMW says. Daimler makes Mercedes-Benz S.U.V.s and C-Class sedans in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and it is building a new factory in Charleston, S.C., to manufacture Sprinter vans, creating more than 1,000 jobs.

Daimler, which also builds Freightliner trucks in the United States, has 22 factories or research and development centers in the United States that employ 22,000 people.

Even Volkswagen has not given up on the United States despite an emissions scandal that has led to $20 billion in civil settlements and criminal penalties. The carmaker, which has long produced cars in Mexico, is expanding a factory in Chattanooga, Tenn., to manufacture a new full-size S.U.V.

For any move Mr. Trump makes, the devil is in the details. Options include tariffs on imported cars and possibly car parts. He could also prompt a rewrite of the American tax code so that imports — but not exports — are taxed, a move known as border adjustment.

The architect of the Reagan administration’s restrictions on Japanese car imports and of a Reagan-era law that temporarily reduced taxes on exporters was Robert E. Lighthizer. Mr. Lighthizer was deputy United States trade representative at the time. He is now Mr. Trump’s choice to become the United States’ top trade negotiator.)