'Made in America'

choi

(1) Louis Uchitelle, What It Takes to Keep a Factory; Subsidies aid rebirth in US manufacturing. New York Times, May 11, 2012.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/1 ... -manufacturing.html

Quote:

"He [Brian O’Shaughnessy, owner of Revere Copper Products] wonders sometimes about the less patriotic alternative of relocating production to Asia or closing the factory entirely on the ground that Revere’s profit margin here is too thin — less than $1 million on $450 million in annual revenue.

"The subsidy comes from New York State, which supplies, at cost, the electric power that Revere uses to produce copper sheets and slabs. Mr O’Shaughnessy says it accounts for half of Revere’s profit.

My comment:
(a) When supplied "at cost," that means no profit is made on the part of a supplier.  
(b) The profit margin of the manufacturer, 1/450, is too slim, even lower than many of Taiwanese contractors. Perhaps America is better off, if the manufacturer is offshored or closed. Like many Tea-Party Republicans, i am ahaist government bailouts or subsidies.
(c) druthers (n; druther, alteration of would rather; First Known Use 1870):
"free choice : PREFERENCE"
www.m-w.com
(d) Rome, New York
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome,_New_York
(e) A paragraph of the report says, "An American company, Element Electronics, for example, has made flat-screen televisions for years at a factory in China but is now expanding in America. It recently opened a factory near Detroit that is producing the first televisions made in the United States by any company in years."

See next.

The O’Shaughnessys (father and son) in (1) are no relations to Mike O’Shaughnessy, the protagonist of (2).


(2) Hal Weitzman, High Hope for a Shift to 'Made in America'; News analysis; Manufacturers look to bring jobs home with 'reshoring.' Financial Times, May 11, 2012.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e9b21b ... 7-00144feabdc0.html

Quote:

"While reshoring’s champions often cite rising wage costs in China, Mike O’Shaughnessy, Element’s owner, says the main costs that determined his decision to start operations in the US were high US import duties on larger and more expensive televisions, and freight costs. * * * Mr O’Shaughnessy – who has been importing TVs from Asia for a decade – will continue to source smaller sets from Asia.

"Even on his US-assembled sets, however, Mr O’Shaughnessy is still paying vast freight costs, since he is importing nearly all the components from China, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. That reflects a further limitation – the lack of a local supplier base for some US manufacturers.

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