Made In The USA

[Bearcatrp]

Wow. Cummins got popped not long ago for emissions. Government must be hard up for cash. I wonder why. Let’s see, print 4 trillion, forgive student loans, give away ammunition to other countries, feed millions of illegals, etc.. whose next?

 

[GreensvilleJay]

It'd be interesting to see the 'list', but I suspect China imports mostly raw materials, scrap metals and machinery from the USA not cars or 2by4s or processed food.

googled and found this...

"According to the Federal Trade Commission, “Made in USA” means that “all or virtually all” the product has been made in America. That is, all significant parts, processing and labor that go into the product must be of U.S. origin. "

I bet it kinda means 99.44% of stuff isn't 'Made in USA'....

 

[SDT]

Wow. Cummins got popped not long ago for emissions. Government must be hard up for cash. I wonder why. Let’s see, print 4 trillion, forgive student loans, give away ammunition to other countries, feed millions of illegals, etc.. whose next?

Bingo.

 

[D2Cat]

It's real easy, but not taught in school.

When your outgo exceeds your income, your upkeep becomes your downfall!

 

[GreensvilleJay]

but... in the real world, you're taught to HAVE deficit budgets ! ONLY pay minimum on all your credit cards, governements allowed to 'run in the red', in too deep,go bankrupt..CEOs get paid extra and employees get shafted.

 

[PaulL]

I was astounded at some of my friends in the US's approach to finance. For example, borrowing to buy a car, which I found astounding (other than young people or poor people, in NZ you generally only borrow for a house, everything else you save for). One family were well off, owned a house etc, but were buying a brand new car with a loan.

Thing is, they were paying like 4% on that loan. In NZ a car loan would be 10-15% (treated as a personal loan). And your housing loans are way cheaper than ours too, and you can fix for 15-20 years. If I could buy a house with a 3% loan fixed for 20 years, I'd have bought a very different house. And, finally, your houses in many places are just way cheaper than ours - other than California or NYC, you're pretty much getting twice as much house for your money.

I guess all countries are different, and some of the things people do actually make sense in the environment they're in.

 

[chim]

Some random stuff:

Seeing things tagged "Assembled in the USA from Globally Sourced Materials". kinda covers it for some companies.

I don't care much where something is made. Quality balanced with price attracts me. I LOVE some Harbor Freight stuff, but wouldn't touch some of the stuff with a 10' pole.

Seems some professionals prefer to use precision tools or instruments from Germany or Japan.

Wouldn't make sense to head off in pursuit of a made in the USofA V-belt for my Italian RFM's.

In the early 80's the rumor was that PA didn't buy new cop cars one year because of the "Buy American" thing going on. Story was that our company had a legal battle with the Commonwealth over the origin of some stainless pipe, and it came out that the cars they wanted to buy weren't as "American" as the pipe they picked a fight on.

I did several projects that had the ol' Buy American clause in the contracts. The clause was only used to harass contractors. Don't show up with a box of Chinese self-tapping screws. They'd make a federal case out of it. BUT specifications often included materials that had to be imported (windows from somewhere in Scandinavia, stone from Great Britain, etc).

Had a PA DGS inspector who tried to insist on steel certs for copper wire. He was just a moron.

 

[ken erickson]

A lot of good information here,

Complying with the Made in USA Standard

Introduction Basic Information About Made In USA Claims The Standard For Unqualified Made In USA Claims Qualified Claims Comparative Claims The FTC and The Customs Service Other Statutes What To Do About Violations Introduction The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is charged with preventing

www.ftc.gov

Not as cut and dried as one might think when labeling “made in usa”.
There are also different rules/laws for certain categories of product, Automobiles and furs as two examples.

 

[chim]

I was astounded at some of my friends in the US's approach to finance. For example, borrowing to buy a car, which I found astounding (other than young people or poor people, in NZ you generally only borrow for a house, everything else you save for). One family were well off, owned a house etc, but were buying a brand new car with a loan......................

I live in the US, and agree with your approach. Credit / borrowing is a major problem here. People frequently buy things they either don't need / can't afford because it's so easy to spend money they don't have. There are some situations in a business where borrowing isn't necessarily bad.

I WANTED a nice tractor when we first built here. I NEEDED something that would cut the grass. We had a limited amount of cash. I bought an older 2WD Cub LoBoy because it would do the job and it was a simple machine to work on. Over the years our needs and finances changed and the equipment did as well.

There was a discussion about financing a tractor in which I suggested the poster saved up for a tractor rather than dive into debt. Wasn't what he wanted to hear - said he couldn't afford to. If you can't afford to put money into savings each month, what makes you believe you can make monthly payments on debt?

 

[P0234]

It's really interesting that quite a few folks here have more allegiance to Orange, than their own country. There is no spin you can put on labeling Made in USA on things that aren't.

And shame on you for calling it politics. What do you call turning your head the other way when someone does this, is that what you prefer the government do?

 

[GreensvilleJay]

kinda curious...are there any 'Made in USA' , sub 50 HP tractors ?

 

[PaulL]

It's really interesting that quite a few folks here have more allegiance to Orange, than their own country. There is no spin you can put on labeling Made in USA on things that aren't.

And shame on you for calling it politics. What do you call turning your head the other way when someone does this, is that what you prefer the government do?

I don't see people putting that spin, and few at all mentioning Kubota's mislabelling. They're more questioning what Made in the USA actually means and how you classify it.

In the case of Kubota, they clearly appear to have mislabelled. The article makes it sound like incompetence more than malicious - i.e. someone maintains the website/documentation and wrote Made in the USA at a point in time. The company changed where some parts were sourced and nobody updated the website/documentation. It doesn't seem to be for whole tractors or loaders or whatever, rather for individual detailed parts in the parts catalogue.

Break the law, pay the fine, but this doesn't seem a particularly big deal other than that - just standard corporate incompetence.

 

[ken erickson]

I don't see people putting that spin, and few at all mentioning Kubota's mislabelling. They're more questioning what Made in the USA actually means and how you classify it.

In the case of Kubota, they clearly appear to have mislabelled. The article makes it sound like incompetence more than malicious - i.e. someone maintains the website/documentation and wrote Made in the USA at a point in time. The company changed where some parts were sourced and nobody updated the website/documentation. It doesn't seem to be for whole tractors or loaders or whatever, rather for individual detailed parts in the parts catalogue.

Break the law, pay the fine, but this doesn't seem a particularly big deal other than that - just standard corporate incompetence.

For the most part I agree with PaulL but do believe that Kubota not updating the labeling might not be completely innocent of malicious acts after reading this part of the complaint. Having been previously sued by the FTC for the same violation I would have thought Kubota would have gotten their ducks in a row as far as labeling "Made in USA".

Based on the facts and violations of law alleged in this Complaint, the FTC has reason to believe Defendant is violating or is about to violate laws enforced by the Commission because, among other things: Defendant has engaged in its unlawful acts repeatedly over a period of at least three years, despite being sued by the FTC previously for the same violations; Defendant has earned significant revenues from participating in these unlawful acts and practices; and Defendant only has ceased its unlawful activities after learning of the FTC’s investigation into its unlawful conduct.

 

[PaulL]

For the most part I agree with PaulL but do believe that Kubota not updating the labeling might not be completely innocent of malicious acts after reading this part of the complaint. Having been previously sued by the FTC for the same violation I would have thought Kubota would have gotten their ducks in a row as far as labeling "Made in USA".

Based on the facts and violations of law alleged in this Complaint, the FTC has reason to believe Defendant is violating or is about to violate laws enforced by the Commission because, among other things: Defendant has engaged in its unlawful acts repeatedly over a period of at least three years, despite being sued by the FTC previously for the same violations; Defendant has earned significant revenues from participating in these unlawful acts and practices; and Defendant only has ceased its unlawful activities after learning of the FTC’s investigation into its unlawful conduct.

Possibly.

I've worked in a few big organisations. It's hard to understand just how incompetent they can be at basic things unless you've experienced it. It seems obvious that when you change the source of an item you'd need to change the labelling, but in reality the people who decide to change the sourcing are probably in production planning or finance or somewhere like that, the people who update documentation are in an entirely different department. Making a process where the people who do sourcing tell the people who do documentation is harder than it sounds.

Japanese companies I've come across are particularly prone to working in silos, and particularly prone to having stupid bureaucracy (although all large companies have a fair amount of that). Maybe it's partly a language thing - perhaps the people who do the labelling are English speaking (perhaps Americans), the people who do the planning are Japanese.

This absolutely can be explained by incompetence, even though it seems obvious that if you got sued once you'd fix it. They may think they fixed it, but actually the people doing the job ignored the new process that was supposed to fix it.

I'm not saying that's definitely the answer, there may be something more malicious going on. But usually given a choice between incompetence and conspiracy, the incompetence theory will be the right one nine times out of ten.

 

[Gb540]

kinda curious...are there any 'Made in USA' , sub 50 HP tractors ?

A certain green-and-yellow brand has plants in Wisconsin and Georgia. What percentage of the produced machines are made versus assembled in these plants I couldn't tell you.

For the labeling issue, IMO the fine here is steep and anyone actually affected won't see a penny... but stuff does need to be labeled right

 

[GreensvilleJay]

Well having a YANMAR engine in it means NOT Made in USA......

 

[SDT]

It's really interesting that quite a few folks here have more allegiance to Orange, than their own country. There is no spin you can put on labeling Made in USA on things that aren't.

And shame on you for calling it politics. What do you call turning your head the other way when someone does this, is that what you prefer the government do?

Bingo.

 

[mikester]

It's real easy, but not taught in school.

When your outgo exceeds your income, your upkeep becomes your downfall!

Unless you are a government employee on the public tit...then you spend more, raise taxes, create more bureaucracy make work paperwork to kill small businesses, then invent inflation to make your debt habit suddenly cheaper.

 

[UnEasyRider]

I think Teslas are still made in CA and TX.

Fremont, Ca, Austin,Tx along with Nevada for the Semi, Berlin, Germany and Shanghai, China, and Buffalo, NY for batteries only. Mexico will probably be next and then India. As a long time shareholder I follow this stuff.

 

[GreensvilleJay]

Tesla Adds Made-In-China Vehicles To Its Canadian Inventory

Tesla has officially added made-in-China (MIC) Model 3 and Model Y vehicles to its Canadian inventory, confirming the American EV maker has shipped vehicles from its Shanghai Gigafactory to North America.

insideevs.com