Grasping at Straws To Understand The Mindset of the Typical Ford Employee
Here’s a news article about Ford’s financial woes, how the trade tariffs have cost them $1 billion this this year and forced them to lay of 24,000 employees. It makes one wonder: How many of them voted for Trump, and how many support him now?
I wish I had accurate answers to either of these questions, but there are only statistics, two of which are key:
• Trump beat Clinton by almost 40 percentage points, according to exit polls of whites without college degrees; this is what carried the election.
• Trump’s approval ratings are holding extremely steady, meaning that a very large portion of the people who voted for him still approve of him.
Real earnings for American workers have fallen since Trump took office, but that doesn’t seem to dampen their enthusiasm, since they seem to like what they see and hear from the White House so much that it outweighs their diminished buying capacity. This is the real miracle of the Trump presidency; there seems to be literally nothing that will alienate his supporters. And as long as that’s the case, it’s unrealistic to think that events might conspire such that he loses the support of congress.
Who would have thought that this could be possible just two years ago?
Craig,
Yeah, they’ll still be voting for the President, because unlike you they’ll still be working for Ford and not reading and repeating completely false media reports.
Both the Executive Chairman of Ford motor Co,and CEO Jim Hackett stated, “The reports you have read about our organization redesign work being related to external forces such as tariffs are incorrect,”
Ford Motor Company media spokesperson Karen Hampton stated ” It’s very distressing to note that despite every effort on behalf of Ford to deny these false media stories, , some irresponsible media outlets continue to disseminate these mischaracterizations for the purpose of causing mischief.
The latest job reduction will be for salaried employees, not manufacturing employees, and is a restructuring completely unrelated to the tariffs, which have been beneficial for our North American operations “.
The source of your story is a report by Kevin Kelleher on the 10th of October. Kelleher retracted the story four days later and apologized for it’s inaccuracy.
The question must be asked, why you would continue to base a whole theory on a long discredited media error ?
Poor research ? Wilfulness ? or just plain desperation ?
Obviously, I don’t fact-check everything I come across; I took Yahoo Finance at its word.
I would add, however, the fact that Hackett isn’t publicly attributing the loss to the tariffs doesn’t mean the tariffs, which raise the price of steel and aluminum, aren’t among the true causes.
I tried to corroborate your statement about Kevin Kelleher but couldn’t. Could you please comment with a link to that datum?
I guess we need to interpret your silence as evidence that you simply invented this.
Craig,
Well I suppose that’s bound to happen if you don’t check your sources.
What do you mean ” true causes” ? Of what ? Blue collar layoffs that aren’t happening ?
That’s the value of belonging to a reliable news aggregation service. There are many available for free the most comprehensive being, being RealClear which provides aggregation services covering Politics Policy Markets World Defense Energy Health Science Religion Future Education Sports History Books Life etc from most prominent media outlets.
Reuters, Watchdog.org,FARK are also useful although I don’t recommend sites like Memeorandum etc, who tend to editorialize news outlets or stories to fit in with a particular agenda or bias.
Some aggregators have software that learns and targets readers habits and leanings to increase the flow of what the site thinks will be of most interest thereby increasing it’s revenue from data collection.
Google News, News 360, etc, are typical of this sort of manipulated news service.
Even the expensive private subscription news services can be biased, or at least edited.
Sites such as Fact Check, Snopes.com, polifact and other “fact Checking” sites are only as reliable as the bias of the fact checker involved, (who checks the fact checker ?).
There are also a number of subscription software services which will search for other articles and and fact check automatically any article you come across, and provide analysis from alternate sources by the time you have finished reading the article !
Such programs are not cheap, but invaluable for the busy or lazy.
On the whole, I find RealClear the best for casual, fairly unbiased news coverage presenting a wide range of views which allows a reader to acquire a certain degree of perspective quickly.
Craig,
I thought I would separate my reply as your two questions are so different.
Free Trade -v- Protectionism is a very old and complex argument. Interestingly, the origins of our modern political parties can be found among the adherents to one or the other cause.
However, it should be obvious from the statement by Ford of these lay-offs being White collar staff on a ‘global’ basis, that US tariff on steel and aluminum are completely unrelated.
The other reason (obvious to even the most anti-Trumper) is the false media reports relate solely to Ford Motor Co. Tariffs are imposed industry wide and automatically affect all local manufacturers equally.
The idea an Industry wide tariff affects only one company doesn’t make sense unless the company is unique in the choice of material no one else uses. Since all automakers use steel and aluminum, how could a tariff affect only Ford ?
The idea President Trump has started a ” Trade war” is silly. The US has been locked in a trade war for at least three decades and losing ! This President is at last fighting back !
Why is Ford most affected ? Because Ford has had to totally reorganize it’s plans to further reduce it’s American manufacturing base in favour of cheaper locations. Ford will lose a great deal as it de-globalizes and is forced to invest in ensuring an American-sourced supply chain.
How this is bad news for American workers, is a bit baffling !
I’m a believer in the principles of ‘free trade’, but free trade relies upon all the parties being honest and not rigging the market place or breaking the rules.
Like democracy, true free trade is more of an ideal or ambition than reality. A myriad of factors,some unexpected and unforeseen others inherent and manipulated, always arise to distort the ideal.
Time will tell whether the US will benefit from the President’s economic measures, which are very complex and not easily understood. Most of the reaction has been very ill-informed and wildly inaccurate.
Curtis Ellis is an American journalist and long standing critic of globalization. Although I don’t always agree with Curtis, he does present well researched insights worthy reading to gain better perspective.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/09/25/why_trumps_tariffs_wont_cost_consumers_a_nickel_138158.html