The car that killed Holden in Australia, so they say.

[Immortality]

You can't blame the demise of Holden and local manufacturing on one thing, there were heaps of reasons that all compounded that resulted in the loss of manufacturing as well as the closure of Holden.

Ultimately in a free market economy Australia is to small in market size or manufacturing to compete with other markets around the world.

 

[the_boozer]

the elites that think they own the world aka American corparate scum is what happened
Grandpa spent his life sucking them off all this we did this for you boy bullshit is the trueth of what happened the silly cunts signed us up to the duding system that moves the goal posts constantly to keep us broke. How about we hold scumbags accountable everyone of our politicans is a gutless sell out and everyone that speaks out gets shut up ? Its been happening the 50 years Ive been alive . My grandfather was a classic gobblier.
As the land the GM factory in Dandenong sat on was given to them in the first place did they give it back when they ran away or did they sell it and make a profit?

 

[J_D 2.0]

You can't blame the demise of Holden and local manufacturing on one thing, there were heaps of reasons that all compounded that resulted in the loss of manufacturing as well as the closure of Holden.

Ultimately in a free market economy Australia is to small in market size or manufacturing to compete with other markets around the world.

Australia’s only chance to keep car manufacturing going was to export but Detroit hamstrung both Ford and Holden in dictating their export markets.

The Japanese on the other hand didn’t tell Toyota Australia where they could export to and consequently they were the most successful of the local manufacturers. They were only forced to pull the pin because with Ford and Holden leaving the economics wouldn’t stack up as local parts suppliers couldn’t survive on one car manufacturer.

 

[Skylarking]

You can't blame the demise of Holden and local manufacturing on one thing…

Ultimately in a free market economy Australia is too small in market size or manufacturing to compete with other markets around the world.

Yet in the Czech Republic, with a population of 10M people, Hyundai and Toyota built new factories to make their cars

Guess you really can’t blame it on one thing

 

[Immortality]

the elites that think they own the world aka American corparate scum is what happened
Grandpa spent his life sucking them off all this we did this for you boy bullshit is the trueth of what happened the silly cunts signed us up to the duding system that moves the goal posts constantly to keep us broke. How about we hold scumbags accountable everyone of our politicans is a gutless sell out and everyone that speaks out gets shut up ? Its been happening the 50 years Ive been alive . My grandfather was a classic gobblier.
As the land the GM factory in Dandenong sat on was given to them in the first place did they give it back when they ran away or did they sell it and make a profit?

GM is particularly bad, they even screwed over their own US workforce after the GFC whilst the fat cats at the top gave themselves extra bonus's on hte back of govco bailouts.

 

[Immortality]

Australia’s only chance to keep car manufacturing going was to export but Detroit hamstrung both Ford and Holden in dictating their export markets.

The Japanese on the other hand didn’t tell Toyota Australia where they could export to and consequently they were the most successful of the local manufacturers. They were only forced to pull the pin because with Ford and Holden leaving the economics wouldn’t stack up as local parts suppliers couldn’t survive on one car manufacturer.

Yes but that comes back to the free market economy that isn't really free. Us little countries don't have the clout to force the issues so we open up our economies to the world whilst places like the US, Europe/UK and China maintain their protectionist stance and screw us over and over and over again.

Even NZ had a small car manufacturing industry and then in the late 80's and early 90's NZ basically transitioned to a free market economy where all tariffs and subsidies were dropped and fairly much whole industries disappeared overnight and now we just import **** for the most part and only export raw products and so we have lost the "value add" portion of the economy and we pay the price for those decisions every day.

NZ has high inflation but it is almost completely out of the control of our government because of "free trade" because for the government to regulate any industry it has to be very careful or it will break some clause in one or more of the many "free trade" agreements we have signed up.

Just like housing, govco added laws that only people living here can by property except a few exceptions (including you Aussies) otherwise we would be in breach of agreements signed previously.

Free trade agreements are bloody dangerous and really only benefit the larger economies in the agreements (like China and the US).

 

[Immortality]

Yet in the Czech Republic, with a population of 10M people, Hyundai and Toyota built new factories to make their cars

Guess you really can’t blame it on one thing

Cheaper manufacturing, same reason most big companies moved their manufacturing to China sine the 90's and now they are moving them again from China to other countries as China is no longer the cheapest or (geo)politically convenient place to manufacture.

It's about those profit margins.

 

[J_D 2.0]

Yet in the Czech Republic, with a population of 10M people, Hyundai and Toyota built new factories to make their cars

Guess you really can’t blame it on one thing

The Czech Republic is a lot closer to a major markets being in the middle of Europe.

 

[Skylarking]

Free trade agreements are bloody dangerous and really only benefit the larger economies in the agreements (like China and the US).

Free trade agreements take away a counties self determination (because we can't easily bring back protections to enable value adding via in country manufacturing). Such self determination is moved from elected governments to multinational business tycoons/barrons.

In essence free trade agreements come at the expense of true democaracy

 

[Skylarking]

Cheaper manufacturing, same reason most big companies moved their manufacturing to China sine the 90's and now they are moving them again from China to other countries as China is no longer the cheapest or (geo)politically convenient place to manufacture.

It's about those profit margins.

That's the same shite i've heard for years. Decades ago it was supposedly the cause of the demise of our boat building capacity. It was offshored yet where it was moved to, welders earned similar to those down under...

It's just a big game and we are simply the pawns in what is a game of multinational greed