{"id":655669,"date":"2013-04-29T08:00:23","date_gmt":"2013-04-29T12:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tundraheadquarters.com\/blog\/?p=10689"},"modified":"2013-04-29T08:00:23","modified_gmt":"2013-04-29T12:00:23","slug":"how-can-anyone-be-loyal-to-the-domestics-when-theyve-laid-off-thousands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/655669","title":{"rendered":"How Can Anyone Be Loyal To The \u201cDomestics\u201d When They\u2019ve Laid Off Thousands?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As a long-time fan of the Toyota product, I&#8217;ve heard or read\u00a0hundreds of comments about how Toyota isn&#8217;t an &#8220;American&#8221; company, that buying a Toyota product is hurting the American worker, etc.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve always tried to educate the people who make these statements, explaining that 1) most &#8220;domestic&#8221; cars aren&#8217;t nearly as domestic as they think and that 2) some Toyotas (and Nissans and what have you) are designed, built, and sourced in the USA (like the Tundra).<\/p>\n<p>Yet sometimes this info falls on deaf ears.<\/p>\n<p>So, instead of detailed explanations about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tundraheadquarters.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/28\/buy-american-truck-hypocrisy\/\">where Toyota&#8217;s profits go<\/a> or numerous examples of supposedly imported products winning &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.tundraheadquarters.com\/blog\/2011\/06\/29\/tundra-most-american-truck-2011\/\">most American<\/a>&#8221; awards, I&#8217;m just going to talk about two numbers:<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>-266,536<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">and<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>+74,885<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>The first number? The number of workers fired or laid off by GM, Chrylser-Fiat, and Ford since the year 2000. The second? Workers hired by Toyota, Nissan, Daimler etc.*<span id=\"more-10689\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>*Numbers according to <em>Automotive News<\/em><\/p>\n<h2>266,536 Jobs Lost?!<\/h2>\n<p>It&#8217;s appalling to me that the three stalwarts of the American auto industry can lay off 266,000 employees, yet still have ardent defenders. How can anyone talk about buying an &#8220;American Made&#8221; product from Ford, GM, or Chrysler-Fiat under the guise of supporting the American worker? Those three companies put more than a quarter of a million workers in the street since the year 2000.<\/p>\n<p>To put that number in perspective:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If each of these 266,536 people earned an average of $60,000 a year, that&#8217;s nearly $16 <strong><em>billion<\/em><\/strong> in lost wages per year.<\/li>\n<li>If each of these 266,536 people collected $2,000 a month in unemployment benefits for a period of 18 months before finding a new job, that&#8217;s <em><strong>$9.5 billion<\/strong><\/em> in government provided benefits to workers who GM, Ford, and Chyrsler-Fiat fired or laid off.<\/li>\n<li>If each of these 266,536 lost jobs supported 2-3 additional jobs each (school teachers, store clerks, dealerships, etc.), this 266,000 job &#8220;contraction&#8221; could have actually been about 1 million jobs lost.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now I realize that GM, Ford, and Chrysler-Fiat were bloated, poorly managed corporations that had to lay off workers in order to stay competitive. It&#8217;s called &#8220;capitalism,&#8221; and I&#8217;m all for it.<\/p>\n<p>However, <strong>explain to me how it makes sense to be loyal to a group of companies that laid off 266,536 people over the last decade<\/strong> (or so) <strong>under the premise of supporting your fellow Americans<\/strong>&#8230;cause I don&#8217;t get it.<\/p>\n<h2>Fortunately, &#8220;Imports&#8221; Hired 74,885 North Americans<\/h2>\n<p>While Ford, GM, and Chrysler-Fiat were busy laying off workers, Toyota, Nissan, Daimler, and others were busy hiring people by the thousands. About 75 thousands, to be precise.<\/p>\n<p>Toyota in particular opened three new auto plants since 2005:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>TMMTX in San Antonio, which builds Tundras and Tacomas<\/li>\n<li>TMMC in Woodstock, Ontario, which builds Rav4s<\/li>\n<li>TMMMS in Blue Springs, Mississipi, which builds the Corolla<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Is this proof that Toyota is good and Ford, GM, and Chrysler-Fiat are bad? No. It&#8217;s just evidence that the whole &#8220;<em>I only buy cars made by American companies cause&#8217; I believe in the American worker<\/em>&#8221; argument is nonsense, at least if you think that only your average Ford, GM, or Chrysler-Fiat product is made by the American worker.<\/p>\n<p>Blind loyalty to Ford, GM, and Chrysler-Fiat is mystifying to me for a lot of reasons&#8230;this one of them.<\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tundraheadquarters.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/29\/domestic-automaker-layoffs\/\">How Can Anyone Be Loyal To The &#8220;Domestics&#8221; When They&#8217;ve Laid Off Thousands?<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tundraheadquarters.com\/blog\">Tundra Headquarters Blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/Tundraheadquarterscom?a=B5Szqodl53c:x5okDA6iYIs:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/Tundraheadquarterscom?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/Tundraheadquarterscom\/~4\/B5Szqodl53c\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a long-time fan of the Toyota product, I&#8217;ve heard or read\u00a0hundreds of comments about how Toyota isn&#8217;t an &#8220;American&#8221; company, that buying a Toyota product is hurting the American worker, etc. I&#8217;ve always tried to educate the people who make these statements, explaining that 1) most &#8220;domestic&#8221; cars aren&#8217;t nearly as domestic as they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7825,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-655669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7825"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}