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Strategies & Market Trends : Aardvark Adventures -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ~digs who wrote (623)	6/23/2004 5:39:57 PM
From: ~digs	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 7944

DEARBORN, Mich. (Reuters) - Cars built in China's low-cost labor market could start pouring into the United States in large volumes by the end of this decade, a senior U.S. trade official said on Wednesday. Al Warner, director of the Office of Automotive Affairs at the U.S. Department of Commerce, made the prediction in a Reuters interview after speaking about China to an auto industry conference in this Detroit suburb. "I don't think you can argue with the low-end cost equation, Warner said. In his speech he said that, with the exception of Honda Motor Co. Ltd. (7267) and Hyundai Motor Co. Ltd. (005380), global automakers lack the production capacity to meet fast-growing demand in China while also using it as an export base. That could change rapidly, however, and Warner told Reuters "big numbers" of Chinese-built cars and trucks were likely to be selling on the U.S. market in "four or five years." U.S. imports of Chinese auto parts have already surged more than 100 percent over the last three years to $2.8 billion in 2003, according to Warner. In his speech he added that continued growth was inevitable, given "the cost pressures of the hyper-competitive U.S. market." None of that is good news for the United Auto Workers, and UAW President Ron Gettelfinger made that clear at the Dearborn, Michigan, conference not long after Warner spoke. The Detroit-based UAW, long considered one of the world's most powerful trade unions, has suffered steep declines in its membership in recent years as automakers shift manufacturing and other jobs overseas. "No worker anywhere can compete with the painfully low wages and terrible working conditions endured by so many workers in China. And, as we all know, China is becoming a growing world power in the auto industry," Gettelfinger said. "With a vast underpaid work force, China is fast becoming an export platform for the global automotive industry, sending billions of dollars worth of components to factories overseas. And it can't be very long before they begin sending fully assembled vehicles, as well," he said. "Workers around the world are suffering from a global race to the bottom," Gettelfinger added, saying auto workers all over the world faced a serious threat from China and its "reservoir of repressed, low-cost labor." finance.myway.com