manufacturing

Congratulations Boeing, Now Hire U.S. Workers

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Boeing just won a hard fought $35 billion dollar Department of Defense contract.

In a surprise twist in a long-running saga, the Air Force on Thursday awarded a $35 billion contract for aerial fueling tankers to Boeing rather than to a European company that builds Airbus planes.

This was a huge deal in 2008, when the Pentagon choose EADS, for Airbus is not an American company, and most of the work, and thus jobs would be offshore. That's your taxpayer dollars going offshore, not hiring American workers, not circulating back through the U.S. economy.

Pentagon officials said decision was based solely on price. Boeing’s bid was more than 1 percent below that of its rival, the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company, the officials said. If the bids had been within one percent, the Air Force would have weighed 92 additional requirements for the plane as a tiebreaker, and some of those were widely thought to favor the larger EADS plane.

This contract eventually will be worth $100 billion dollars and a huge number of good paying jobs, 50,000 directly and over 100,000, eventually, will be in the state of Washington.

Durable Goods New Orders Up 2.7% for Advance Report, January 2011

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New Orders in Durable Goods increased +2.7% for January 2011, after last month's -0.4% decrease, which was significantly revised. In spite of the final numbers, this report is not good news. New orders in transportation equipment, which includes non-defense air-o-planes increased 27.6%. Core capital goods new orders decreased -6.9%.

Durable Goods New Orders Down 2.5% for December 2010

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New Orders in Durable Goods dropped -2.5% for December 2010, after last month's -0.1% decrease, which was significantly revised. New orders has declined 4 of the past 5 months. New orders in non-defense capital goods decreased -6.3%. Core capital goods new orders increased 1.4%. Nondefense aircraft & parts new orders dropped -99.5%. Even for volatile aircraft that's an astounding drop.

About That GM China Sales Report

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The headlines are blaring how GM sold more cars in China, a first for the corporation, than the United States. Their sales in China alone are up 28.8% from a year ago.

GM's sales in China rose 28.8% last year to 2,351,610 vehicles, GM said Monday. U.S. sales rose just 6.3% to 2,215,227

Unfortunately the financial press then tries to tie those sales to mean more U.S. jobs. That is simply not the case.

The company said the expansion will generate 750 jobs for the Flint plant, which makes Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups and has been operating on two shifts per day. The last time the plant worked around the clock was in the second quarter of 2008.

GM will fill the shift by recalling laid off workers who will start arriving in the second quarter. It expects to hire no new employees.

The Flint factory employs about 2,100 hourly and salaried workers. It made 115,000 trucks last year.

Last year, GM sold 8.39 million autos. Toyota is still #1 with 8.42 million car sales.

What the press and GM are not telling you is that sales in China are extensively through Joint Ventures. A joint venture means a Chinese company is partnering with GM, but they have their own plants, their own factories, their own manufacturing and their own workers.

As an example of the media spin, recently an export deal to China of $400 million in vehicle exports and $500 million in components over two years was announced.

What they are not telling you is this very JV, or Chinese company, made & sold 1.03 million of the 2.35 million GM cars sold in China.

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