New Holland to switch to Korean manufacturer?

[dave1949]

IMO we all have to look in the mirror on this one, or at least the people around us. We have become a nation that values price over jobs and quality. Walmart in the early 90's had a made in the USA drive that a lot of the stuff in the stores had 2 options, made here, or made were ever. It didn't last due to people put price 1st. In the end the "Big dogs" are giving people what they want.

Also try and open a factory here in the states. I was part of a team that my employer had look into expansion in several states. In the end the EPA had so many hoops to jump through there was no way to pay for it, throw in a decent wage and we could not compete. It would also have taken years to get the approvals. We even got our 1 plant below our emissions cap with the thought of expanding it. The EPA lowered our cap to where we were currently at. Better yet try and enforce a copy write or patent when the product comes from China. All they do is change the company name and in a few days they start right in selling your product. Depending on your process some products are easier to open a plant, but it gets harder every day.

Here is some food for thought, I read the enviro impact study to build an oil refinery is 200 million, and a new nuclear plant $1 billion. That just paper and permits before any ground is broke. Throw in a few lawsuits by enviro groups and the costs add up quickly.

We need to look in the mirror not just as consumers, but also in the area of business ethics ( the ethical choices made by those engaged in manufacturing/production/etc. ) I agree the environmental compliance costs are a burden and we need to find a way to do that much more economically. It would be a lot cheaper to just be more ethical, but we are human.

The bottom line is the vast majority of those regulations are the direct result of someone acting unethically. We have to see that in the mirror too. It's easy to get into 'trench' mode which results in an 'us against them' situation.

I don't mean to imply that you or your company is unethical. Enough were/are however, to bring on the regulations you ran up against. I doubt you would like to live and raise a family in countries where there is little or no environmental oversight over industrial/agricultural operations.

The idea that the US would be the idea and invention country doesn't work so well against the total lack of intellectual property rights in places like China.

We have problems and challenges.
Dave.

 

[IslandTractor]

Here is some food for thought, I read the enviro impact study to build an oil refinery is 200 million, and a new nuclear plant $1 billion. That just paper and permits before any ground is broke. Throw in a few lawsuits by enviro groups and the costs add up quickly.

Drill Baby, Drill. Maybe it would be preferable to have a few $100 billion natural disasters to a $200 million environmental impact statement.

Chernobel wasn't such a big deal either.

Let the freedom of the marketplace unfettered by big government deal with it. That's the American Way, right?:confused2:

 

[RickB]

Drill Baby, Drill. Maybe it would be preferable to have a few $100 billion natural disasters to a $200 million environmental impact statement.

Chernobel wasn't such a big deal either.

Let the freedom of the marketplace unfettered by big government deal with it. That's the American Way, right?:confused2:

Actually, the American Way is to sit around complaining and identifying shortcomings without offering any tangible solutions. Thanks for your contribution.

 

[dave1949]

Actually, the American Way is to sit around complaining and identifying shortcomings without offering any tangible solutions. Thanks for your contribution.

Rick, The antidote to multi-layered bureaucracy lies in personal responsibility. I can well imagine a manufacturer's head spinning whilst caught between a budget, a project schedule, civil servants and several third party consultants and engineers.

What if the EPA, for example, focused on compliance and punishment for non-compliance rather than up front permitting? You would see the consultants and engineers bonded against damage to their clients, and the clients themselves would face real penalties including jail time for failure. The bottom line of emphasis would be, if you want to disturb the environment you had better be competent and responsible.

For firms that are playing nice, they avoid costs, the bad eggs get punished.
Dave.

 

[IslandTractor]

Actually, the American Way is to sit around complaining and identifying shortcomings without offering any tangible solutions. Thanks for your contribution.

Perhaps you are being too concrete in interpreting my reply. My suggestion, buried perhaps in sarcasm, is that there does need to be strong government regulation especially of big industry. That means minimizing the impact of lobbying and perhaps an amendment to overturn the rediculous recent supreme court ruling on unlimited political donations by corporations. There needs to be a balance and my point is that the pendelum has swung too far in favor of big business and their shortsighted focus on short term profits.

 

[Pops15]

Dave,
Yes there are many cases where business has acted unethically. No one has any sympathy for them.
There are more cases where they just didn't know what they were doing was potentially harmful. Sometimes it takes decades to see the harmful effects of products or procedures. And sometimes the "experts" are wrong. It's not as simple as ethical or unethical.

The EPA DOES focus on compliance and punishment in some instances. Check out the fines for violating the RRP lead safe work procedures. When I took my certification class the instructors informed us there were only 23 EPA inspectors for the RRP program for the entire country. How do they plan to enforce the new regs? They are relying heavily on their "snitch hotline" where the snitch gets a commission on any fines that are levied.
The RRP rules basically give us three choices. Comply with the rules and price ourselves out of business, don't comply and hope we don't get caught, or only work on post 1978 houses. I'm not going to cheat and hope to avoid being caught. It's a widely held belief that the RRP rules open up liability issues for contractors. The proposed changes to the rules will increase our liability even more. For now I've decided to only work on post 1978 housing.

One of my clients is a retired executive from a well known national company. He cited many instances where needless government intrusion hurt the business he worked for. None of his gripes concerned health or safety issues.

Regulation is fine if it's applied with some common sense. Unfortunately that's not the case in our country. With an average of 8000 new federal regulations a year it's no wonder we don't manufacturer much in this country anymore.
Pops

 

[dave1949]

Dave,
Yes there are many cases where business has acted unethically. No one has any sympathy for them.
There are more cases where they just didn't know what they were doing was potentially harmful. Sometimes it takes decades to see the harmful effects of products or procedures. And sometimes the "experts" are wrong. It's not as simple as ethical or unethical.

The EPA DOES focus on compliance and punishment in some instances. Check out the fines for violating the RRP lead safe work procedures. When I took my certification class the instructors informed us there were only 23 EPA inspectors for the RRP program for the entire country. How do they plan to enforce the new regs? They are relying heavily on their "snitch hotline" where the snitch gets a commission on any fines that are levied.
The RRP rules basically give us three choices. Comply with the rules and price ourselves out of business, don't comply and hope we don't get caught, or only work on post 1978 houses. I'm not going to cheat and hope to avoid being caught. It's a widely held belief that the RRP rules open up liability issues for contractors. The proposed changes to the rules will increase our liability even more. For now I've decided to only work on post 1978 housing.

One of my clients is a retired executive from a well known national company. He cited many instances where needless government intrusion hurt the business he worked for. None of his gripes concerned health or safety issues.

Regulation is fine if it's applied with some common sense. Unfortunately that's not the case in our country. With an average of 8000 new federal regulations a year it's no wonder we don't manufacturer much in this country anymore.
Pops

Those all sound like good points, Pops. I agree we are over-regulated in general. And experts don't always get it right due to the state of current knowledge. What is most disturbing to me, is even with all the regulation the desired goals aren't always met. That just becomes a paper passing exercise.

There needs to be a middle ground based upon common sense. Personal responsibility and applying best practices would go a long way in removing a reliance on regulation. People being people, some enforcement mechanism will always be needed.

I don't blame you for working on post '78 houses only. I feel some sorry for the person who needs their pre '78 house worked on. On the other hand, they should perhaps have known remediation needed to be done long before this. One would need to be living in a vacuum for the past 20 yrs. not to know about lead. The personal responsiblity thing again.

I wish I knew more details about regulatory challenges businesses face. It's clear that China, Mexico, India and the like have provided a way out for some. That is dodging the regulatory problem, not addressing it. If those off-shored firms had to function in the US, we may not have gotten to where we are now.
Dave.

 

[JasG]

My biggest problem with regualtion is yes some are needed. As others pointed out were due to people just didn't know any better, not out of greed. yes some out of greed also.

Seems to me I read every day about regualtion and or laws getting passed that are from some company or group pushing an agenda to force an out come or market for there product. In exchange they make donations to the people who push the law through. Or what about a drug campany that gets FDA approval for a drug, then later discovers and is honest about "well if you take X with Y and Z you may have a problem. Then they are sued for being honest about a product.

Right now CARB has changed it's name to ARB in a large part due to it has come out they lied about the data that supported the latest Diesel emissions. CARB is the air board in CA that is allowed to lead on clean air regs. NY add these to there laws and on the same day Corning glass made contrabutions to several reps who got the laws passed. Corning also got a huge grant from the state of NY to build the factory that makes the filters.

Caterpillar wanted to used there own tech to get to a clean diesel and even sued the EPA, and lost. How is it right if a company can meet the standard on there own, yet they are told no you have to do it the government way. Now Caterpillar is out of the on highway engine market.

Yes regulations are needed, but right now we have become a repubilc of the lobby, by the lobby and for the lobby.

 

[dave1949]

My biggest problem with regualtion is yes some are needed. As others pointed out were due to people just didn't know any better, not out of greed. yes some out of greed also.

Seems to me I read every day about regualtion and or laws getting passed that are from some company or group pushing an agenda to force an out come or market for there product. In exchange they make donations to the people who push the law through. Or what about a drug campany that gets FDA approval for a drug, then later discovers and is honest about "well if you take X with Y and Z you may have a problem. Then they are sued for being honest about a product.

Right now CARB has changed it's name to ARB in a large part due to it has come out they lied about the data that supported the latest Diesel emissions. CARB is the air board in CA that is allowed to lead on clean air regs. NY add these to there laws and on the same day Corning glass made contrabutions to several reps who got the laws passed. Corning also got a huge grant from the state of NY to build the factory that makes the filters.

Caterpillar wanted to used there own tech to get to a clean diesel and even sued the EPA, and lost. How is it right if a company can meet the standard on there own, yet they are told no you have to do it the government way. Now Caterpillar is out of the on highway engine market.

Yes regulations are needed, but right now we have become a repubilc of the lobby, by the lobby and for the lobby.

The lobbies are out of control. It's a sham when Cngr. Reps/Sens claim that lobbiest provide them with in-depth information on current issues. What the heck are their staffs doing? They all have a large number of aides, and we pay for them.

The CARB/Cal. thing typifies the regulatory problem. From the 30K foot view, years ago Cal. had some real air pollution issues unique to them. Not that long ago, Cal. state's was the 8th largest economy in world. So, plenty of money, unique problem being ignored by Wash. DC and off they go. It's predictable that their agencies would morph into regulatory monsters over time. I have no idea how to prevent that, something comes into being to serve a useful purpose and really becomes a victim (with collateral damage of course) of it's own success.
Dave.

 

[dave1949]

Getting back to the thread topic

As a NH owner, this doesn't impress me. I put some value on product and vendor stability. It looks to me like a company thrashing around trying to be profitable. They have tons of models across the tractor spectrum that they are constantly twiddling with to position them in the market. Something like the GM 'too many models' issue. They have confused me Combined with a lack of any nearby dealers, this is a turn off. If I buy another tractor it will probably be a Deere or Kubota. My opinion has nothing to do with the quality of LS/LG stuff. How sad is that?
Dave.