charlie hebdoWe haven't manufactured most consumer electronics, for example
I don't think that is true, I think that is political myth designed to get the electorate to give up hope on free markets and embrace a planned Economy.
It's more accurate to say American Companies have not manufactured most consumer electronics on U.S. Soil in a while. GE Appliances, Whirlpool Appliances, Maytag Appliances, Kitchen Aide appliances still have a very substantial operating manufacturing plants in the United States. So does Texas Instruments, so does IBM, So does DELL COMPUTER, INTEL, AMD, etc, etc. A good portion of the companies above might not be American owned but they still manufacture in quantity here. A lot of the subcomponents might be from overseas but the main product still rolls off the line here.
Perhaps nothing is built in Illinois anymore but you should visit major cities in Southern Michigan, Northern Kentucky, Alabama, Texas, Arizona, California, etc.
charlie hebdoThis will continue unless you ban all imports
If that were true, we don't have free bi-lateral trade with SE Asia period. I think your going to find that if enough business leaves China, China will be forced into some kind of action to earn it back. China and Vietnam are not exactly friends and I see Vietnam which I believe to be just as corrupt as China but they would be more compromising with the United States just to get our business. Perhaps China can play the "weather the storm" game with the United States but guess what? Europe is going to follow in our footsteps if it works out for us. If that happens China has two choices, go back to being a farming society or capitulate.
Additionally, not all factories are leaving China for other parts in Asia. Apple is seriously considering pulling it's factories back to the United States (possibly joining FOXCONN in SE Wisconsin). Something liberals stated would never happen was jobs returning from Asia to the United States. However, Apple is tired of the Chinese government insitgating the boycott of it's products in China and is also making the move as with the tariffs in place it is cheaper to export from the United States than it is to remain in China. So Apple gets relief from a double whammy, the Chinese boycott and Tarriff imposition. Initially the same attitude Apple has is what got FOXCONN to SE Wisconsin.
Your view is short-sighted and shows a lack of grasping fundamentals. So the factories move to SE Asia? That simply means the trade imbalance will shift to those countries. This will continue unless you ban all imports and force Americans to either do without goods people choose to buy freely or pay a lot more money for those products if we could even make them. We haven't manufactured most consumer electronics, for example, in years. But some ignorant people want to dictate to the majority.
China last year had a surplus of over 700 Billion with the USA when it came to Trade. That is 700 Billion dollars they had to spend on whatever they wanted to expand their economy and government. You take that money away from them and they will feel the pain in a hurry. How will they feel it not at first but in terms of lower spending by the huge number of factory workers they have over there. You can not win a trade war by playing a short game you must play the long game. People that think you can win a trade war in a couple months are like the Generals that think you can win a major war in 6 months. You can't you have to think long term. Why do you think the Germans and Japanese in WW2 had great sucess in the short runs they had but long term they got destroyed. Yamamoto himself said it best for 5-6 months I can run wild thru the Pacific beyond that I can promise nothing. Why it takes 5-6 months for what we are doing for it to show up.
My husband has several friends that are classmates that run factories in China for their US based companies. All of them are now being pulled out of China for other Asian countries such as Vietnam Tawain Indonesia and Thailand. Companies needed time to pull out of China it took them about 6 months to find the factories they needed in other countries in that area to produce what they needed. Now they are going to be leaving China in a hurry. One company is leaving China and leaving behind close to 100K workers out of work. Another is going to be putting about 40K out of jobs. Similar numbers from the other plants. It takes time for companies to move production now that they can move the lines they are. Everyone here expects things to be done right now well it does not happen like that in the real world. In order to move a plant you first have to redo the logistic chain to the new plant set up your supply chain into it then get your distribution plan into effect while shutting down the other plant while ramping up production at the new one. All that takes months to do. This is not something you can order off Amazon and get it to you in 2 days with Prime shipping. Right now we are helping a customer shift production back to plant based here in the states. You want to talk about fun. Try having to get his plastics to him instead of shipping his containers of custom blends while still shipping him the occasional container of blended. We are getting it done and just over 2 months before all we are doing is shipping 3 loads a week to a plant here in the states instead of overseas.
Shadow the Cats ownerThe farmers have not abandoned the President over his use of tariffs they know that something drastic had to be done.
But, something drastic did NOT have to be done. Economic wisdom has taught that tariffs are a bad move. This is because they always result in retaliation and that becomes a trade war. Like any war, unless one side completely destroys the other, neither side wins.
We are being told that the reason we must now go after China is to prove that the U.S. will not be pushed around anymore. Yet, the U.S. consumers have been buying all the low cost products that they love and China is filling that demand as the leading low cost producer. This is the free trade all the economic geniuses demanded. Where have all those cheerleaders suddenly disappeared to? It was obvious that if we opened the door to free trade worldwide, China would be the low bidder. That was the game we entered. Now we are crying because we think it is not fair.
The most galling part is the line we are being fed by our representatives about how this is punishing China with no cost to us. It is being made to appear that we are pulling over China and giving them a ticket for pushing us around too much.
Completely left out is the fact that a tariff on China is a U.S. tax on the U.S. consumers. We punish them, and they slow down buying. Then that slow-down punishes China by causing fewer U.S. consumers to buy their products. BOTH SIDES GET HURT.
Yet we are being told the lie that only China gets hurt. I do not know what is causing our manufacturing slow-down, but an economic slowdown is natural result of adding tariffs (a U.S. consumer tax) on products purchased by U.S. consumers. This is because a tariff reduces the purchasing power of the U.S. consumers.
The U.S. consumer may not get how this works, but China certainly does. We thought we could quickly teach them a lesson on how they must buy our products because we are buying theirs. We wanted to wrap it up quickly. But China is taking the slow road. They will use the pain we are causing to our own economy to teach us a lesson.
Even during the last major recession my boss did not LAYOFF a single employee. Why the goods we haul have to be moved regardless of wheter or not Wall Street or the experts say the economy is doing well. We haul things like medical and food grade resins for plastic tubing for IV's plastic bottles chemicals to treat the water supplies used across this nation. We haul food the containers used to package the food. We haul the things that people can not do without. People can do without a brand new car during a recession. They can not go without clean drinking water or food to eat. We haul the things that people have to have to survive. My kids can go without a new Iphone or Android phone every 2 years. They can not go without eating or drinking. I can live with my older van. I can not go without gas or power into my house. During a recession I prioitize what is more important buying something new and shiny or keeping the old one and saving the cash. Well guess which one wins every time.
charlie hebdoIt's what happens when a poorly-educated "stable genius" (as on a horse farm?) tries to run things.
Genius? Not the term I would use for someone who lost over a billion dollars in only ten years. Meanwhile, Warren Buffet's Berkshire had an operating profit of $5.56B in the last quarter of 2018, ending the quarter with a cash pile of $112B, which continues to grow at a rate of $100M per day. https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/warren-buffetts-berkshire-hathaway-posts-big-profit-ahead-of-shareholder-meeting
Now THAT is what I call genius!
Shadow the Cats owner If everyone would stop listening to the MSM and in the major media centers and listen to those in flyover country you know the people that got forgotten in this nation along with the farmers your going to find out a different tune. The farmers have not abandoned the President over his use of tariffs they know that something drastic had to be done. The ones screaming the loudest are those that are the ones that screwed over the nation in the first place. I live in an area that was almost destroyed by China dumping product into the USA in terms of tubing and other goods along with it being a farming area. Well guess what we just had 2 factories reopen that had been SHUTTERED for almost a decade because we have a president that puts us first instead of the other nations of the world. My boss has more business coming out of his ears than he can handle due to expanded growth. He has added 30 trucks and 80 trailers to the fleet this year so far to the fleet alone and still needs to add another 20 and 60 of each. That will put us over 400 trucks total. To bad the CEO's and people like Warren Buffet didn't care about the USA as much as the current President. Maybe we would not have to be in a trade war with China for the RIGHT to keep our intellectial property when anything is made there or not have our patents stolen from us. China is hurting worse than the media is letting on their GDP collasped by 10% each of the last 2 quarters from this trade war as companies pull out for other nations. Their last card they can try to play rare earth metals well Austraila and here in the USA we are ramping up production to counter that. Soon China is going to be out of cards to play and will be forced to either fold em or be beaten.
If everyone would stop listening to the MSM and in the major media centers and listen to those in flyover country you know the people that got forgotten in this nation along with the farmers your going to find out a different tune. The farmers have not abandoned the President over his use of tariffs they know that something drastic had to be done. The ones screaming the loudest are those that are the ones that screwed over the nation in the first place.
I live in an area that was almost destroyed by China dumping product into the USA in terms of tubing and other goods along with it being a farming area. Well guess what we just had 2 factories reopen that had been SHUTTERED for almost a decade because we have a president that puts us first instead of the other nations of the world. My boss has more business coming out of his ears than he can handle due to expanded growth. He has added 30 trucks and 80 trailers to the fleet this year so far to the fleet alone and still needs to add another 20 and 60 of each. That will put us over 400 trucks total.
To bad the CEO's and people like Warren Buffet didn't care about the USA as much as the current President. Maybe we would not have to be in a trade war with China for the RIGHT to keep our intellectial property when anything is made there or not have our patents stolen from us. China is hurting worse than the media is letting on their GDP collasped by 10% each of the last 2 quarters from this trade war as companies pull out for other nations. Their last card they can try to play rare earth metals well Austraila and here in the USA we are ramping up production to counter that. Soon China is going to be out of cards to play and will be forced to either fold em or be beaten.
EuclidOh yes, the tariffs on China are a disaster. I can't believe the swinging free-traders have suddenly fallen in love with tariffs. Where were they 15 years ago with their protectionism as our maunfacturing sector was flying out the door? No, back then we were instructed that free trade was the only way to go. Get the best product at the lowest price with the whole world as bidders. This was said to be the most efficient and fairest way to go. Now we look at the trade imbalance with China and paint them as a criminal for not buying as much as we buy from them. You can have free trade or you can have fair trade, but you can't have them both.
It's a shift in thinking caused primarily by growing trade deficits which Moody's has pointed out several times could lead to a downgrade in our credit rating. Also, in part to growing Chinese arrogance in the world where they have started to make statements about bypassing us Economically and Militarily. Further Chairperson Xi, has consolidated power as no past leader of China has done before since Mao. Another concern. Now is the time to fix the relationship or place it on a new footing.
Given the above, the railroads are also suffering a loss of intermodal traffic from China as well as agricultural export traffic to China. Until the trade disputes are settled. I personally think the Chinese strategy is to stall indefinitely and we are probably going to be forced to a full seperation of suspending trade with them fully. Which we can do at some cost. We'll see what ultimately happens but I would not care at all if we just broke cleanly all Economic ties with them.
charlie I work in one of the most REGULATED industries in the freaking nation. It was the OBAMA administration that gave us the Safer 2011 program that determined that a seatbelt ticket is worth more points than a DUI in a freaking SEMI TRUCK. It was the Obama Administration that gave us the current HOS in 2010 that first had the 14 hour clock in them then screwed them up even more by mandating that after 8 hours a 30 minute break was required. Before that they tried screwing with the resets making it so that a driver even if they were a night shift runner on a team required 2 consecutive nights from 10pm-6am off to get a reset. Then they slammed the entire industry with the ELD mandate as his going away present and made the process for getting the units approve for the smaller carriers dang near impossible for them to manage. They tried to put a 15MPG standard on all OTR trucks. The list of how Obama tried destroy thru overregulations this nations industries is out there.
2.5 years into Trump's disaster and people like you will blame the coming downturn on Obama.
Re: And ironically, his trade wars are hurting manufacturers as well as soy farmers and mass retailers. It's what happens when a poorly-educated "stable genius" (as on a horse farm?) tries to run things.
It's too bad, tho, that the well-educated "ivory tower(?)" people thought that shipping all the peasant jobs out of the country was a good idea 30+ years ago. Remember that short guy who ran for president who made the "giant sucking sound"? The well-educated "ivory tower(?) intellectual(?)" people laughed and LAUGHED at that guy. Naaaa, (they said), all of OUR peasants will become "knowledge workers". (Remember that one?) Free-trade is WONDERFUL, a rising tide float all the boats! (That was a good one...) And, the "trickle down theory".... who was it that thought THAT was actually a good concept? Of course, sometimes the well-educated "ivory tower(?) intellectual(?)" people don't "get it" either. Who was it - in the "giant sucking sound" election, that the "well-educated" voted FOR - who DID finally ship all the jobs out? I think he was the one who "felt the peasant's pain" (amongst other things). Yeah, the well-educated always "feel the peasants pain" (in theory).
Oh well, in the mean time, the top 20% - which just happens to INCLUDE the well-educated "ivory-tower(?) intellectuals(?)" - have done better than ever in history; and the pissed-off peasants do what they always do when they get pissed-off: pick an idiot as a leader and follow him (the peasants NEVER have any knowledge - working or NOT - so who ELSE would they pick: one of the "well educated" who screwed them in the first place?).
Too bad the "well-educated (?)" didn't care about the peasants when they had the chance 30+ years ago, maybe none of this would have happened. Of course, the "well-educated" wouldn't be nearly as well-off NOW either. As somebody famous once said: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
https://dqydj.com/net-worth-percentile-calculator-united-states/
Oh yes, the tariffs on China are a disaster. I can't believe the swinging free-traders have suddenly fallen in love with tariffs. Where were they 15 years ago with their protectionism as our maunfacturing sector was flying out the door? No, back then we were instructed that free trade was the only way to go. Get the best product at the lowest price with the whole world as bidders. This was said to be the most efficient and fairest way to go.
Now we look at the trade imbalance with China and paint them as a criminal for not buying as much as we buy from them. You can have free trade or you can have fair trade, but you can't have them both.
Euclid BaltACD Flip Flopping does not create trust. Filp flopping on what?
BaltACD Flip Flopping does not create trust.
Filp flopping on what?
BaltACD Euclid charlie hebdo Euclid Union Pacific says the 300 stored locomotives are due to a “downturn in manufacturing and other aspects of the economy.” That downturn is what the article on CSX I posted is about. An economic downturn is coming. Rail carliadings are an advance signal. We have had a decade of growth, with a sugar high the past year. It may come tumbling down late this year. When did the downturn in manufacturing begin and what caused it? AAR has been reporting decreased car loading since the first of the year if not into the later part of 2018. I suspect solid business men have real distrust of Trump's economic policy or the lack thereof. Flip Flopping does not create trust.
Euclid charlie hebdo Euclid Union Pacific says the 300 stored locomotives are due to a “downturn in manufacturing and other aspects of the economy.” That downturn is what the article on CSX I posted is about. An economic downturn is coming. Rail carliadings are an advance signal. We have had a decade of growth, with a sugar high the past year. It may come tumbling down late this year. When did the downturn in manufacturing begin and what caused it?
charlie hebdo Euclid Union Pacific says the 300 stored locomotives are due to a “downturn in manufacturing and other aspects of the economy.” That downturn is what the article on CSX I posted is about. An economic downturn is coming. Rail carliadings are an advance signal. We have had a decade of growth, with a sugar high the past year. It may come tumbling down late this year.
Euclid Union Pacific says the 300 stored locomotives are due to a “downturn in manufacturing and other aspects of the economy.”
Union Pacific says the 300 stored locomotives are due to a “downturn in manufacturing and other aspects of the economy.”
That downturn is what the article on CSX I posted is about. An economic downturn is coming. Rail carliadings are an advance signal. We have had a decade of growth, with a sugar high the past year. It may come tumbling down late this year.
When did the downturn in manufacturing begin and what caused it?
AAR has been reporting decreased car loading since the first of the year if not into the later part of 2018.
I suspect solid business men have real distrust of Trump's economic policy or the lack thereof. Flip Flopping does not create trust.
And ironically, his trade wars are hurting manufacturers as well as soy farmers and mass retailers. It's what happens when a poorly-educated "stable genius" (as on a horse farm?) tries to run things.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
I believe I've read that equipment trusts kept the second order of Challengers for the Clinchfield around until 1970 or so when they finally were scrapped upon expiration.
Duplicate post
Equipment trust requirements have led to some interesting situations. Certain rolling stock retained its Pere Marquette reporting marks long after the merger, some of it until at least 1960. A more recent example was two ex-VGN Train Masters on N&W that were re-numbered 3592 and 3599 (ex-WAB) to secure the equipment trust.
PNWRMNM An equipment trust is basically a bank loan secured by specific equipment identified by type and road number. If equipment secured by the trust is sold, I am 99.99% sure the bank must be paid the balance of the loan attributible to the equipment sold. 300 units stored is not a huge number in the context of UP's total fleet. Holding on to them is simply a hedge that enables UP to have the power on hand to service demand. Equipment supply is seldom in balance. It is either short or surplus. Surplus equipment gets stored in the weeds.
An equipment trust is basically a bank loan secured by specific equipment identified by type and road number.
If equipment secured by the trust is sold, I am 99.99% sure the bank must be paid the balance of the loan attributible to the equipment sold.
300 units stored is not a huge number in the context of UP's total fleet. Holding on to them is simply a hedge that enables UP to have the power on hand to service demand.
Equipment supply is seldom in balance. It is either short or surplus. Surplus equipment gets stored in the weeds.
I believe the 300 number is what is in that one particular place. There are locomotives stored elswhere, but nothing approaching that number.
Jeff
Sept. 2016
Jan 2019
EuclidI am not asking about the business decision to store the locomotives versus selling them. My point is to ask why there are 300 unneeded locomotives. Did they buy 300 to meet expectations that never materialized?
Another possibility is that UP and BNSF have lost a lot of coal business. I live near the BNSF coal mainline.
Ten years ago we have nearly 80 coal trains a day from Wyoming headed east.
We are now down to around 40 per day.
I can't say this is what affects UP and the number of stored locomotives. I do know that several former students have been laid off due to the drop in coal.
York1 John
Business levels are down. Fewer trains doing more work. (Say you have 2 trains that need the power of 2.5 engines. That means 3 engines on a train. Now you combine the trains. Power required is 5 making 1 engine surplus.) Some engines may still be on lease. Once their leases are up they may be gone.
They also could be holding onto some as replacement power for when active engines fail. They've been getting rid of mechanical people, too. Closing points where running repairs can be done. Then trains are run with as little power as possible. (You may see many engines in a consist, but that doesn't mean they are all working.) It seems like there's a lot of power out there having problems of some kind.
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