Why More US Companies Are Outsourcing Administrative Tasks

As someone who used to work as a Director and Vice President of Manufacturing for parts of Fortune 500 companies and did a few global measuring studies, I think that NAFTA and the WTO were created so that we could send our production to low-wage countries with few or no health, safety, and environmental rules. My old company had a "sister" plant in China that sent goods to the main warehouse and distribution center of the company. This was also part of my job, but the costs of moving the goods wouldn't cover the cost of materials at my U.S. plant, let alone labor and OH. Their HS&E bills didn't even show up on their financials because they didn't exist.The problem also comes from the fact that our big European trade partners give us VAT breaks. Have you never heard of them? The U.S. doesn't have a Value-Added Tax, but most of our trade partners do.

The VAT that those countries put on our goods that we send to them is usually 17%

They also charge VATs on goods made in their own countries, but many of them give all or a large portion of those VATs back to companies that export goods—in the case of EU members, goods sent to countries outside the EU. This is called an export tax subsidy, while imports from the U.S. are charged a VAT penalty.When it comes to trade with our main partners, the U.S. is at a huge disadvantage because of high VATs. These are 19% in Germany, 20% in France, 23% in Ireland, 25% in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, 22% in Italy, 20% in the U.K., and 16% in China and Mexico. There are even VATs in Canada. The Goods and Services Tax (GST) at the federal level and the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) in the provinces both help products like aluminum.By comparing them to other companies, I found that my eleven U.S. plants were usually twice as productive as any of our sixteen foreign operations in Canada, New Zealand, Spain, Portugal, Australia, or the UK, or our investment partner’s two plants in Japan. We thought about buying a plant in Mexico that made almost the same goods as my main plant in Illinois, but it had 1,300 workers instead of my plant's 212. I believe that our elites are taking advantage of us. They want cheap labor overseas and are putting too many restrictions on U.S. manufacturing, mostly environmental ones, that are impossible to follow and are meant to send output overseas.Walmart, which is by far the biggest store in the world, has hurt American businesses more than any other company.

If you sleep with Walmart, you're sleeping with the devil Massive, huge amounts of things are bought by Walmart

Any business that can do that wants Walmart as a customer. But if it does happen, your business will be in big trouble. When Walmart takes over a big part of your business and your bottom line counts on them more and more, they have you by the balls. They decide the price they will pay, not you or your silly bean counters who talk about "Operating Margins" and "Cost to Manufacture." ALL OF YOU see that huge number of sales. What do you say next? "I lose a little on every product I make, but I make it up in volume."You can't do that in real life, at least not for long. It has its own word. It's known as "bankruptcy." What are you going to do when your biggest customer says they will pay $2.50 a unit for something that costs you $3.00 to make? Say No? Not really.You are going to try to save money. One way to do that is to find a Chinese seller who will make it for $2.00 each, which will still leave you with 50 cents. But you have to shut down your business first. It costs too much to keep it open, and you don't care about your workers, no matter how skilled they are or how long they've worked there. They need to leave.And the standard goes down. That great product you proudly made at a plant in Ohio looks like crap when it gets to you from China. No end. No smooth running. Not good packing. When the customer sees YOUR brand name on the package, they think, "Wow, that company USED to make such great stuff." Is that person still alive? It's all about the brand, and Walmart hurts it.

This takes place ALL THE TIME

I worked for two businesses that made high-tech items for Walmart. It was the worst customer experience I've ever had, and it made me feel hopeless. The Walmart vice president would make fun of the product, call you an a**hole, say your product was bad, and then demand that you sell it for half of what your best customer was paying. It didn't matter how hard you worked or how proud you were. They were really into it, too. We were TOLD to just nod and smile, even if it made us feel bad. Then we hired someone in Mexico to do the building. There were 300 skilled factory workers who were fired out of the blue, and Walmart had to cut the whole wave soldering business in order to make money. It's not like the Mexican version was better either. There wasn't. It didn't matter that it was MUCH worse. A lot of times, fit and finish were thrown out to save money. The worst quality became the packaging, the paperwork, and the extras. You were no longer proud of what you made. You felt bad about yourself.This takes place all the time. Walmart has done more damage to American industry than any other store.