Ward's Auto: Texas Is The American Equivalent Of China
Toyota’s decision to shift sales operations to Texas has been the subject of much hand-wringing over the past few days, but the high-water mark for hate speech so far has come from Christie Schweinsberg at Ward’s Auto.
The news, first reported by Bloomberg, that Toyota will be moving many of its Southern California-based sales and marketing positions to Plano, TX, is shocking for a number of reasons.
The most obvious to me is this is an automaker that constantly preaches its commitment to the environment, taking a large chunk of jobs from what is one of the most eco-friendly states in the union to the U.S.’s equivalent of China…. If the No.1 Japanese automaker really did pull the plug on its Torrance operations for tax reasons, we’ll know what “green” status really counts in Toyota City.
It’s also possible that Toyota is moving away from California to reduce the impact that its water consumption is surely having on California’s water table, which is at its lowest point in recorded history. Alternately, perhaps Toyota wants to be closer to where they build trucks. What’s even less clear than Toyota’s reason for moving would be the decision on the part of the Ward’s editorial staff to openly denigrate both Texas and China by painting the latter as an environmental hellhole (which it may well be) and the former as its moral equivalent. Perhaps the best clue we’ll get comes from Mrs. Schweinsberg’s description of California elsewhere in the text:
an optimal environment to work and have fun
Tell that to the migrant workers who live beneath the poverty line inland while they destroy their bodies and health toiling in 120-degree weather… oh, who am I kidding! All of California is like Los Angeles! It’s an optimal environment to work and have fun!
California good, Texas baaaaaaaaad!
More by Jack Baruth
Comments
Join the conversation
China is a developing country and problems with pollution in its big cities isn't much different from London or Pittsburgh just after WWII. In 1952 London had the Great Smog that killed 4K to 12K people. Something similar happened near Pittsburgh in 1948, although with fewer fatalities. I used to visit my grandmother on Chicago's East Side in the 1960s, close to several steel mills, and remember wiping the windowsill in the morning and finding it black with soot by dinner time. The richer people get the more they can afford to clean up their environment. A quick look at Gapminder World shows China's life expectancy soared from 66 to 75 since just 1980, which is about when Deng started moving China from socialist economic retardation to a market economy. I expect life expectancy will continue to increase commensurate with the continuing per-capita GDP increase.
The best explanation I've read for why Toyota decided to move their US headquarters from Torrance, CA to Plano, TX is Toyota has transitioned from primarily an importer from Japan to primarily a manufacturer in the US. There is more need to schedule conference calls with manufacturing plants and dealers in the Central and Eastern time zones and less need to coordinate with Japan and the Port of Long Beach. Putting most Toyota employees in the Central time zone makes operations more productive. Plane flights from Toyota Headquarters to the other facilities also become much shorter. Toyota gets to start with a big empty chunk of land next to the J.C. Penny headquarters and build the facilities exactly the way they want them while benefiting from infrastructure built for other large companies. Could be that the other cities didn't have an equivalent piece of land in a prime location. Plano, TX is not a cheap place to do business compared to many rural areas, but it offers pretty good amenities for the money. Toyota employees will get excellent housing and schools near the Toyota headquarters combined with a considerably lower cost of living. Not Ozarks low, but national average cost to live in the highest income city of >250k population in the US. Not many mobile homes in Plano.