Japanese Car Makers Flee Bangkok War Zone
Demonstrations in Bangkok have been put down with a brutality not expected from the Land of Smiles. The stock exchange is on fire. Thailand instated a news and power blackout, making the number of killed and wounded hard to assess. Japanese car makers have long been invested in Thailand. Now, they are worried about long-term implications.
Toyota relocated its Bangkok office to a suburb, says The Nikkei [sub]. A week ago, Toyota had announced the closure of a plant near Bangkok.
Honda halted operations at car and motorcycle plants in Thailand today, The Nikkei [sub] reports. Yesterday, Honda’s Bangkok office, has been relocated to a temporary location outside the city. Honda shares fell in Tokyo on the news.
Other companies, such as Ford or GM-Daewoo have plants in other provinces and are not yet affected.
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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Wonder what this does to Ford's Asian Production Strategy for the Global T6 Program - the forthcoming replacement the two old Ranger programs a) the NAAO-Ranger, aka P150, and b) Mazda-B-based non-NAAO-Ranger ... Thailand-export production threat was a strong lever to use against the UAW ... indeed, the P150 Twin Cities producton was supposed to end by 2011 ... but if Thailand blows-up, where will the T6 be produced?
Thailand should be a warning to other nations and corporate entities about what happens when you play footsie with populism instead of actually working to enable your lower- and middle-class: * Keeping your lower- and middle classes reasonably empowered, such that they can share in propserity and have an opportunity to grow, is good. Sure, you might lose the ability to maximise wealth for the very rich, but as we've seen that's not completely sustainable * Disenfranchising them is bad. * Disenfranchising them, but then letting some populist twerps play to them as a way to get votes, and then getting booted out because knee-jerk populism is a bad idea, is horrible. Now you have a bunch of upset people who had a taste of power. The lesson should be especially apparent to the European extreme Right and Left, as well the Tea Party** in the US (and I'm sure that people thinking about curbing China's middle class would do well to look at Thailand). There is a huge difference between socialism and populism***: the former is a kind of harm-mitigation strategy; the latter is letting the inmates rule the asylum. Playing to the latter is a dangerous thing, especially since the more extreme of populist policies generally don't work. ** there is no American left wing. *** note to Randians: there is a difference. If you can't see it, it's a forest-for-the-trees.
I doubt any Asian auto plants in the Southern US are considering pulling up stakes due to active Tea Party elements nearby. They stay put despite shrieking from the very real American left wing outlets that the sky is falling because rightward groups are engaging in exercises of speech and assembly.