You just have to read the excellent, straight forward, and fascinating interview with Caterpillar CEO, Jim Owens in today's Wall Street Journal. Owens provides a lot of insight on where the company is headed. He is a strong proponent of globalization, and makes no apologies for outsourcing.
One such tidbit:
WSJ: How do you make the argument that free trade is a win-win situation to someone who fears his $75,000 a year job will be outsourced to China?
Mr. Owens: It's a very difficult sell. It's like the guy who's making horse carriages when the car comes along. How do you make the case to him that the car's going to make the world a better place? We try to educate our employees on the importance of exports to us. We exported $10 billion worth of product last year, and many jobs in our U.S. facilities are very much geared to export markets. Many small manufacturing companies that supply materials to us probably don't consider themselves as exporters, but they are. If we don't export, we don't buy from them. So they lose jobs.
And then there's this:
WSJ: Will Caterpillar's U.S. work force shrink as it expands abroad?
Mr. Owens: We're going to have a lot more employment growth outside than inside the US. We [Americans] are 5% of the world's population. And today, we're more than 20% of global gross domestic product. So it shouldn't shock Americans or even worry us too much that 10 or 15 years from now we're going to have a smaller percentage of GDP because our country's not growing as fast as emerging countries. It doesn't mean that our standard of living's going to go down. It just means that theirs is going to grow much faster.
The entire article is worth reading. In fact, for anyone who's future is CAT dependent (i.e., Employed by CAT, anyone who owns property in Peoria, or who's job is dependent on CAT doing surviving and thriving- and in this town, who's job isn't?) it should be mandatory reading.
I'm not sure the link I provided will allow you to read the entire article. Greedy dorkwads at the Wall Street Journal only provide a teaser paragraph and then want you to subscribe. I will try to type the whole thing up later tonight. Nothing good on T.V. anyway. Meanwhile, I suggest you prepare for the future by learning Spanish. Brazil, according to Owens, is the best country to do business in right now.
2 comments:
I hate to tell you this Polly but they don't speak Spanish in Brazil; they speak Portuguese.
Ooops! Of course. Somewhere in my rock hard brain I knew that. Still, Central America is still CATs emerging market of choice, and they do speak some Spanish in there them parts.
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