Chinese Pirellis???

Sergio1199Panigale said:

I have a Motorola Moto X. Cell phone Made in USA

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But what about the internals???

centeroff said:

Very disturbing, the rule of thumb is if your going to buy Chinese ...., buy the cheapest Chinese ...., because it's all ..... And I will never knowingly put any Chinese stuff on my Ducati.

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Anyone not manufacturing in China can simply no longer compete pricewise. Most of what we think are European, Japanese or American products are made there.They may be assembled or even finished elsewhere, but the majority of components come from there or other low cost producers.
Just like the Japanese and the Koreans, many products originating from China at the beginning were of poor quality. There is still plenty of crap coming from there but China has evolved into the global manufacturing powerhouse it is today because of the technology transfer from the developed nations over the past 25 years.
Our manufacturers are slowly falling one by one under Chinese control.

On another note. The Chinese are getting a taste of life after the industrial age. They're sick and tired of being poor stupid rice farmers and factory workers. As they catch up to the rest of the world, their pricing will increase. May take another 15 years. And then we'll have to start making things in...... Is there a cheap labor market we haven't used up yet?

I'm OK with China investing money in an Italian company. For now, the tires are still good. We'll have to see if they stay that way.

Pirelli want's into the rubber dog poo market in China, this is a way to get there.

I work in M&A. Trust me, it takes a company 2 years minimum to .... up an acquisition in a way you will notice as an end-product consumer. If this deal goes through, you'll see the quality shift up or down in a gradual but noticeable way. It's not happening at the flip of a switch.

edit: I forgot we're dealing with a Chinese company that doesn't give a flying .... about not butchering an acquisition. Make that 1 year to .... .... up instead of 2.

I thought they did fairly well with the IBM PC acq, aka Lenovo. Also, I wouldn't discount the Chinese on their ability to make good products "if they choose to". I mean, they're probably going to be the next country to put a man on the moon. The problem for any country going through an industrialization phase, all the sudden opportunity ignites a lot of greed among normally a large group of less wealthy people. Do you remember late 1800's during the u.s. industrial revolution, we were putting 8 year kids to work in factories.

As was already basically said; China has become a powerhouse in manufacturing. Although many low cost/high volume products that have been sent to China to manufacture have suffered from quality issues, this can be blamed on the overseas company that sent the product there to get manufactured. On the contrary, some of the highest quality and defect free products have been manufactured in China. These products typically tend to be those that were designed and developed by a company with excellent R&D and great products that implemented and executed their quality specs in China.

Although I'll reserve my opinion on outsourcing everything, I think the writing is on the wall for most companies that are tasked with providing a fairly non-proprietary product and are faced with having to deal with any type of competition on price or maximizing margins. In North America and Europe (and other geographic locations), there are many burdens a manufacturing company faces. From high costs of living, to unionized workforces, to a shortage of "skilled" labour in certain circumstances, it's almost impossible to be competitive in a market with more than 1 player.

I could go on and on about how setting up an import tax would sound like a solution, but would actually cripple the economies of both net export and net import countries, but that starts to get off on a tangent...