More jobs to China.

[bigrun]

Saw this story on ABC news last nite...Sure sounds fishy to me...


Wrench Inventor Claims Sears Stole His Idea, Took It to China.

In the small town of Cabot, Pa., Dan Brown is the proud inventor of the Bionic Wrench, a product made solely in Pennsylvania

This time last year, Brown's factory was buzzing, with his employees working overtime to fulfill holiday orders. With the help of Sears, Brown's company sold more than 200,000 wrenches at Christmas alone.

"Last year was a great year," Brown said. "We got ourselves on a commercial and Sears had us in stores. We were going crazy."

Brown says he agreed with Sears not to sell his bionic wrench to any other national chain such as Lowe's or Home Depot. Brown's company continued business this year but suddenly there was no deal from Sears for Christmas.

Brown had three production lines working to fill orders last year. But this year, there's only one running and he has had to lay off 30 workers.

"We were building at a forecast that Sears had given us, then they just cancelled it," Brown said. "We built so much ahead trying to avoid the overtime that we were going through in previous years that we got caught now."


Brown heard from a customer that there was now another wrench on the shelves at Sears with what appeared to be a similar mechanism. But this one, made in China, is sold under the Sears brand, Craftsman.

Brown wasn't surprised by the new wrench, he said.

"It's a knockoff. There's no question," he said. "If you take them apart and look at the plates, they're virtually the same. ... It's our patent. We've got it covered."

http://abcnews.go.com/US/MadeInAmeri...ry?id=17720122

[cal828]

Glad somebody brought China up. Wish I knew WTF Barack Obama intends to do to staunch the flow of jobs to China and others. Not sure whether he has any cards to play or not. We heard precious little from either candidate in the election about what they planned to do. To me, might be more important than dealing with the fiscal cliff. I may be a hopeless optimist, but I truly believe that compromises will be made and the cliff will be avoided, but the hemorrhaging of jobs to China will continue unless someone comes up with some strategy for dealing with it. Not sure whether this means punishing China, punishing companies for moving there, ignoring the problem and hoping the Chinese will come to the end of their tether and be pulled back much as the Japanese were not too long ago or whether America just needs to concentrate on domestic industries that because of their nature, like energy companies, cannot be easily outsourced.

[jms62]

Originally Posted by cal828

Glad somebody brought China up. Wish I knew WTF Barack Obama intends to do to staunch the flow of jobs to China and others. Not sure whether he has any cards to play or not. We heard precious little from either candidate in the election about what they planned to do. To me, might be more important than dealing with the fiscal cliff. I may be a hopeless optimist, but I truly believe that compromises will be made and the cliff will be avoided, but the hemorrhaging of jobs to China will continue unless someone comes up with some strategy for dealing with it. Not sure whether this means punishing China, punishing companies for moving there, ignoring the problem and hoping the Chinese will come to the end of their tether and be pulled back much as the Japanese were not too long ago or whether America just needs to concentrate on domestic industries that because of their nature, like energy companies, cannot be easily outsourced.

Obama and Romney have the same strategy. They will do nothing to piss off the rulers of this country. Corporations.

[cal828]

Originally Posted by jms62

Obama and Romney have the same strategy. They will do nothing to piss off the rulers of this country. Corporations.

Not sure that I totally agree with that. Obama has already done plenty to piss them off by proposing higher taxes on the rich, but assuming he wanted to do more then what can he realistically do?