The cuts represent about 10% of Bosch’s total workforce in the country, and 3% of its staff worldwide. Workers’ representatives vowed to resist the cuts, labelling them ‘unprecedented.’
German industrial giant Bosch said Thursday, September 25, it would cut 13,000 jobs, mostly in its auto unit, in the latest blow for the country’s ailing car sector.
The auto industry in Europe’s biggest economy has been hammered by fierce competition in key market China, weak demand and a slower than expected shift to electric vehicles.
The cuts, all of which will take place in Germany, represent about 10% of Bosch’s total workforce in the country, and 3% of its staff worldwide.
Bosch − the world’s biggest auto supplier, making everything from braking and steering systems to sensors − said the layoffs were needed to help make annual savings of €2.5 billion in the group’s car unit.
Why wouldn’t we let them in too drain the Chinese economy then. We would “win” in the short term by getting vehicles with fewer emissions while siphoning money out of the Chinese economy. Later when they could no longer afford to offer the vehicles at such a low price another company would step in with a superior product. At least that’s what I’ve been taught about how capitalism works. Was that all a lie?
The situation is a lot more complicated than that. On big enough scales (globally), it’s not actually about the money at all. The countries can literally just print arbitrary amounts of paper money, so money is no concern at all.
What is a concern, however, is everything else. There’s jobs, the way that countries perform on the international stage (geopolitical aspects), future prospects, people’s quality of life, and much much more. All of that matters and is not really mapped to economic numbers such as money. That’s why these micro-economic attempts fail when trying to apply them to the global level.
The Chinese government can afford to pay their manufacturers 10-20k euros per car indefinitely, there’s no real limit to how much money they have. They’ll continue until every western manufacturer is bankrupt.
I know you probably realize this, but no. It’s not how capitalism works in the real world. In the real world, when you have products that cost billions to develop before production, it’s nearly impossible for a new company to be competitive against a monopoly. And if the Chinese give away semi-free cars to everyone for a decade, everyone else goes bankrupt and they have a monopoly. OR other countries start sacrificing other budget items so they could subsidize their domestic car manufacturing and we just have… even more cars on the roads and less public transit, less walkable cities. Yay!