kscarbel2

But remember, we're actually speaking of the Rheinmetall-MAN joint venture, and Rheinmetall owns 51 percent of the JV. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinmetall_MAN_Military_Vehicles https://www.bigmacktrucks.com/topic/32063-rheinmetall-man-military-vehicles-and-haulmark-trailers-win-158-billion-adf-contract/?tab=comments#comment-195967

Bob, our government and media continually "drill it in" that China is the key to dealing with the DPRK. But in fact, that's not the true situation. As for trust, it seems that nobody can trust anyone. We now know that our intelligence community was spying on most of the western European leaders (our so-called allies) including French Presidents Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy, Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. So I can't see the "we can't trust China" argument, when we ourselves don't practice what we preach. http://www.bbc.com/news/33248484 Everyone looks out for their own. The global political arena is alike football, some plays are good......some bad, some good plays are executed well.....and some badly. You need to have sound plans, clear goals that justify sticking your neck out, the ability to quickly alter the plan due to evolving situations, and darn good judgement.

Foreign companies can indeed own up to 50 percent in joint ventures. The limit allows the country to share in the profit, rather than just the foreign aggressor taking 100% of the proceeds.

At least 50 percent government owned. (The foreign company can own up to 50%)

Foreign companies can not hold more than a 50% stake (not 51%) in a joint venture (in most industries), unless they are producing solely for export (which fewer and fewer do because of the high labor costs there today).

Yes, that's what you'll indeed read in the western media. But it's not true.

Billy, believe it or not, we believe it has more to do with concern for the country's well-being (including its citizens), than it does global image (though being able to project a positive global image is always good for any country).

Geely is not privately owned.

China's Geely buying stake in Mack Trucks' parent company The Morning Call [local Allentown, PA newspaper] / December 27, 2017 The Chinese owner of Sweden's Volvo Cars is buying a stake in truck manufacturer AB Volvo. Geely Holding Group said Wednesday the acquisition of shares from Cevian Capital, a fund manager, would give it 8.2 percent of Volvo's share capital and 15.6 percent of voting rights. Financial terms weren't disclosed. Analysts estimated the value of the deal at around 27 billion kronor ($3.3 billion). AB Volvo is the parent company of Mack Trucks, the North Carolina-based truck maker that assembles its heavy-duty vehicles at a massive plant in Lower Macungie Township. Mack spokesman Christopher Heffner did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment on Wednesday’s news.

Yes.....8.2 percent.

Reuters / December 27, 2017 China’s Geely Holding, owner of the Volvo car brand, is buying an 8.2 percent stake in Swedish truckmaker AB Volvo from activist investor Cevian Capital, worth around $3.3 billion at current market prices. The value of the investment amounted to around 27.2 billion Swedish crowns ($3.26 billion), a Reuters calculation showed. Geely paid 3.25 billion euro ($3.86 billion) for the stake. The deal makes [China's] Geely the biggest individual shareholder in Volvo Group and second ranked in terms of voting rights behind Swedish investment firm Industrivarden. “Given our experience with Volvo Car Group, we recognize and value the proud Scandinavian history and culture, leading market positions, breakthrough technologies and environmental capabilities of AB Volvo,” Geely Holding Chairman [and Communist Party Secretary] Li Shufu said in a statement on Wednesday.

BMC was known of years ago..... British Motor Corporation

Billy, it's not about global image. Rather, it's about realistically dealing with their pollution problems. India and Pakistan are ten times worse.....I wish they would also seriously deal with their environmental issues. The Buick Envision SUV is the same quality level as a unit built in North America.

Philco-Ford Press Release / 1967 .

US poised to let emerging markets trade pact expire The Financial Times / December 24, 2017 Pressure mounts to let Generalized System of Preferences, which grants tariff-free access to US, fail A 1970s US trade deal that unilaterally grants products worth billions of dollars from India and other developing countries tariff-free access [why?] to the American market is set to expire on December 31, as pressure mounts from Donald Trump supporters to let it die altogether. Congress last week failed to agree on renewing the Generalized System of Preferences, despite Republicans and Democrats saying they support it and will try to bring it back to life. But critics of the programme created to help developing nations grow their export industries argue that countries such as India have for too long abused the programme by ignoring its rules, and that past administrations have been too lax in enforcing them. “There’s nothing developing about India or China any more — 600m people are in the middle class in India and that’s probably three or four times the size of our middle class,” said Dan DiMicco, former chief executive of steelmaker Nucor and a trade adviser to Mr Trump. “Just because there are pockets of real poverty — and there’s no doubt about it — that’s the job of their government to take care of, not our government.” More than 3,500 products from 120 developing countries and territories are covered by the trade deal, according to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service. In 2016 products worth $19bn were imported into the US tariff-free under the GSP, with business groups saying importers saved more than $700m in duties. But economic nationalist supporters of the US president such as Mr DiMicco argue that countries such as India have failed for decades to live up to their end of the bargain and grant US companies reciprocal access. “It’s a one-way street. It’s not supposed to be a one-way street,” said Mr DiMicco. “India doesn’t qualify on any count,” Curtis Ellis, founder of the American Jobs Alliance which advocates hardline economic nationalist trade policies, wrote in an article published by Breitbart, the conservative outlet controlled by Steve Bannon, the former White House adviser. “It routinely rips off US intellectual property and blocks US imports through a combination of high tariffs, taxes and corrupt bureaucracy.” The Trump administration, whose support for the GSP has been lukewarm compared with that of previous administrations, has indicated it wants to see it reformed. The office of US trade representative Robert Lighthizer, which administers the programme, on Friday declined to comment when asked by the Financial Times whether the administration supported GSP renewal. Backers of the trade deal say it benefits US businesses by providing sources of low-cost parts outside dominant China, and that any impact on competing companies in the US is relatively small. The $19bn in goods imported in 2016 represented a minuscule portion of the US’s total $2.2tn in goods imports. The GSP programme has expired before, most recently in 2013. Businesses that use it are forced to pay duties until it is renewed, which last time took almost two years. The Trump administration’s vow to rip up and rewrite decades of US trade policy has added a new layer of uncertainty, say backers of the trade deal. “I fear it’s dead in Congress for the foreseeable future, regrettably. It really shouldn’t be controversial, but alas, as with so much regarding trade and this administration it could turn out to be more difficult than necessary,” said Clark Packard of the R-Street Institute, a pro-trade Washington think-tank. Republicans and Democrats in Congress say they back renewing the GSP but ran out of time to do so this year. Kevin Brady, chairman of the House ways and means committee, last week blamed Senate Democrats for not giving the GSP the green light. A spokesman for Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate finance committee, which oversees trade matters, dismissed that as “nonsense” and said Republicans consumed with pushing tax reform had failed to advance GSP legislation. A spokeswoman for Senator Orrin Hatch, the Republican chairman of the finance committee, said he would seek to renew GSP “as soon as possible” when Congress reconvenes in January. Mr Trump on Friday suspended some of Ukraine’s GSP privileges for failing to live up to its IP requirements while partially restoring Argentina’s. “President Trump has sent a clear message that the United States will vigorously enforce eligibility criteria for preferential access to the US market,” Mr Lighthizer said. “The administration is committed to ensuring that other countries keep their end of the bargain in our trade relationships.”

Warmest wishes to one and all for a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Pentagon admits running secret UFO investigation for five years The Guardian / December 17, 2017 Task force that investigated sightings of unidentified flying objects ran from 2007 to 2012 with annual budget of US$22 million The truth is finally out there [of course not really], after the Pentagon admitted it ran a secret UFO investigation programme for five years until 2012. The US defence department’s own “X-Files” operation, known by the less catchy title of the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, was closed after a change in funding priorities, it said. But the remarkable revelation has raised more questions than answers, including whether the programme has been completely shut down, or just covered up further. While the Pentagon claims it ended five years ago, it said it continued to take seriously “all threats and potential threats to our people”. The military intelligence official Luis Elizondo, who ran the programme on the fifth floor of the Pentagon’s C Ring, according to the New York Times, which broke the story, told the paper it was only the government funding that had dried up. He said activities continued under the direction of his successor, whom he declined to name. Either way the revelation is likely to provide some satisfaction to UFO enthusiasts, often dismissed as conspiracy theorists. Nick Pope, who used to run the British government’s UFO project, said: “The take-home message here is that there’s probably something out there, but we don’t know what it is. It’s an extraordinary revelation, not least because it directly contradicts the many specific denials that the US government has issued previously when asked about this subject, and their involvement in it. “It precisely reflects my own experience of this intriguing but frustrating subject with the British government. Like our US colleagues, we too denied – even to parliament – that we were undertaking secret studies into the UFO phenomenon and consistently downplayed the true extent of our interest and activity at the Ministry of Defence.” The New York Times said the project, parts of which remain classified, received $22m (£18.7m) each year, hidden away in US Department of Defense (DoD) budgets worth hundreds of billions of dollars. It said its initial funding came largely at the request of the former Senate leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat long known for his enthusiasm for space phenomena. He was quoted as saying: “I’m not embarrassed or ashamed or sorry I got this thing going. I think it’s one of the good things I did in my congressional service. I’ve done something that no one has done before.” Last year, John Podesta, chair of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, declared that he had convinced her to explore declassifying any government documents related to UFOs should she win the election. Bill Clinton previously said that, during his time in the White House, he had tried to find out if there were any secret “X-Files”, concluding: “If so, they eluded me.” In the UK, 209 files and approximately 52,000 pages of information on UFOs were released during a five-year rolling disclosure programme that concluded in 2013, containing details of about 6,000 separate observations reported to the British authorities since 1984. In 2009, the Ministry of Defence closed down its hotline for UFO sightings, stating: “In over 50 years, no UFO report has revealed any evidence of a potential threat to the United Kingdom.” Responding to the revelations about its activities, the Pentagon spokeswoman Laura Ochoas told Reuters: “The Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program ended in the 2012 timeframe. It was determined that there were other, higher priority issues that merited funding and it was in the best interest of the DoD to make a change.” She added: “The DoD takes seriously all threats and potential threats to our people, our assets, and our mission and takes action whenever credible information is developed.” Pope said: “This isn’t quite the ‘spaceship in a hangar’ smoking gun the UFO lobby was hoping for, but it’s as close as those of us who have looked at this subject from within government will ever go to saying: ‘Yes, this is real.’”

Ford Trucks Brasil gives a world class showing at the 2017 Fenatran international transport show in Sao Paulo.

Ford Trucks Press Release / October 23, 2017 .

Volvo Trucks Brasil / December 6, 2017 https://natal.cocacola.com.br/home/ .

The diesel Equinox is supposed to get 28mpg city, 38mpg highway and 32mpg combined. In comparison, the 2018 CRV with the new fuel-sipping 1.5T gets 27mpg city, 33mpg highway and 29mpg combined, and you know its a far better designed SUV with legendary resale value. These MPG comparisons are both AWD models. Note city mpg is virtually the same. In global markets, Honda has offered the CRV with their 160 horsepower 1.6-liter i-DTEC diesel engine paired with a ZF 9-speed transmission.

When did Social Security and Medicare become entitlement programs? For more than 50 years, we and our employers paid FICA (Federal Insurance Contribution Act) payments from every paycheck received. Thus, how is receiving payments from these two federal insurance programs in our old age now considered an "entitlement"? Combined employee/employer Social Security and Medicare deductions totaled from 7.25 percent (1964) to the current 15.3 percent. Thus the benefits of Social Security and Medicare in retirement are not handouts. Rather, they are returns from an insurance policy managed by Congress and various agencies. The payments were mandatory. It is estimated that through 2010, Social Security deductions exceeded benefits paid. But the excess, in the trillions of dollars, were raided repeatedly by Congress. Once the coffers were significantly depleted, paying benefits became a clear budgetary liability. To attack or deny Social Security and Medicare is breaking a faith and contract with the American people who were forced to pay their FICA, and for employers who were required to match their payments since the inception of these programs. The American people all need lawyers for the biggest class-action suit in history: The people of the United States versus the Congress of the United States.