Thread: More job losses and trade deals

Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc. plans to lay-off 150 employees, outsource some drug discovery functions and consolidate space in Cambridge, even as it has announced improving financial numbers.



LISA NAPOLI: Ford keeps on looking for ways to reduce its costs. So it's not going to buy American. From Beijing, Ruth Kirchner says the struggling automaker's going to double its purchase of Chinese-made auto parts.


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RUTH KIRCHNER: Chairman William Ford Junior said the carmaker is going to buy up to $3 billion worth of auto parts in China.

That's almost double the amount Ford bought last year.

The company said the quality of the Chinese suppliers was improving but costs are a lot lower.

An average manufacturing job in china pays about 10 percent of an equivalent job in the U.S.

Ford wants do cut $6 billion in annual costs by 2010

Analysts said General Motors was poised to follow suit, although the company would not comment on Thursday.


TORONTO (CP) - Another wave of job cuts and the closure of two U.S. plants will help Cott Corp. (TSX:BCB) slash costs and rebuild flagging revenue, the soft-drink maker's CEO said Thursday while reporting a weak summer-quarter profit of US$6.6 million.

The Toronto-based maker of store-label beverages said it will eliminate 350 jobs as it shuts plants in Elizabethtown, Ky., and Wyomissing, Pa., to save more than $8 million in 2007 and help it contend with dropping demand for carbonated soft drinks, its major products.



HANOI, Vietnam, Oct. 26 — Trade negotiators who were gathered in Geneva on Thursday approved the terms of Vietnam’s admission to the World Trade Organization.
What Vietnam really wants from the United States is high technology, including nuclear power plant technology. But Vietnam, like China, is restricted by American limits on the export of military-related technology.

www.americaneconomicalert.com

Perhaps if Ford changed their Marketing strategy, they could avoid the boycott that has been plaguing them for so long by the AFA. It's not the price that is driving consumers away.