Moosetang

Just because someone on Breitbart says it's happening that way doesn't make it so. Canadian government and Canadian steel industry officials have pointed out that there's no massive stream of Chinese steel "posing" as Canadian steel for import into the US. And that imposing blanket tariffs on Canadian steel is further hurting their ability to fight cheap Chinese steel on the opem market. If Trump really wanted to fight Chinese steel dumping, he would be imposing greater tariffs on China, not Canada, and hammering Xi Jinping about currency manipulation. Strangely, though, at every opportunity he's let them skate. And suddenly, right after the Chinese goverment dumps money into a Trump-brand building prohect, he's cut a deal to create thousands of jobs for a Chinese company which is guilty of massive industrial espionage in the US. That's what happens when you elect a successful scam artist out to milk his office for all its worth.

Part of this equation is going to come down to how the cars Mustang competes against react to the new market reality. If the other pony cars and imports that Mustang is battling scale back their refresh cycle to save money, Ford likely will take a somewhat similar route. On the other hand, it's possible some of them will crank up the refresh tempo in order to compete more effectively, in which case it will be interesting to see how aggressively Ford responds.

It's interesting to me that neither Musk nor those with interest in/influence upon his company have realized that what Tesla needs is a Gwynne Shotwell. Gwynne is the President and C.O.O. of SpaceX, and is generally the person whose job is to translate Musk's high-concept ideals and desires into a pretty well-functioning (though far from perfect) company. And because she is known to be competent and business-savy, when investors and the like need someone to reassure them that SpaceX isn't off it's rocker they can go to her rather than trying to pierce Musk's personal reality bubble.

I don't even know where to begin with this. Keynesian economics rebuilt the West after WW2 and produced the "American Golden Age" that people who are now wistful for better days remember, 30 of the last "40 years" from the 70s to the late-2000s were rather Friedman's Monetarism, and despite 2008 it seems like some are trying to resurrect it. Economic policy, of whatever sort, is not directly responsible for the National Debt, nor are trade deficits, and the largest debt increase of the past decade was this Administration's business-focused tax cuts. Reducing the buying power of American consumers by causing costs to spike, however, risks a slowdown over the long haul. Especially retaliatory tariffs make it harder for the industries to compete in markets other than our own. Kudlow is a TV clown whose actual career as an economist died decades ago in a cloud of addiction issues. Since the 90's the only thing he's ever done is toe an arch-conservative party line to drum up TV ratings, and that's why he was hired by the current Administration. Even supporters of Trump economic policy, whatever they believe that to mean, were critical of his hiring on the grounds that he's an unqualified nimnal and likely to just rubber-stamp whatever comes from Oval Office rather than attempt to craft realistic policy. Even if you believe the current system of trade, and the various trade deals now in place, are all terribly wrong and require reconstruction or replacement, Unilaterally slapping tariffs on random industries is a terrible way to go about it. Like it or not, the other side of a trade agreement gets a vote. And if you demonstrate that you will violate agreements on a whim, punish friends and reward enemies, and so on you're gonna get a much worse "deal" from the other side of the table.

And having the advertising push of a small, asthmatic beagle.

Definitely seen worse, from CarScoops and Ford both.

I agree his departure doesn't (necessarily) signal bad things for performance/fun models. But it's still a bit sad to see someone who created such an amazingly successful model walking out the door.

At the risk of beating my own drum, this goes back to my complaint that they didn't have anything to roll out at the same time they killed sedans. They needed a full-court strategy to make the death of sedans look like the actions of an agile and forward-thinking company being agile and forward-thinking. Instead they look look scared and reactionary, with little confidence and little positive for people to latch onto other than "we're reducing costs!" The decisions they're making might all be perfectly sound, even ahead of the curve, but they aren't projecting that at all.

Pretty stunning to see Fusion go, whatever their market research says. But far more concerning to me is that the details were all about the cuts, while future products and investments were yadda-yadda'ed. This is becoming a theme of Hack-job's tenure: hearing far more about what's NOT happening than what is. The thint is, I don't think it will please Wall Street the way they hope. While "more profit" is something they want to hear, so is confidence. And if they wanted to project confidence, they needed to roll out something impressive that they intend to DO.

Good to see, they can't start here fast enough.

Looks pretty solid. Would have liked for SOME information about the NA plan but oh well I guess we wait. While I appreciate the complaints that it's not a bold enough step, I think the Bold step into the current generation had uneven results. So I'm not terribly surprised they played the "good but safe" angle.

Yeah not only Focus but hatches in general seem to be doing better as time marches on. Would seem an odd decision to pinch that particular penny these days.

Environmental and safety regulations are not the top drivers of new-car pricing. They certainly play a part, but Nissan's Versa is compliant with mileage and safety regulations and is still available for under $13K. Features, materials, build quality, lower per-vehicle volumes and just plain old market forces do their thing to drive the price up. Meanwhile, wages below the midpoint of the workforce have not kept up with the rising cost of living, which exacerbates the money crunch for anyone interested in buying a new car.

And, as I mentioned during the F-150 rollout, anything that's not an increase in weight is a positive. Because the trend line had been a long march upward.

It certainly seems that way at the moment. I'm unsure whether the "Insider" who range up FA and TTAC was full of it or they misread something they saw/heard, but these things happen sometimes.

The XC is still the cleanest but the Linc is easily in the better looking half of this field.

Precisely this. Look no further than the Tesla Model 3, which has a big floating screen and not much else and stands in contrast to the giant, integrated screen of the S. There might be kudos to won by having it retract when the car shuts off, but that has a large number of potential pitfalls so I find it pretty unlikely.

Would seem like a stretch, given that it's already being sold. If splitting that sort of hair why not claim the Nautilus as "new?"

That's really darn good looking. Well done to the designers, looking forward to seeing more.

Whute collar workers are very mercenary these days, thanks to a whole host of factors. Attracting and retaining high-quality talent often requires going an extra mile. Is that worse than generations of workers who were very passionate about where they worked but treated like crap by the management which knew they wouldn't leave?

If we're lucky, that's all it is.

Does is belong to a guy named Walt Longmire?

Going to disagree with you pretty strongly here. If they're really working to assemble property around the Depot as is being reported then they have the ability to construct the campus they want/require, parking included. Having a campus with transit access in an an urban neighborhood on an upward trajectory is massively appealing to the sort of young tech workers they want, see the Team Edison location or any Amazon building, but it always requires substantial investment to build a big campus in that sort of location. A new-build of that size in a healthier city would easily be a half-$Billion project, and would require substantial time/effort negotiating with the city and landowners to get everything assembled, re-zoned, and approved. Here the city would probably bend over backwards to do something with the Depot, the only real big obstacle to get it green-lit is likely to be Matty Moroun's intent to squeeze every last $.01 he can out of the purchase price. The historic nature of this building does certainly pose problems/challenges that a new-build wouldn't, both in material and legal terms, but if the company believes they need a new urban campus I think this is an intelligent option. Add on the attractive PR and positive impact on their relationship with the Detroit political establishment, and it looks pretty decent.

Not feeling the hood vent yet, but that nose....me likey.

I like the Transit but the best of the prototypes I've seen is the AM General. A good mail truck should be cartoonish, but cohesive in a way that Transit with it's goofy-looking add-ons just isn't. That said, AM General is struggling while Oshkosh is on a mega hot streak in the government contract game so I'm definitely marking the Transit as one of the favorites. I agree it's nice looking, but without front doors it's not at all practical for USPS needs.