Years ago, you know where you are just by looking at the cars on the road. In France, 99% were French cars, Italy, UK, Germany, etc... Except Switzerland which does not make automobile, thus consumers made their choices freely, Swiss had large number of Japanese cars. Nowadays with the Euro market, Japanese cars are everywhere. I do not buy Japanese cars for personal reasons, but I am a strong believer of a free world market where the strongest and the best win.
In the '90s, my firm buys 6 million pens a year from a Montana company, while our plan B and C showed me that I would make $300K extra a year if I move production overseas. I kept the production in USA, because I knew if I leave it would have dealt a serious blow to that company and that entire town. A few years back we lost some major contracts on these pens, the Montana supplier had no choice but to supply the same pens to the competitor who took away our contracts. In return, I moved production to Spain and later set up production in China to fill in the demand; consequently we had new & lowered prices, the competitor lost the contracts back to us, the Montana people lost it all. It is a battle out there, every single day. You cannot stop the world from turning. My decision to keep production in the US costed me dearly, I was soft and weak, I will not make the same mistake again.
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