“Buy America” laws are policy creatures that keep jobs but at the cost of higher prices and lower quality. First, they restrict competition to only those builders willing and able to run a superflous factory. The winner now has to maintain two factories when one could handle the job just fine. The cost of the additional factory is tacked in to every order, so you’d end up with fewer product than directly importing the vehicles from abroad.

This reduced competition also leads to dominators like Ansalobreda who learn the key to business success is conforming to the procurement process, not to delivering a quality product.

Also, most heavy equipment manufacturers don’t open up final assembly sites every place they have a job. Metro’s single biggest bus builder is North American Bus Industries. Despite the name, NABI is a Hungarian company. The shells are built in Hungary and shipped to its final assembly point in Alabama, then delivered to customers. NABI has the largest share of the Southern California market (around 2,000 buses), yet its factory is clear across the country. It has a sales office here, but doesn’t plan to open a factory in the area.

L.A. didn’t need Breda to finish the subway and the light rail cars here. Plus, it only offered to build a factory here on the condition that it lands the contract Metro staff have misgivings about. It would relocate a factory it has in Northern California, so it’s a zero-sum game anyway.

I really think the county Grand Jury ought to sniff this proposal a bit.

I just wanted to point out that both Pittsburg, CA and now Glenville, NY also think they are going to be the new main factory for Ansaldobreda.

Funny how that conflicts with what is being posted here:

http://www.keeplajobsontrack.com/

While I can guess at what the signficance is of why you cited the above excerpts from recent articles, it would no doubt greatly facilitate everyone’s comprehension if you simly stated your point!
Leo

GLENVILLE — An international manufacturer of rail cars is offering to buy Super Steel’s vacant locomotive manufacturing plant in the Glenville Business and Technology Park, a transportation official said.
The San Francisco-based AnsaldoBreda Inc., a unit of AnsaldoBreda S.p.A. of Italy, tendered an offer the week of June 6 to Super Steel Products Corp. of Milwaukee, Wis., to buy the Glenville plant and its equipment, according to Walter Zmuda, director of surface transportation for the Niagara Frontier Transit Authority.

(snip)

He said the federal government plans to spend some $13 billion to upgrade the country’s railroad infrastructure, and there will be a demand for manufacturing facilities.
“From my end, you have existing infrastructure [at Super Steel in Glenville] and you have people who worked there and are trained, and you have idle capacity and this demand that needs to be filled,” he said.
“In the long term, there is an interest in high-speed rail, and the industry is well-positioned for investment,” Meadley said.
Gillen said the Super Steel plant, which refurbished and manufactured freight locomotives, can easily handle the transformation to light rail work. “The building works for the transit industry,” he said.
Glenville officials said Super Steel continues to pay property taxes on the plant.

http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2009/jun/26/0626supersteel/

This $185 million contract will be carried out in a 200,000 square foot facility located at the corner of Loveridge Road and Pittsburg Antioch Highway. The contract will take about 7 years to complete and BREDA will hire about 150 employees. This contract has two options for more cars that could take its value to over $400 million.

BREDA is also meeting with BART and the California Rail Authority as well as other transit systems on the west coast and if additional contracts are awarded BREDA’s plan is to make Pittsburg a permanent manufacturing facility that could employ up to 600 people in high paying high skilled jobs.

http://www.ci.pittsburg.ca.us/Pittsburg/Government/Departments/Economic+Development/breda.htm

An important aspect of yesterday’s meeting however, was the fact that the Board passed Mr. Antonovich’s motion to release the Request for Proposal for the new car purchase and was surprised that considering how much press this issue has received,there was no mention of this fact anywhere. Even more astonoshing to me was that no one made mention of the verbal lashing the Mayor took from John Walsh, like the fact that he never replaced the Acting Inspector General with a permanent IP. Could it be because the Acting IP wasn’t doing any “insepecting”?

Anyway, it looks like some people are starting to stand on their own two feet. Lets hope the trend continues.