Did you hear? The automotive biz is rockin' and rollin'. General Motors—that's right, the same GM that trudged to bankruptcy court earlier this year—reported 2009 growth of 40 percent. Heck, the industry overall reported 90 percent growth in August. Simply amazing!

Oh, I forgot to mention: You have to move to China to join the party.

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It's 2005. A group of investment bankers visit a dimly lit New York club. One banker in his 20s makes more than a million a year packaging mortgages and sending them on to the big Wall Street firms. Two waiters arrive carrying four champagne bottles each with tiny sparklers. Everyone turns to look. Those bankers just ordered four bottles of Cristal at $1,000 a pop.

It's 2009. Tom Tseng, general manager of Chinese bicycle-maker Tandem Industries, tells a newspaper reporter that "China's ability to consume has reached a fairly high level … [while] in the U.S. people now only want to buy cheap things."

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On a flight to a manufacturing event last week, I read an article in BusinessWeek that got me pretty down. The headline on the magazine cover screamed, "America's Manufacturing Crisis." The topic: Why stuff's invented stateside and sent abroad for manufacturing.

"While the Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese, and Chinese plowed billions into megaplants to churn out commodity products, America steamed ahead in more lucrative pursuits, such as software, life sciences, and financial services," the article stated. "As for companies such as Dell and Apple, they could still reap high profits by focusing on marketing and design while letting offshore contractors handle the grunge work."

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The August issue of "Stamping News Brief" (SNB) featured comments from an SNB reader responding to an item in the previous month's issue about employment in the metal stamping sector. This reader said, "I am soon to be unemployed, and there are really not many prospects around here for employment as an engineer. I currently am traveling 55 miles one way to work for 25 percent less than a year ago. As more and more people here in the U.S. have to accept lower paying jobs, I really do not know where the off-shoring companies expect to find their markets. China sure is not much of a market.

"[The company I work for] is a former automotive supplier with a <10PPM, but yet all of the former Big 3 are off-shoring the parts we made. With our bailout money, they are transferring our equipment. I used to be a staunch buy-American, but I believe [domestic automakers] have lost about 150 potential automobile buyers here. I sure hope they find their market in Costa Rica."

The August SNB then described how some talk show hosts and others in the U.S. have been calling for a boycott of GM and Chrysler and asked subscribers about their car buying plans.

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From what shop owners tell me, the metal fabrication sector has had quite a ride during the past few months. It's hard to believe that in October at the FABTECH® International & AWS Welding Show, shop managers told me stories of strong business that, though not as good as in 2007, still had enough orders to keep machines humming on the floor. They told me largely the same story in November too.

Then December happened.

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I fess up. Yes, I’m an overgrown band geek. I played trombone during high school, on through college, and I continue to do so (very badly, actually) in a local community band. Every Thursday, driving into the rehearsal hall parking lot, I see yet another blast from the past, that preferred transportation method for us geeks and nerds: A motor scooter.

The driver, who happens to be quite the clarinetist, has driven his scooter to band practice for years, but within the past few months he’s been getting a lot more attention. During breaks we gather around his Vespa ®, admiring not so much its sleek design, but its miles per gallon: 72.

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These days, wherever I go … whomever I talk to … the conversation usually turns to high gas prices. When I shake my head at the ever-increasing cost of produce at the market, my first thought after "Should I buy these blueberries at this price?" is “It’s those high fuel costs!”

It's not just the food we eat and the products we buy that are affected by high fuel/transportation costs. A young man near and dear to my heart had to round up his change and visit a nearby Coinstar® machine to turn change into dollars for the gas to visit his mother for a Memorial Day picnic (sans blueberries). Even then, he was watching the fuel gauge closely.

With the price of crude oil escalating and the price at the pump following suit, could there possibly be a silver lining to high energy costs? Maybe.

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Labor costs continue to rise. Companies feel the pinch of surging raw material prices. Margins are declining. Companies can’t find the labor they need, and manufacturers strive to cut costs and keep work on their shores. This sounds like the problems manufacturers face stateside, but it’s not.

It’s in China.

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Toronto, Canada's star.com reported March 5 that Ontario lost more than 77,000 manufacturing jobs from 2001 to 2006, according to the latest employment trends report from Statistics Canada. Labor market experts believe that trend is likely to stretch well into 2008 and beyond. Quebec lost 56,600 in the same time period.

Among the reasons cited for the losses was the disparity between Canadian labor costs and those in other countries, including the U.S.

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Jean-Guy April knows the value of a dollar, and in this case more value isn’t always better.

April owns April Services Techniques, a metal fabrication consultancy in Montmagny, about 50 miles northeast of Quebec City, and many of his clients are feeling the pain as the dollar falls and the Canadian loonie (dollar) hovers high, hitting a record Nov. 7, according to Bloomberg. At this writing, the dollar and loonie sit at parity, something that hasn’t happened in more than three decades.

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