Caterpillar is one excellent company. It is building new factories now in Texas, Arkansas, and North Carolina, from which it will export products made by American workers all around the world. Its excellent worldwide parts distribution network gives its used equipment a very high resale value. But on September 29, Caterpillar announced that it is building its twelfth factory in China -- this one to produce mini-excavators.
Why can’t Caterpillar make a profit exporting mini-excavators to China? The answer is simple: China has a 30% tariff on all excavators. In fact, it has a similar high tariff on just about every vehicle, be it a Ford car, a GMC truck, a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, or a giant mining machine made by Bacyrus International.