Sometimes you just have to laugh. Sometimes the only alternative to being consumed by the chaos is to give yourself just enough distance to separate the profound and important from the dumb and frivolous. This is why the Good Lord gave us irony. The car world has reached peak irony.
If this is your first time reading The Morning Dump, it’s ostensibly an automotive news roundup wherein one of us talks in a straightforward manner about which cars or executives are being recalled, what’s happening to car prices, et cetera. Occasionally, it goes a little off the rails because there’s some theme that emerges in the automotive world that’s worth talking about somewhat more obliquely.
Did you ever see the Lars Von Trier movie Melancholia? I wouldn’t exactly go out of my way to watch it, if only because the central irony of the film is almost too hard to bear. The crux of this eschatological narrative is that one sister, played by Kirsten Dunst, refuses to yield to convention and acts in a way that feels increasingly irrational. The other, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, does her best to be reasonable and act rationally even as the world is possibly ending. The closer we get to humanity being wiped out the calmer Dunst is and the more freaked out Gainsbourg gets because it turns out that believing nothing really mattered and acting accordingly is, ironically, the only truly logical way to exist in a collapsing world. If you want a similar, but less dour version of this, you could watch Neon Genesis Evangelion, which has way better cars and cool robots.
That’s a big wind-up to a report that’s just come out indicating that BYD might not want to build a plant in Mexico because it’s afraid Mexico is going to steal its secrets. Ironic! Vice President J.D. Vance has been out claiming that pursuing cheap labor always has a cost to countries, which isn’t wrong, but is doing it at a time when the U.S. government is trying to de-invest in the development of advanced electric cars in the United States. Ironic!
Tariffs can work, and the huge Japanese investment in the US is probably the best example of this. Now President Trump is threatening to put even bigger tariffs on Japan, which is a little ironic because Japan actually has no tariffs against importing cars from the US and that seems like a fair and reciprocal tariff (which is the goal, right?).
There’s so much irony I’m going to burst at this point, but let’s toss one more on there. GM gets viewed as being behind the curve sometimes when it comes to technology, but GM is now pretty far ahead of it when it comes to electrified vans. The response? GM is maybe too far ahead.
The Irony Is Killing Me
There’s a narrative in the automotive world that the Chinese government allowed the whole world to bring in its manufacturing to China, only then to steal the competency necessary to build cars. That narrative exists because, in some part, that’s what happened. However, with electrification, it’s a little different. China pumped billions and billions of dollars into becoming a leader in electric cars and, while some of that foundational knowledge certainly came from places like Germany and the United States (and was gained via joint ventures, i.e. deals with western automakers, not always IP theft), they’ve gone ahead of Western automakers in many areas of electric car development.
BYD, like other Chinese automakers, has found a decent export market in Mexico and was planning to build a plant there. When this news got out, the American government freaked out a bit and slapped huge tariffs on Chinese-built electric cars and pushed Mexico to not make it any easier on BYD. That was back when the United States was a good trading partner with Mexico. The vibes may have shifted here a bit lately.
Now, though, it’s the Chinese government that’s worried about the plant. Why? According to a Financial Times report titled “China delays approval of BYD’s Mexico plant amid fears tech could leak to US,” China doesn’t want the United States to do to China what China did to everyone else:
“[D]omestic automakers require approval from China’s commerce ministry to manufacture overseas and it has yet to give approval, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Authorities fear Mexico would gain unrestricted access to BYD’s advanced technology and knowhow, they said, even possibly allowing US access to it. “The commerce ministry’s biggest concern is Mexico’s proximity to the US,” said one of the people.
Lol.
I will again reiterate that, when it comes to electric cars, China is the real innovator here and not the IP thief (even if the knowledge was built on stolen data), so the government’s concerns here aren’t entirely invalid.
‘Cheap Labor Is Fundamentally A Crutch’ VP Vance
Vice President JD Vance gave a speech to the American Dynamism conference yesterday that I’ve linked above, and you can watch it if you’ve got a half-hour to spare today. If you can’t, here’s a good summary via Nikkei Asia. The point of the speech appears to be to try to tie together President Trump’s industrial and immigration policies.
This part struck me:
“The idea of globalization was that rich countries would move further up the value chain while the poor countries made the simpler things,” Vance told the American Dynamism conference in Washington organized by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
He cited Apple’s iPhone, which is designed in Cupertino, California, but produced in locations such as the Chinese city of Shenzhen. Globalization assumed that if advanced economies like the U.S. lost manufacturing jobs, their workers could learn to design or learn to code and continue to prosper.
“I think we got it wrong,” Vance said. “It turns out that the geographies that do the manufacturing get awfully good at the designing of things.”
In light of the story above about BYD, this is a little funny, but I don’t think it’s entirely wrong. If you’re confounded by the large number of people who voted Bush-Obama-Obama-Trump-Biden-Trump I think you can go all the way back to the neoliberal trade policies of the Clinton Administration, China Shock, and the fact that we traded away a lot of jobs and industrial knowhow for the ability to buy cheaper crap from Walmart and, now, Amazon.
This left communities, especially in the industrial Midwest, hollowed out by plant closures and lost jobs. Where once there was a thriving middle class you’ll find poverty, drug abuse, and people looking for some kind of hope.
“Cheap labor is fundamentally a crutch, and it’s a crutch that inhibits innovation. I might even say that it’s a drug that the American firms got addicted to,” the vice president said.
Rather than investing in innovation, companies have found it more convenient simply to offshore factories to economies with cheaper labor or to import cheap labor through immigration to produce things, he said.
This is where the speech loses me a little. Cheap labor is a crutch, absolutely, and I don’t disagree that it’s a drug. That being said, the big idea here is that service jobs are somehow bad and that industrial jobs are somehow good. It’s possible, and even desirable, to let people transition from manufacturing jobs to something better.
It reminded me of something that the first Vice President, John Adams, said in a letter to his wife Abigail:
“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.”
Preach, brother.
That kind of moving up in the world from smelting aluminum to doing something easier that pays better requires investment and, unfortunately, the liberalization of trade didn’t come with any answer for those communities that would be losing jobs. Why? Because that requires, at some level, government intervention and, in the back-and-forth between Democratic and Republican presidents, we got the free trade part, but we didn’t get everything else that needed to come with it.
The CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act seemed designed to address some of this, hoping to stave off the threat of losing the innovation race to other countries by encouraging investment in more advanced industries here in the United States. Currently, the Trump Administration’s plan is to undo these acts, which could risk jobs and the US getting ahead in these critical areas, which is probably why even many Republicans are trying to save the programs.
On the immigration and labor question, I’ll just leave this quote I saw on the wall at Ellis Island in an exhibit there:
“Before I came to America, I thought the streets were paved in gold. When I came here I learned three things: The streets were not paved in gold, the streets weren’t paved, and that I was expected to pave them.” – unnamed Italian immigrant.
Japan Is The Biggest Foreign Investor In The United States, Will It Be Punished For It?
America has a 2.5% tariff on cars imported from Japan, but Japan has no tariff on cars imported from America. The caveat, of course, is that Japan has extremely strict homologation standards that make it difficult for American companies to sell cars there. While those barriers exist, the reality is that Japanese tastes run towards the kinds of smaller cars that America produces in such small volumes that it imports them in great numbers from Japan.
If the premise of the trade war is that we need fair and equal/reciprocal tariffs and we need to bring more jobs back to the United States, you’d think that Japan would be the one company that would get a break. Japan has been, historically, the biggest foreign investor in manufacturing in the United States. That’s not what’s happening and now Japanese automakers are trying to figure out what they’re going to do next as Automotive News reports:
At the automaker level, cutting back on output was one “theoretical” option, Katayama said. “It was mentioned as an example of what we should think about in order to protect the state of the automobile industry as a Japanese export base. It does not mean that production will be halted.”
In the meantime, JAMA wants the Japanese government to continue negotiating with U.S. trade authorities to win tariff exemptions. So far, such appeals have fallen flat, as the U.S. stands pat.
“We discussed with the ministry our response to the U.S. government, focusing on our sense of crisis as an industry,” Katayama said. “We call on the Japanese government to continue its efforts to ensure that Japan will be exempted from the application of the additional tariffs.”
This hits all Japanese automakers, but especially Subaru and Mazda, who import more than half of their cars from Japan.
Chevy BrightDrop Vans Are Piling Up In Ontario
The Chevrolet BrightDrop van might be the best electric van for sale in America right now. Electric delivery vans, also, are among the best use cases for electric vehicles given that they usually stick to small geographic areas, idle frequently, and are traditionally stored in a shared lot overnight.
So why isn’t Chevy selling a bunch of them?
From the Detroit Free Press, we get a pretty good explanation:
Sam Abuelsamid, vice president of market research at Telemetry Insights, said the extended range of BrightDrop vans far surpasses its market competitors — but so does its price tag. Before incentives, the vehicles cost about $74,000. Ford’s E-Transit van with extended battery range, for example, is $51,600 — more than $20,000 cheaper — even before applying incentives.
“There is a market for electric vans,” Abuelsamid said. “Just not at that price point.”
Hey, it’s Sam! Here’s an irony for you, while we’re on the topic. By building the best van did GM build the least popular one? Range, which is such an issue for regular car buyers, might not be a big issue for commercial buyers, who are cost-conscious and more specifically aware of how far their vehicles will actually go.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
You knew it was coming. Is it ironic that Alanis Morissette wrote a song called “Ironic” that highlights a bunch of outcomes that are not, in fact, ironic?
The Big Question
What’s the most ironic moment in automotive history?
Top Photo: BYD/Happy Days
Ironically, the hyper-focus on the short-term profits at all costs did translate into long-term business success.
Wait, no, that’s not right.
Ironically, business investment from democracies into countries that had authoritarian regimes with their own political agenda actually did turn those countries into human-rights respecting democracies.
No…that’s not right either.
Ironically, extreme political partisanship has provided a long-term strategy for successfully navigating the large challenges of the 21st century world so far.
Damn. Wrong again. Gotta look up the definition of ‘irony’.
Ah. Here we go:
Ironically, the huge advantages of the developed democratic world (strong institutions and high public trust, solid financial management, huge technological lead) at the end of the 20th century was absolutely squandered only 25 years into the 21st century.
Irony does have an element of comedy to it. I suppose perhaps it is a very black comedy.
Leave Japan alone, they invest so much in the US that the current administration should be ashamed of putting tariffs. Their manufacturing efficiencies are very high compared to the Big 2.5, they are very good at making quality products.
RE Cheap labor: “That being said, the big idea here is that service jobs are somehow bad and that industrial jobs are somehow good. It’s possible, and even desirable, to let people transition from manufacturing jobs to something better.”
This concept is something I think about a lot. Service sector jobs such as food service and hospitality are the fastest growing segment. Yet so many people have the idea that food service jobs are “starter jobs for kids” and should not pay a living wage. On the other hand, MFG jobs are revered and thought to be “good jobs”. Are they though? I work in MFG, in a blue-collar area. I’ve talked to some of the younger guys here about real estate, and they’re discouraged that they’ll never be able to afford to own a home in the area, they’re having a hard enough time with rent.
As far as food service VS. MFG, really, how different is assembling a Whopper or making a coffee from putting a screw in a widget all day? IMO, food service is the new MFG. I’ve never worked fast food myself, but I bet handling a bunch of impatient customers on a lunch rush can be more stressful than some mfg work. I see them running around, and I don’t think I could do it for very long.
I can imagine all these MFG jobs they want to bring back as being low paying, in anti-union states with low worker protections. I doubt these will be good jobs that allow people to achieve much. Either that, or they’ll be heavily automated with minimal humans working.
I wish rather than focusing on “bringing jobs back”, they would focus on the things that have made everything so expensive in the first place. IMO the housing crisis should be first priority.
“As far as food service VS. MFG, really, how different is assembling a Whopper or making a coffee from putting a screw in a widget all day?”
Widget guy is probably unionized and therefore:
a) Paid fairly
b) Offered real benefits and equity for his work.
c) Not forced to do “other tasks as assigned” like take out trash or scrub a toilet.
d) Not abused by customers from clock in to clock out, dependent on the tips of people who don’t respect him to survive.
Even if the plant isn’t union, much of this still applies. It may not seem so on the surface but modern American service jobs are criminally terrible and borderline wage-slavery. Second only to agricultural. I’ll take the widget any day,
Non-union Widget Guy is hardly paid better than Whopper Guy around here.
according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2023 just 7.9 percent of manufacturing workers were union members.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.t03.htm
Many service jobs in blue states are decent and pay very well, but that is definitely not as common in red states. Fewer than ten percent of manufacturing jobs are union nationally. For every highly visible automotive plant operating with high standards, there are 50 smaller private manufactures operating without public scrutiny. Their standards can very widely, with a few being excellent places to work, but many are shockingly bad. They invest as little into employee safety and comfort as they can get away with, and have lower pay/benefits than your average MacDonalds. And that’s before you get to companies that fudge the category lines like chicken processing facilities.
Remember when Ron DeSantis banned Florida counties from requiring water breaks for outdoor workers? That’s the future the maga GOP has in mind for the whole country.
That’s a shame to hear. In this part of the country working for a company like Stryker vs Starbucks is night and day.
Midwest MFG guy here. Non-union ENTRY LEVEL widget jobs pay similar to fast food or Amazon warehouses, but there’s a (more accessible) career path. Our top “widget jobs” pay similar to our mid-level engineers and project managers, all non-union. In (food)service, you’re generally either moving into management or to a similar business serving higher-end markets to achieve that income.
Choice ought to be a top policy priority. Choice of summer employment, choice of career (without onerous dues or certification hurdles), choice of whether, as a consumer, you want to spend extra to support domestic union jobs or save money and buy imported.
Here is a few things about service jobs:
A. They should be a mandatory requirement as a summer credit for ALL high school students everywhere. There is no better teacher for empathy than dealing with people with none.
B. When you work a service job, it becomes more about perfection of the minutiae over everything. Obviously, one needs to make the customer happy, otherwise one isn’t fully rewarded for their work (tips). However, when you kick ass at a service job, you develop a loyal following of return customers that will do crazy shit like buy you a birthday card, or by your dog a shirt, etc. and can potentially make a friend for life that will help you out in whatever way/whatever field that they work in.
Being the best at your job on the line/most union jobs is not a requirement, and you will never get noticed for being the best side view mirror installer. It’s a thankless job, and quite frankly, a sad existence.
The VW Beetle mobilizing the German military during WWII, then mobilizing the post war Western world so much so that air cooled VWs got associated with the anti war Hippy movement.
Despite my vocal consternation towards communist China, over the past 40 years, they did exactly what I would have done if I were in their sandals.
You can’t show me how to do something and not expect me to learn it.
Postwar Japan learned from us (read Deming), it was OUR industry that refused to learn in many ways.
As the US took the crown from the British well over a century ago and as the British took it from Danes before them. Hardly new stuff. It’s a bitter pill to swallow but we will survive.
Sandals? ha! It’s cold as fuck there!
Japan may not have tariffs, but they have other not-so-friendly practices that keep over 90% of the cars sold there as Japanese. I feel like more equalizing tariffs are needed for countries with cheaper labor, like for China and Mexico, I don’t understand the ones towards Canada and Europe, like the Canadian dollar is almost what a US dollar is and the Euro is slightly more.
I feel like one of the most ironic moments was when Henry Ford was paying workers a living wage so they could buy his cars, and improving work conditions, and then they turn around and unionize. (not that he didn’t try to stop it with some completely legitimate business ‘help’.)
Maybe that or Mitsubishi licensing their engine designs to Hyundai to build cars almost as good, and now look where they both are.
RE tariffs, when Trump says “reciprocal”, he’s not talking about tariffs (as in country A puts a 5% tariff on US goods, US puts a 5% tariff on Country A). Instead, what’s happening, is that they’re trying to do some sort of math to calculate how “unfair” the cost difference of producing in other countries is, and apply a tariff based on that – factoring in currency values, energy costs, wages, taxes, manufacturing efficiencies, etc.
It is pretty tough to calculate all of that in relation to the US perfectly accurately and is a lot of variables to track, so it basically means he can just pick any crazy huge pie in the sky percentage and claim it’s reciprocal. Again, this is mostly all the pet personal theories of Trump’s primary trade and manufacturing advisor, Peter Navarro, he’s basically just implementing a two-do list that guy’s been developing for decades, Trump didn’t come up with any of this himself and probably wouldn’t be doing most of it if he hadn’t had Navarro talking in his ear for the past 8+ years
Trumps had those wacky ideas well before Navarro lurched out from under his rock.
I don’t think he researched enough or read deeply enough to formulate any sort of plan or detailed philosophy on his own, because a very broad belief that the US was being “taken advantage of” and signing “bad deals”. Generally, he goes with the first person he talks to who appears superficially smart and knowledgeable, as long as that person’s beliefs don’t conflict with any of his own preexisting notions
At that moment in time. Researched, read! Bwahahahaha!!!!!!! Understood!!!!!
Matt, you speak with a lot of confidence that the knowledge was only gained through joint ventures, and not IP theft. Knowing full well how China works, I’m not sure how you can repeat that with such confidence unless you have a lot of insight into it, though even then it doesn’t seem a provable statement. Not trying to be hard on you, just realistic.
I modified the parenthetical to say “not always IP theft” because there’s a lot of basic, foundational expertise you learn by doing something and the difference between that and the more obvious IP theft of just copying stuff is often important.
When auto enthusiasts wonder if tariffs will lead to a resurgence in US auto manufacturing, I offer this: did the chicken tax lead to a glut of mini truck models?
The most ironic moment that occurred during my lifetime was the death of the pontiac aztec only for ever car to be made in its image 10 years later.
The chicken tax did help lead to a glut of trucks. Not sure why you need to artificially limit it down to mini trucks, as CAFE standards and other reasons are what aided the drift to large trucks.
The most ironic moment in automotive history has to be right now.
We’re on the cusp of a large scale transformation in vehicle propulsion (ICE to electric), driven in no small part by a company that’s received billions in government handouts (carbon credits and tax credits for EV purchases being the most obvious examples).
And now the leader of that company is doing everything he can to decimate the very government that’s provided all those benefits, resulting in a huge market revolt against the company (both in terms of the stock price tanking and sales cratering) and its products (Tesla’s getting defaced and burned, people selling their cars off in droves or removing the Tesla logos and trying to disguise them with other company’s logos, and “I bought it before we knew Elon was crazy” stickers becoming a thing).
The irony here is the CEO that worked so hard to bring EVs to the masses is burning it all down, apparently oblivious to the fact that actions have consequences.
Talk about biting the hands that feed you.
It’s almost as if billionaire, nepo-babies have no idea how to do anything except “throw money at it”
Considering I saw a BYD Shark driving around the Stellantis Campus last month, China probably isn’t wrong.
There are companies in the Detroit metro that have a BYD shark for benchmarking and is slated for teardown. I got to sit in it during a review. It’s surprisingly nice.
The midwest comment. Yeah, some elements of my homeland of Forgottonia blame NAFTA and such. But when did we lose the gumption to get up and move? People used to move for opportunity. All economies change over time. Henry Ford loosely said the tractor will make 99 out of 100 farmers find a new job. What is automation doing for factories? How are schools teaching kids to be agile and willing to learn new skills? It’s a deeper problem than Chinese labor. Hmm, but what does history say about finding a group that looks different than us and blaming them for our problems…
What are schools doing? Let’s ask the Department of Ed for an overview. Oh, they’ve all been Musk’d. I’ve watched the alst 20+ years as this country has somehow decided education isn’t a worthwhile investment.
The billionaires need peons to man their Amazon warehouses, clean their pools, and wash their private jets. Education, critical thinking, and opportunity are not in the billionaires best interest.
They also need peons to write their trading algorithms, update their trading software, and help them dodge taxes. Education, critical thinking, and opportunity are very much in the billionaires best interest. THAT is the irony.
Did you misspell DOGE?
But they only need a few of those people. The rest can return to their tar paper shacks and play hillbilly coal miner or farmer until they die out
Hey pool boys are crucial. Just ask Jerry Falwell Jr.
It’s not that, rather it is the structure of those in charge of education on a federal level have gotten sooooo federal, that the bloat outweighs the carcass.
Education is obviously worthwhile. The process to do it properly just has become prohibitively expensive on a federal level.
Zoning makes it pretty hard to get up and move. We haven’t built enough housing for growth in the number of households for nearly 20 years.
Also, I don’t think the current regime knows anything about history. So I should just leave a farm that has been owned by the same family for over 200 years?
I get some of that, a centennial farm is why I’m still here. I can’t tell you how bad it was in Forgottonia in the 80’s. My class got cut in half when the coal mine closed. My most respected HS teacher told me to join a branch, get out, and never look back. But I found a gal to team up with, we went and got technical degrees that would allow us to stay, and we came back. We cared for our parents while we raised the kiddos. But no, I can’t buy into the politics of despair.
The current regime, that was elected largely by people in farm states, over opponents that had clear plans to help small towns and farms?
Now that’s irony.
I recently read an article about how US mobility is at an all-time low. People are feeling trapped where they are, that they’re not able to move.
Those are the people that locked in the sub 3% mortgages.
Yes, but that’s not all of it. This also applies to renters too.
The housing market being what it is also makes it damn near impossible. Sure I could sell my house and move for a job, picking up my family, leaving behind a support system, family and friends. But if I did, I’d sell my house to what, have to rent something 2-3x expensive somewhere else? Or attempt to buy something else, which seems to be borderline impossible in most places?
For people to consider that sort of nightmare, the salary of that new job had better be pretty fucking awesome. And for most industries, there’s just not enough potential there. Unless you work in tech, but ironically, those people tend to be the least likely to need to move with rates of remote work being so high.
There are 2 types of people. Those from somewhere and those from everywhere. Somewhere people don’t move. Everywhere people go where the work is.
The USA has a unique system for trapping people to their employers: healthcare tied to employment and emphasis on home ownership at high cost.
Sincerely, you keep hearing this bullshit about “muh americans aren’t as mobile” but only a nutjob would pack up and go in this day and age not knowing about the insurance or conditions you’ll have if you move. It’s one of the few things we actually have an excuse for.
Housing plays a factor too, costs are out of bounds for many in the places where jobs and opportunity are. I know many in our city renting apartments for the same as my mortgage in the exburbs.
I have made that same point about moving for work. For every person complaining about no work here, they likely have an ancestor who moved halfway across the world for a job here and probably couldn’t speak English either.
I’m sympathetic to what’s trying to be achieved with tariffs (reviving US manufacturing) but it’s being done so stupidly and haphazardly. What business leader would make plans for a US factory based on what Trump is doing today with tariffs? If Congress passed a bill that slowly and methodically raised tariffs in the coming years for products desirable to build in the US, it would have a much better chance of happening.
America off loaded jobs to other countries to save money. 100% true. Not that they wanted too, but because wallstreet pretty much forced them to. Companies report to their shareholders. Shareholders don’t like what a company is doing, they force leadership changes, or worse, they pull all their investments. Then said company goes under.
Hey Midwest. What the vast majority of people are unaware of is that JD Vance is heavily invested in a company that specializes in farm bankruptcy takeovers.
Any wonder why he works night and day against family farms. Vote stupid. Get stupid!
I hope my pension funds are in it as well.
If their votes impose their political views on me, I may as well profit from their self-imposed misery.
What’s the long-ass German word for that?
Farfegnugen?
Here’s another irony, unrelated to the auto industry – we’ve got all these MAGA folks cheering the (apparently unconstitutional) dismantling of the government because it’s gotten too bloated and bureaucratic, and yet they’ve kept voting for the same senators and representatives that created and maintain that bloat, over and over again.
If you want smaller, more efficient government, vote for people that will actually make changes (the legal way) instead of allowing the current crop of incompetent clowns do nothing but point fingers at the other guys while sucking up lobbyist money and extending the status quo.
Sorry, I’ll get off my soapbox now.
Here’s my favorite automotive irony story. After WWII, the Volkswagen plant at Wolfsburg was being used to produce Beetles for the British military during their occupation. When they withdrew, the VW plant was offered to other countries/companies as part of war reparations. The chairman of the board at Ford supposedly said to Ford himself, “I don’t think it’s worth a damn.” So the plant was returned to the Germans, and in 1972 the Beetle outsold the Model T.
If I remember correctly, Matt was on National Geographic’s documentary “Driving America” where he explained that had it not been for an unexploded bomb that hit that plant and a British bomb diffuser, we would have never had the Beetle!
You mean British electrics were unreliable?
No surely you jest./s
Yep, that is true! If I remember correctly, it was wedged between a couple of the body pressing machines.
Putting the Chevy bowtie on the BrightDrop van was a smart move. The next smart move would be to drop the BrightDrop name. I used have fleet management/procurement as one of my responsibilities, and the perception of risk-taking is the last thing a fleet manager wants if the vans don’t work out.
Does BrightDrop equal TMD?
TMD?
The Morning Dump….
Haha. Gotcha, sorry.
No, my bad. Dad jokes
I think you’re right. Time to bring back the Astro. With a scene for scene recreation of its greatest commercial.
https://youtu.be/SeBOuaxTJZg?si=TN9Ccnv59k1_pxou
Living rent free in my head for 40 years.
Go Astros!
“That being said, the big idea here is that service jobs are somehow bad and that industrial jobs are somehow good.”
So what you’re saying is that working as a bank teller, or in a call center, or doing random corporate office paper-shuffling crap – all of which is easily outsourced or automated now – is better than making tangible things that other people find useful?
That is a deeply weird take.
“It’s possible, and even desirable, to let people transition from manufacturing jobs to something better.”
And yet – there are some people who just want to go to work, turn the screws and operate the machines – Don’t want or need to put much thought or creativity or communication skills into their work – then come home to eat, have a beer and fuck.
They deserve to have a decent life too.
I think we need both, I just think we vacillate between value judgments one way or another. We need a manufacturing base here in this country, putting on a hard hat doesn’t make you better or worse than anyone, just like putting on a suit isn’t uniquely more or less noble than any other job. Both parties do this, of course, and when the romanticization of blue-collar labor is matched by real support (whether unionization or OSHA or whatever) then it bothers me a little less.
I have an employee who I’ve been trying to promote for the last year. Everyone is on board too, like…I could hand them a better title and a six figure salary tomorrow. However, they keep saying they like their less prestigious role and aren’t interested in taking on the additional responsibility they’d need to take on if I were to promote them.
And you know what? I respect the hell out of it. Some people don’t want careers so much as they want jobs. They want to be able to come in at 9, do what’s asked of them, leave at 5, and live their lives. A job or career is just a means to an end, and I wish more people saw them as transactional rather than a competition.
I have a fancy title and a fairly high salary and I can’t really say that it’s dramatically improved my quality of life compared to my last job. At that gig I just came in at 8, did everything that was asked of me in an expeditious and professional manner, minded my own business/stayed in my lane, and left at 4 to go home…where I’d have an edible (which I can’t do at my current job) if it was a Friday, eat dinner, have sex with my wife if she was in the mood, watch some documentaries, and go to bed.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting an honest day’s work and nothing more. I feel like hustle culture has programmed people to forget that, and it’s a shame.
I agree with you and even go one step beyond. Not only has hustle culture programmed us to avid fight for more, Western society has programmed us to be defined by what we do for a living. I have long felt that US culture has tried to tell me that where I should be finding my personal value is primarily in the workplace and wallet. Not in my home and family, not in creativity or creation, not in trying to help my community, etc. My primary value personally should be derived from my “value” commercially.
I disagree with this premise. I believe that programming is behind a great deal of the burnout issues we are seeing. Everyone is trained to derive their personal value from their job, but they view their job as just being a cog in the machine, and thereby can’t derive any personal value from it.
The ability to disconnect from that, find value in other parts of your life to define “who you are”, I believe frees many people from many of those pressures.
Well said my friend. Well said indeed.
I get no satisfaction from my job; it’s just a means to an end.
What really gets me are the Jamie Dimon type goons that think that people’s only value comes from work and the financial value they create. Like you’re worthless if you haven’t generated your GDP units for the day.
Dark Mirror episode Fifteen Million Merits.
Is that the one where they’re on the exercise bikes all day?
That one is brutal.
I see coworkers in MGMT taking calls and meeting on their time off, even while they’re away on vacation. F that. As soon as I leave the building, this place ceases to exist to me. I like that attitudes are shifting to that today, people are learning that sacrifice for the job is not worth it, employers don’t appreciate it and just grow to expect it.
I would not take a promotion that involved being on salary or having any reports, it’s just not worth the stress.
This is my 2nd job where I actively go out of my way to NOT let them take advantage of my personal time (work/life balance). I don’t get overtime, so don’t ask me to work it (regularly, there are certainly days where it makes sense). I do stuff for work at home, but because I want to, not because I have to.
tldr; I now try to shut down when I leave work after 20 years of not doing that.
I’m in a tech job that I enjoy and find fulfilling, but it is never ending. The more I do, the more I am asked to do to the point that I really do nothing else. Sometimes I just want to go live in a shack, stack rocks, and drive a beater. I think part of the reason I don’t is that once you get off this train, you don’t get back on. There is a VERY real possibility that anyone who does 100% of their work interfacing with a computer can and will be replaced with AI in the not so distant future. I’ve suggested going into trades with my soon to be college bound kid, but who knows what the right answer is.
That’s the scam they never tell you about! I assumed that as I rose through the ranks I’d eventually have less work, but it’s the opposite. The better I get at what I do (and I’ll brag a wee bit here, I am very good at it at this stage) the more gets put on my plate.
It’s the curse of competence. I eventually get ridiculously overloaded everywhere I work because people eventually get to the point that the default is “oh give this to N Sane, it’ll get done well and on time and he won’t complain”.
More work just gets you more work. Thats capitalism, baby. I’m lucky in that my current company is obsessed with work life balance and actively discourages us from doing anything outside of our normal work hours. I still probably get assigned more than I should, but at least I can leave it at work.
Yeah, that’s me. I am skilled at what I do (a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career). I’m pushing back hard this year on work-life balance and letting others learn even if it means we need to extend timelines.
“the curse of competence” I like that and have been a victim of it for decades!
At my current employer, I do only what my job specifically entails and the Owner ‘already knows everything’ and is not open to my sharing previous experience/knowledge for situations they find themselves in. But, I’m paid well, work exactly 8-5 and its a refreshing change from ‘having to solve everthing’, so not really complaining. He’s just not getting his full value from me.
It’s nerve-wracking though when you can see the train wrecks coming from miles away….!
While I have finally managed to find a job where my little weird skillsets are not only appreciated, but encouraged. Most of our team is composed of folks like that, but all of us have different weird skillsets. Between us, we can craft just about anything we need. We had an outside company promote their product, give demos, and gave us a quote. Hundreds of thousands of $ product. Once we found enough details about what they offered, we realized that we had created their product in-house on our low-work-load days already! Great job, great company, great people, great product. Finally!
I was offered a salaried engineering job at a steel mill a little over a year ago after working years as hourly tech/operator type jobs and I was going to take it as it paid more then what I make but during the in-peron walk through I was told that the position would have me working a minimum of 9hr days/45hrs a week so the pay bump was pretty much null and void at that point as I would be working more hours and not getting overtime for those extra hours. I find it really weird how it seems a lot of places try to push you into salaried roles but then require you to work way more hours then you would as hourly. My current role has not been too bad as I am now salaried but I do get overtime for anything over 40 hours which is nice and double time if I work Sundays.
Wait do you actually find it weird that businesses use every trick in the book to suck as much productivity out of you for as little cost to them as possible? 😉
Did salaried mtc engineering in steel/specialty metals for about 20 years. You are 100% correct in your assessment.
8 and the gate
Some of the best people I ever worked with tried a mangement job, hated it, busted themselves back to a worker role. They recognized the diffrence, and loved being the worker and were great at it. The folks who took a management job, but stayed for the money were the worst at management.
Cold, dry sex and a documentary.
That’s some Black Mirror shit right there, lol.
My sex has never been either cold or dry but I’m sure it is for some people, and I feel bad for them.
I mean, you do live in Virginia/Maryland of all places, so it’s a logical assumption, lol
My brother in Christ, you live in FLORIDA!
And pineapples are ripe year round!
I figured yall were too busy catching gators in trash cans and jumping draw bridges to have time to get it on
First of all, they are drawl bridges, and they are always open. Fuck them signs.
Secondly, everyone here is half naked all the time. Did you think people were crocheting wool gloves down here or something?
He is making the right call for him.
I am the senior design engineer for the company work for. Twice I have been offered the VP of engineering position and turned it down. I like what I do, I’m very good at what I do, and I get to have a real creative input into the final products we make. The VP of engineering job came with a good pay bump and other benefits, but I’m already well paid. It would have required more hours, and made me essentially the engineering groups project manager, a role I would hate.
The only real attraction would be to have the title on my resume, but I don’t think that would be that useful for my future plans.
I am also confused by the meaning of “better” in your quote. Without further context, it feels like Matt just disagrees with Vance. Vance says “industry over service”, and Matt says “service over industry”, seemingly without any supporting statements. I think he is shooting for balance, but the language in the article isn’t really clear on that.
I firmly believe there is a dignity and pride that working with ones hands that simply cannot be reproduced in most desk jobs. Many people work in spreadsheets. How many of them have the same level of personal satisfaction in their creation that you find in the person who made a charcuterie board in their garage? The single easiest possible project in woodworking will bring greater personal value to most individuals than their day job can. But many blue collar jobs DO provide that. Not all, but many. Thats why so many white collars have blue collar hobbies (woodworking, welding, auto repair).
I get tremendous personal satisfaction from an elegant SQL statement that helps my customers solve problems.
DEVs are the primary exception to my statement. Because it still involves a sense independent creation, which I think creation is one of the drivers of that satisfaction. There are others like digitial artists, thought most artists I know who work in digital medium ALSO work in physical mediums.
The other half of my job is literally being that guy in Office Space who talks to the customers so the engineers don’t have to. I’m really good at it, and it’s 90% soft skills. Very satisfying.
I think it’s just incorrect to say that broad categories of jobs are more or less satisfying.
Thats fine. I have no issues with you disagreeing with my premise. I disagree that one individuals personal experience in their white collar job is sufficient evidence to refute my position. I’m glad you find that satisfaction in what you do. The vast majority of white collar professionals I know do not. All the “burnout” and “job dissatisfaction” research ongoing also indicates that a large number of people not only don’t find satisfaction at work, they CANT. They have to find that satisfaction outside of the work place.
My son is going to college next year. My only advice for him is to find a career he doesn’t hate that can feed him and his family for life.
Meanwhile, my wife has an English and History degree, she’s a travel agent. NOTE: she is NOT happy in her job.
I, as an engineer, am SUPER happy with my job. But, a lot of that has to do with people. I hated my previous job because my boss was an incompetent asshole which caused me to struggle to work for him (and then he fired me). Loved the work, hated the boss.
Yeah, I don’t buy in to the “do a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” theory. I also don’t want to, because I have no desire to define myself by my job. I got an education that gave me a tool kit and the ability to make a decent living. I neither love nor hate it, its just a means to an end.
Another thing your comment reminds me of is an article about being happy at work I read many years ago. Its premise was there are 3 categories of “work happiness” to consider.
1) The work that you do
2) The amount you are paid to do it
3) The people you do it with.
The idea was if you are not happy with any of them, you need to get out. If you are happy with one, you still really need to get out.
If you have two of them, you are doing fine, try not to complain too much. If you have all three, then you are one of the lucky ones and should appreciate it.
I’ve been trying to apply that rule my entire adult life and I don’t think its failed me.
very well said. I could not agree more. I don’t prescribe to the “do a job your lvoe and you’ll never work a day in your life” thing. I feel that I have all 3, but I still don’t love work.
It is absolutely a means to an end. I enjoy it, I try not to complain very much, but I would much rather be rich and choose what I do everyday versus this.
I very much consider myself a happy person, overall. 🙂 🙂 🙂
I have a hobby that is nothing to do with my day job. That said, I sometimes get to engage in teaching my hobby at work. Glad I got my boss to agree to it.
Doing something as a hobby is entirely unrelated to doing it for a profession.
Most blue collar jobs are not about making nice woodwork, and you generally don’t get to choose what you are working on. This is true even if you own the company, bills must be paid, and in time you find that you need to focus on whats profitable, not what satisfies you. Blue collar work can be just as tedious as office work, and is almost always more physically demanding. Office space was a brilliant send up of corporate culture, but not every white collar employee works for a company like that, and not every blue collar job involves dignity and pride.
Blue collar jobs, white collar jobs.. they are still jobs. I’ve been on both sides of that line, and the real trick is to find something that you can find satisfaction with that fits with your other life needs – and absolutely don’t let your job become who you are.
You’re on to something here and I think I’d take it even further. Manufacturing jobs are fundamentally different from service jobs psychologically. That is, I think that jobs where you’re creating, or at least assembling, something tangible are more fulfilling than service jobs.
Not to mention that service jobs are a result of other jobs in an area, but the other way around is not true. This is why towns became hollowed out when manufacturing left, there was no one to buy groceries or eat out either.
In short, Vance is correct that globalization isn’t serving us anymore.
Yet the economy has been doing very well by historical standards, and lots of manufacturing still takes place in the United States. While refinements might need to be made, globalization absolutely serves us well. Ending it won’t magically lower housing prices, or change a wealth disparity created by a tax structure that favors unearned wealth over earned wealth. But it will raise prices, leave the US out of future overseas markets, and put us behind in technology.
Small towns became hollowed out because manufacturing consolidated. NAFTA may have speeded up the process, but It would have happened anyway.
If the Trump administration cared even a little about farmers or small town America, they wouldn’t be insulting our allies and destroying the overseas markets for American farm goods. What they are doing is rapidly destroying the safety net older small towns Americans rely on.
I do think that globalization can serve us well and bring benefits all around. However, I believe that requires what I call “capitalism with heart”, which I believe we are farther from than any time in the last 40 years. Capitalism inspires creativity and large scale thinking in a way I don’t believe anything else really can. People are motivated by self interest primarily, and capitalism is all about opportunities to make yourself “more” through a business idea.
However, the larger a business gets, the less inclined it is to think about either its employees or its consumers as actual people. This is exacerbated by magnitudes when a company goes public. Now you have a board who’s ONLY intent is grow. Unmitigated growth in any other area, without any other concerns for whats around you, tends to be called cancer.
Capitalism with heart, as I call it, leaves room for saying “yes that would make us more money. I refuse because I will not participate in hurting those around me to make that extra money. We are profitable now, and still kind to people.”
The modern publicly owned company is not allowed room for that type of large scale action. I find that sad. Many small business owners DO choose to operate that way, and them I applaud.
I wouldn’t disagree with that. I just think the attacks on globalism are a distraction from the real issues. Protectionist policies almost always benefit the largest businesses by reducing markets and limiting supply chains.
The tariffs are going to decimate the few small farmers left, and farm conglomerates will buy them out – which is perhaps their real purpose.
Then the well connected conglomerates and the private equity billionaires that actually own them will get subsidies to cover their losses.
Sadly, I have high degree of belief in your statements here.
You make the point that capitalism is basically a pyramid scheme that cannot sustain itself without a shit ton of regulation.
Ending globalization doesn’t mean cutting off all contact or even trade with the outside world, so most of your well written post is arguing against a straw man unfortunately. Those “refinements” are exactly what we’re talking about, though that word implies something smaller than what’s needed.
It means dispensing with the idea that free trade is an unalloyed good and we should allow countries access to our markets while they restrict our access to theirs. It means understanding that we have the resources to produce more locally and doing so. It’s a return to evaluating our trade with all foreign countries to see if it benefits us.
Sure, I agree jacking up Canada isn’t a good way to go, but taking a stronger stance towards other nations definitely is and it’s refreshing to see. And sometimes, frankly, our allies have treated us like shit and need to be held accountable.
Every made-from-scratch restaurant is a tiny factory filled with jobs that can’t be outsourced overseas.
It is certainly ironic to use a Canadian artist for the music of today’s TMD, considering the unaddressed comment from yesterday’s article.
Manufacturing jobs are great, and they’re easier to pay good wages in, if the raw materials can be had at a good price.
If only there was some independent nation close by that would be willing to freely trade vast amounts of those resources…
> An
independentnation close-by that can be forcefully annexed by financial meanswould be willing to freely tradefor vast amounts of those resources…FIFY.
Sadly, that’s what’s happening right now to a nation that’s proven to be, literally, America’s closest ally for over a century.
Can be? Attempted to be, sure. The “can be” is some real hubris.
China has an entire industry that does nothing but make cheap, inferior copies of Western products. Are they worried we’re going to steal everything they’ve stolen from us back or something?
What are you talking about are you saying the seller named Xypa_banana_led on Amazon didn’t actually design their multimeter leads that look like cheap knock off fluke leads?
I’m not! I think the $500 Gibson guitar is probably legit too! And did you see that $150 Rolexx?!
It was just a “Fluke”!
I think aftermarket accessories that are designed to work with OEM equipment is perfectly legal. That’s the basis for all those non-OEM photo accessories such as shutter release, flash guns, etc.
Chinese universities graduate several times more engineers every year than the US schools do, and their government has subsidized product development and manufacturing on a scale that we will never be able to.
They do make a lot of cheap, knock off shit. But they also make a lot of quality, cutting edge shit. We were dismissive of their capabilities, and happy to exploit their labor, for decades. And look where we are.
I don’t disagree
I have always heard the statistics regarding the number of Chinese engineers is greatly inflated. My understanding is they use the term “engineer” far more broadly than we do, and that a lot of those “engineers” are probably what we would refer to as technicians (i.e. auto mechanics, HVAC techs, etc.).
I’m not saying China doesn’t make decent stuff or train good engineers, but I disagree with the implication that Chinese higher education is outpacing US higher education. If nothing else, there are thousands of Chinese nationals enrolled in US educational programs, and very few US nationals enrolled in Chinese educational programs. If Chinese higher education was equal or superior to US higher education, we would not see those disparities.
This has been my experience as well. I once saw a statistic that like 95% of the Chinese employees hired by a my company had “masters” degrees. There was no comparison to someone with a US masters degree though. This isn’t exclusive to China either, a lot of the folks from lower income countries that I’ve worked with are much better at their jobs if they’re US-educated.
Of course, with the way the crusade against education is going in the US that may not be true for much longer. 🙁
And before the Chinese there where the Koreans and before them the Japanese. The common theme for each of them was they made cheap knock off crap and copied everything the west made.
Was bs then just as it is now.
The line from the beginning of Tom Gun. “You screw up just this much and you’ll be flying cargo planes full of rubber dog shit from Hong Kong.”
Making cheap copies is a good way to get practice and making quality copies, which is a good foundational skill for making original improvements.
Knowledge cannot be “stolen” only lost or gained. Either you keep making new knowledge, or your secrets become the common thing
Said this before, worth saying it again; my previous employer made products in China. There was a design flaw (that was easily ignored for performance by us) that was copied by the Chinese when they stole the design.
We sat on our hands (collectively as a nation) while the communist government did what everyone expected them to do, learn how to make our stuff. Now, we are just mad that we never kept up with them, now they are ahead (I could have written that better!)
Tom Hanks stars in the movie “A Hologram for the King”. His backstory was an executive for Schwinn and they moved manufacturing to China. Eventually China produced bikes that were much cheaper than Schwinn after learning the techniques from Schwinn. Hanks character has flashbacks where he had to tell everyone they no longer had a job, while dealing with culture shock in the middle east trying to sell a King a holographic telecommunications system.
Are you sure you didn’t just describe “Gung Ho”??? 🙂
No, that movie starred Batman and Norm from cheers.
DEFECT!
The US should require all Chinese automakers to partner with a local automaker to produce cars for sale in the US. Not all Chinese automakers though, we will allow an exception for a single automaker who is the most willing to sell out to the US government to operate their own factory.
Republicans lost their shit over the Ford-CATL plant so doubt that’s on the table. Though I guess it’s possible since now they can take credit for it.
Ford-CATL joint venture in 2023 = bad
Tesla-BYD, Tesla-Geely, Tesla-SAIC, Tesla-Cherry joint ventures in 2025 = the greatest thing for America ever
Japan DOES NOT have unreasonably strict homolgation standards that make it difficult to sell American cars there, unless you mean quality cars that are actually designed by engineers.
They use the international UNECE standards like just about everyone else.
LOL it’s the US that has the stupid standards, specifically designed to be different (not better, different), the stupid 25% chicken tax, the 25-year shit, etc., so all they do is build big-ass trucks that really ought to require a CDL to drive.
The Brightdrop is a stepvan. It’s priced competitively with stepvans, a product that exists for a reason. GM might’ve just been a little optimistic that Amazon DSPs would appreciate the better tool for the job when they could just use cheaper Transits and expect the drivers to deal with the downsides.
I never knew my real van.
COTD!
He went out to deliver some smokes one night and was never seen again.
This exactly – the comparison to “regular” van pricing is apples to oranges.
It’s a cargo van. It may be better for certain applications as a step van, but if the budget savings square peg can be crammed into the fleet requirements round hole, you bet companies are gonna do it.
I don’t care if it’s less ergonomic for the driver if I can buy 4 Ford Transits to every 3 Brightdrops. If I need 100 of the things, that’s some HUGE cost savings.
If Vance is so against cheap labor, why is the party he represents so against raising minimum wage, trying to eliminate welfare, Medicaid, social security, and investments into funding trade schools, infrastructure, and useful public transit; all the while trying to sell crappy shoes and bibles made in China?
Because cognitive dissonance is the #1 trait required for politicians.
And/or hypocrisy seems to be the only thing you can count on from this administration.
I don’t know, Scott, I feel like you are pretty safe counting on them for unhinged levels of greed and selfishness.
Pointing out and pumping the bogeyman gets them elected. It’s an old tradition that works.
Be every single one of them is a lying, no-good cheat. And we all knew that, but some people elected him anyway.
In the current environment, it is impossible to do anything that would possibly help “the other side”. Which seems counter-productive. Rising tides help all boats. You can’t just wall off your side of the harbor, though, but they seem to insist on trying.
I blame Newt.
*Goose meme*
Where do people get the money to spend on services?
Crypto.
Release a new shitcoin every time you want to go on vacation, the new American dream!
Lol, you need both, obviously, but there seems to be a focus on a specific kind of blue-collar industrial job at the expense of everything else. There have been some conversations about semi-conductor manufacturing, crypto, et cetera, but it’s been mostly on the edges.
The stereotypical hard-hat wearing blue collar worker does get overrepresented in these discussions, but I don’t think that takes away from the need to support manufacturing up and down the value chain to counter China’s rise.
Bringing metal smelting and steel fabrication back to the US doesn’t need to be at the expense of semiconductor manufacturing (although it is hopefully at the expense of crypto).
Tariffs on metals are hurting the US manufacturing we have right now. The USA just isn’t a great place to produce aluminum. This company near where I live is already losing export customers because of the tariffs.
Schuylkill County company concerned about effect of aluminum, steel tariffs | Schuylkill County Area | wfmz.com
Specifically didn’t mention tariffs as a strategy because I do not think they’re the best method to accomplish what we want. Especially not in the manner that we’ve seen the last month or so.
Gotcha.
What we’ve seen with tariffs over the last month might literally be the worst way to implement policy, in a general sense. Everybody’s angry, alliances are damaged, and businesses are afraid to invest.
But people wanted somebody to “shake things up”, so that’s what they got.
The blue collar manufacturing jobs always get romanticized over others for some reason. When factory workers get laid off it’s a tragedy, but if the same company lays off engineers or accountants, the reaction is crickets.
We also don’t need to bring it all back. Just enough to have it locally.
I see charts of China’s lead over us in steel production, shipbuilding, manufacturing output, etc and feel like Japan’s leaders must have by the end of WWII.
I agree. I just don’t think we need to bring everything back. We don’t need to make everything in the US, and source everything in the US. It does make sense to have at least “one of everything” here (which we probably already do).
And build out the power grid to support that, AI, EV, and then next new shiny thing. Call me in 20 years when it’s done.
I think the semi-conductor thing is because the current Administration is hell bent on undoing absolutely anything accomplished during the previous Administration, no matter if its beneficial or not.
A more controversial take on Labor is: many people are much better/capable at ‘labor’ than ‘office jobs’. We need to have self-supporting jobs for EVERYONE, not just ‘All Star’ talent, otherwise general populous might start revolting at some point.
Oh China…Maybe wear these shoes a little and see how it feels to be the victim instead of the benefactor for a little while. hmm? from what I’ve seen though, the BYD shark is not at risk of being called an innovator worth stealing from just yet. Interesting concept that sorta works, but is very much not a fully flushed out product.
Yeah, this “lead” China has in EVs seems to be more about volume than quality. Sure, they sell a ton of them, but it’s not like they’re a quantum leap ahead of what we have. The main thing they beat us on is price, which makes sense when you consider they’re predominantly manufactured in a place that has…charitably…lax labor and environmental laws.
Which, to be fair, is a quantum leap ahead of where they were ten years ago, making ugly, shitty cars that even their own citizens didn’t want to buy. That was pretty much inevitable though, since they could copy basically everything we were doing. It would be more surprising if they hadn’t caught up quickly. There’s a big difference between catching up and leading though.