DesRosiers On Ford's Announcement

I thought you might be interested in what Dennis DesRosiers has to say about the Ford announcement. Clearly the 1,000 jobs at Ford in Windsor are now at risk.

And what is Windsor's strategy other than talking. Perhaps if the Economic Development Commission did something, say hire a new Executive Director. Perhaps the Mayor can tell us when he returns from France.

I'll offer a suggestion in the other BLOG I post today. Except Windsor contractors better not read it

• "Like everyone else I just read the Ford announcement on their cut backs this fall.
  http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060818/NEWS99/60818010
  
  This is the latest of a number of significant negative announcements by Ford over the last few years. They position it as moving faster on their "way forward" announcements made in January. Anyone who watched that press conference in January though, just knew that they would end up in this position. This latest cut back should have been made in January and they would be in better shape today. They waffled in January whereas GM was hard hitting and got the bad new behind them, Ford didn't and now they have to go through all this negative media over the next few days. And since August is a very slow news time they will get more negative news out of this than if they had bit the bullet in January.
  
  What's behind this. Three things.
  
  First the US market is very soft and is paying for all the foolish incentive dollars poured into the market over the last few years. Pay me now or pay me more later. Well it is later and the US market is not going to get better without major incentives and nobody can afford big incentives and nobody has the appetite for big incentive money. The pie is shrinking.
  
  Second, Ford continues to struggle in the market. They are not losing a lot of market share in North America but they are losing some share and this creates a doubling up of the problem. To lose share in a declining market forces companies to react.
  
  Third, Ford's strength is in the least fuel efficient vehicles. Need I say more.
  
  Hope this helps."