Duluth gets assurance that Cirrus will stay
July 13, 2011 at 7:00 pm in Duluth News Tribune
In a memorandum signed this week, the city pledges to support Cirrus while its owner pledged to keep the Cirrus operation in Duluth.
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Duluth gets assurance that Cirrus will stay
22 Comments
So the tone of this story leads one to believe that this letter is guaranteeing that Cirrus will never leave, cut wages, outsource component production, etc. The only sentence that really matters in the story is that one that mentions the letter is not legally binding. It’s as good as the IOUs in the movie Dumb and Dumber. The way that the original Cirrus stockholders were “bought out” gives much more insight into how much the new ownership cares about stakeholders in the Duluth area – the buyout is the story that the DNT needs to look into further.
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I hope the Chineese wrote their promise on rice paper, so Donny Boy won’t choke on it when he has to eat their words in a couple of years.
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This issue has been discussed before, will they stay, will they leave in one sudden move at some point in the future….or will they slowly move functions one at a time.
Time will tell. We can debate it till we’re blue in the face…..but the only way we’ll know is to let a few years (or more) pass and look at the situation.
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If Duluth is the best place to do business they will stay.
If the bureaucrats say sorry, you can’t make planes without your state plane making permit and you can’t get your state plane making permit because the office is closed, they will leave.
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Excellent point! I have a talent agency in WI. so it becomes very beneficial to me and the actors I represent for them to shoot their films here. Many other states give the producer large tax incentives for bringing business to their state. Our lovely governor thought the film business was more trouble than they were worth and took away their incentives. We haven’t had any large production companies shoot in WI for quite a while. Why should they when Indiana and surrounding states are more than happy to increase tourism which put food on everyone’s table.
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I remember walking out of a taconite processing plant saved by a Chinese steel maker a few years ago with an older Finnlander who was spitting nails mad about the conditions we were forced to endure that day… I jokingly said to him, “ya know… when you work for the Chinaman, your a Chinaman! He almost had a heart attack. Our corporate leaders have robbed all the wealth out of American companies and when the old girl starts to look a little thin they just dump her for a dime on the dollar.. cant say this applies to Cirrus, but we will get to see how much like the Chinaman the employees will be treated. By the way, ya gotta love the Chinese, their history culture and all, but I hear their corporate leaders are pretty ruthless. They are nationalistic though and support protectionist polices … for China
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When did we start selling our soul to the highest bidder? Why does the almighty dollar mean so much? I would rather have my intregrity than share my house of worship with any other gods. Different view points challenge us and cause us to question what we believe and learn to stand stronger because of it. I hate to see misjustice and I cry when I see someone being mistreated, but I will not become so watered down in my belief system that I don’t knowthe difference between right and wrong. Selling the United States off piece by piece to other countries is the craziest thing I had ever heard of—and then I woke up.
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While a nice piece of paper and a little ceremony are well and good, it is really only a wink and a prayer. China is still a thoroughly communist nation, with a rich tradition of breaking promises, tossing out agreements and dumping treaties. As soon as they feel they have reverse engineered Cirrus’s proprietary products and methods enough, they will relocate everything to Guangdong, China. It is one of their largest industrial centers and is “…home to the production facilities and offices of a wide-ranging set of multinational and Chinese corporations” (Wikipedia). Within 5 years, Cirrus will be next. This was a sale that was forced, in large part, to the current Obama debt laden economy, resulting in a lack of available small business credit to Cirrus’s management for expansion. They didn’t want to wait years for a more positive, business educated, political change in U.S. leadership. They had to find another way — and did. The current ‘feelings sensitive’, but business illiterate administration is killing our country’s biggest job providers (small business) and Cirrus won’t be the last. Very sad, frustrating and angering.
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With such a strong ingrained culture here of pessimistic naysayers and doomsdayin’ Chicken Little’s one is just completely lost as to why any company would ever want to leave here.
“Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain –
and most fools do” ,,Dale Carnegie
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Now fastone, that’s throwing a whole lot of people into one category. Maybe I have a few years on you and remember what it meant to say the pledge of allegence. Perhaps, even though I was born and raised in Southern Calif. and experienced the Hippie culture and then watched everyone waste their lives away while indulging and escaping through drug use. Even then I had always seen the good in most people. We were polite to one another and cared dearly for our neighbors. My greatest loss through waking up and researching the world around me was the realization that there is more evil than good in the world these days. I feel that I lost my innocence. I want my grandchildren to know what true kindness is by people who love them instead of brainwashing their little minds. I believe we call seeing things for how they really are instead of burying our heads in the sand.
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“a rich tradition of breaking promises, tossing out agreements and dumping treaties”
Sounds a lot like the US.
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or the city regarding retiree & tribal treaties
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Wish in one hand, do do in the other and see which hand fills up first.
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I can see Donny sitting around in a few years scratching his head and muttering, “But they promised.”
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I can see Donny sitting around in a few years scratching his head and muttering, “But they promised.â€
DanH. Ha ha ha, I love it!!
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I really don’t understand all the fear here. This is a capital investment by a Chinese company in Cirrus (which has little cash) which no american companies would risk. Heck, Cirrus’s majority owner was the Bank of Bahrain, a middle eastern company. Did people freak out thinking the bank as a majority owner would move jobs and American technology secrets to Bin Laden?
They are not outsourcing jobs or production. I mean come on, do you really think you can build an airplane overseas and then take apart the airplane, put it on a boat, then reassemble once it gets here? This isn’t cars or toys. These are airplanes.
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Grandforkinsider, How do you think they got airplanes across the ocean in WW2? Some were flown over, smaller planes went by ship.
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And yet you didn’t address the my first comment that the company had been owned by a middle eastern bank which HADN’T taken jobs out of this country.
I think all of you need to remember that NONE of the American financing companies were willing to invest in Cirrus because they want to make a quick dollar. This Chinese company will spend the time and money to invest and build the Jet then sell the company and makes millions when the value of the company goes up. And then China will have even more money.
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Yes, I do expect them to build the airplane overseas, take it apart, put it on a boat, and then reassemble it in the US. Cessna is doing just that with its latest training model. The Cessna 162 Skycatcher is produced by Shenyang Aircraft Corporation, a subsidiary of Aviation Industry Corporation of China. Cessna estimates it saves over $70,000 per aircraft by manufacturing overseas. Tough to compete with $1 an hour wages.
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Cirrus DID assemble, test fly, disassemble, pack in a shipping container, reassemble in Europe or Australia, test fly again, and deliver to the customer for a few years as part of its overseas shipping program.
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I’ve been watching anime and reading chinese menus to learn some pidgin chinese before the takeover comes.
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I’ve been practicing my marksmanship.
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