A Match Made in Heaven? Foreign Companies Doing Business on U.S. Soil

Today’s report comes out of a personal experience I had this week. It’s relative to our economy, our job market, and foreign investment and business done in the U.S. It’s important that we understand some things about our economy and how it will be primarily affected by foreign businesses coming to the U.S. and setting up shop.

A friend who is a construction recruiter told me he was talking to a candidate from the Phoenix area. The candidate was telling him about a huge $40B construction project in the area to build a huge manufacturing facility spanning 1,000 acres for a foreign chipmaker called, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. For brevity, I’ll call it TSMC. The natural question the recruiter asked was, “Do you have any interest in working on that project?”

The candidate said he had no interest as there were really bad stories circulating in local construction circles about the project in terms of culture. There seemed to be a “clash of cultures” with international management coming in and trying to do things the way they’re used to doing them versus the American workers that are used to adhering to strict safety rules, regulations, and codes to keep construction project sites safe.

Allegedly, TSMC is not used to abiding by these same codes and standards and may not necessarily care to do so. This was just one issue revealed by this candidate.

[Click here to watch VIDEO if you don't like to read.]

An article in The Guardian titled, ‘They would not listen to us’: inside Arizona’s troubled chip plant, corroborated these statements. It describes a multitude of problems from fast tracking visas for Taiwanese workers to come in and work the jobs, safety concerns, accidents on job sites, cultural misunderstandings between Taiwanese management and American workers and subcontractors, to claims that American workers are afraid to come forward in fear of losing their jobs.

One source was quoted as saying, ‘“When you have to put stuff up, tear it down, put it up, tear it down, literally five or six times, that’s going to cost five or six times the original quote, probably more because you have to get demolitions involved,” the worker said. “This was constantly the whole process. Everything was rushed. They weren’t giving us actual blueprints, just engineer drawings. It felt like a design-as-we-go type of deal. The information we were getting was really strange, never complete, and always changing. We would get updates constantly and these were big updates to the point where we would have to start pulling things down.”’

Foreign Business Problems Not New in U.S.

It made me hearken back to a report I actually did in 2013; I was talking about foreign businesses coming into the U.S. and doing business on their terms. I discussed specifically how a Chinese company that came into Ohio to manufacture glass had some of the same internal worker problems. The company’s primary shareholder was the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and they were not going to cater to the wishes of American workers. If they want you to work seven days a week, 24/7 that’s what you’re going to do. There were stories about how they made workers pick up broken glass with their bare hands with no concern about safety.

The research I found revealed that many blighted areas in the U.S. were trying to get foreign investors to come in and open up manufacturing plants to supposedly rejuvenate these areas economically by bringing jobs to them. This all sounds warm and fuzzy, especially if you’re the mayor of that city or if you’re a government official in that city, you can tell your constituents, “We’re going to open this big facility and then we’re going to have all these jobs for you.”

How Can Foreign Businesses Operate on Their Own Terms on U.S. Soil?

In comparison, American and foreign business models, have a difference in cultures and a different way of doing business altogether. Americans are used to unions that give them fair wages, limited work hours, safe working environments, and rules in their favor. But beware, because as we have more foreign investment come in to set up shop, before you know it, they could be running the majority of the companies.

But you say, “How could that be?” How can a foreign business circumvent U.S. rules and laws and operate under their own homeland rules on U.S. soil?

Enter the Corporation

Several months back I did a report on the U.S. Corporation and showed a video clip of a presentation put on by Kurt Kallenbach. He did an in-depth explanation of how the U.S became a corporation. He said, we are a U.S. corporation, not a government, and this trickles down to the states, counties, cities and other municipalities. When you think of the U.S. as being a corporation, a money-making entity, rather than a government, the stories regarding foreign businesses and how they conduct business in this country makes a lot of sense. Here’s why.

As an example, take into consideration the construction story I started with at the beginning of this article, if the U.S. is a corporation and the state of Arizona is a corporation, and the city of Phoenix is a corporation, (I actually went to the city of Phoenix charter documents to make sure—and yes, the city of Phoenix is a corporation) –then they are all money-making entities. They are in business to make money.

So if they’re all corporations and they’re dealing with TSMC, which is also a corporation, it would make sense that they probably made a business deal with TSMC. Within the deal, the U.S. corporation may allow them to circumvent some American standards or regulations. Maybe they don’t have to abide by them as American companies may have to. We have no way of knowing for sure the details of the deals they make with foreign businesses. Maybe they made a deal to sweep away those pesky standards and rules. Maybe they agreed that if a foreign business just agrees to have “safety” under control—however they decide to do it—then it’s all good. Whether or not that’s the case, it does not really matter, technically, it’s been handled.

Think about it. When your “elected officials” get into office, they almost always do what’s best for them and the corporation, not what’s best for you. Why is this? They are working for the “corporation.”

If you think of the U.S. government as a corporation, such as Walmart, and your elected officials as the management level that work for the Walmart, it makes sense that they will take their orders from the corporation at the top and then carry them out irrespective of what you and I, the customer want. We don’t really have any pull as far as how they want to run their business. They are a corporation put into existence to make money. And so what they’re going to do is make deals and do the things that bring them revenue. They don’t care about what the people or the customer wants; they’re going to run the business their way.

The Future of Business Will Likely Change

Maybe you think this scenario doesn’t affect you directly right now. But I’m telling you, as I said ten plus years ago, as we see more and more foreign investment and business coming into the U.S., you’re going to start seeing more and more clashes like this that will affect you.

All of this goes back to our economy, our free market system, and ultimately the U.S. jobs market. Where are we headed now? This is just one story that came to light, can you imagine all the other stories that we don’t even know about?

Sources:

Truth Seekers Radio Show: Episode 26: Angeline Marie discusses Chinese Building Development Projects in the U.S. – Dec. 2013
https://app.talkshoe.com/episode/6764670

The Guardian:
‘They would not listen to us’: inside Arizona’s troubled chip plant

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/aug/28/phoenix-microchip-plant-biden-union-tsmc

Wired.com:
I Saw the Face of God in a Semiconductor Factory
https://www.wired.com/story/i-saw-the-face-of-god-in-a-tsmc-factory/