Levels of Business
by Lorine Parks
We welcomed David Weidman, CEO of Celenese Corp., a Fortune 500 Business company, which manufactures cellulose products for use in diverse industries. Headquartered in Houston, it competes on a global scale. David used China as an example of competition our country, and his company, face.
To shape and stretch one’s vision, it is helpful to ask, where do you see yourself five years from now? Ten years? Fifteen years? Taking these horizons as time frames, one then begins to plan. The question to ask is, “Who are you?” “Who are your customers, and “Who is the competition?” “What are your costs?”
Giving us Big Business’s view of things in the manufacturing field, David said the United States government tends to be more punitive while for example, that of China’s, which tends to be rewarding. In this country, to take an extreme citing, stringent air pollutions standards will not allow manufacturers to use one of the cheapest forms of energy, as China does, namely soft coal. The side effect here of cheap, is damage to the environment and public health. This involves government’s mandate to protect them.
David’s advice is, don’t worry about what you can’t do. Build skills for the future as you see it. Make mistakes if you have to, but go on.
To the question from the audience, what should young college graduates do about the low opportunities for employment now, he said, be tied only to opportunity. Go where the job opportunities are.
When asked if he expects to see a shift in government policy toward manufacturing, David said he was encouraged by the government’s efforts to help develop low-cost energy sources, such as natural gas. At present, Iran Russia, Turkmenistan and Qatar have the most known reserves of natural gas, according to The World Factbook. The United States and Saudi Arabia follow, then Venezuela, Nigeria and Algeria. Shale gas has not been added to this list, and methods of extracting it, such as fracking, are political footballs.
As to government involvement in encouraging manufacturers, he said that when you go to an Asian country, such as China, Singapore or Korea, the local mayor is at the airport to greet you. Their strategy is to attract business. In Singapore, for example, city managers are paid bonuses for attracting business to locate there.
When making a product, said David, the costs have to be added up, and they include such items as: labor, material, energy, and federal regulation. The United States’s corporate tax is one of the world’s highest… David feels that with full manufacturing capacity, employment could be kept to as low as 2%.
When asked, how much do taxes affect the decision to move to another country, David’s reply was, “If you don’t have customers. . .”