I find it hard to believe that a company can manufacture a bunch of parts, ship them to Portugal, assemble them into a finished product, then ship back to the country where the parts originated for sale and have this cost less than assembling the parts in the the country where they were made and where the product is primarily marketed. I suspect that FN, being a European based company, prefers to support their interests in Europe rather than in the US. All European countries provide pretty good health care so I don't think Obama's efforts to do so in the US would have bothered them much. I really would like to know where the economic benefit lies. I'm fairly certain the reason is economic but as I said, I can't see it. I don't buy the Obamacare explanation. European companies don't have the aversion to universal health care that US companies have. On the bright side, perhaps the Portugese assemblers will know when an extractor doesn't work; something which appeared to be beyond the abilities of the assemblers in South Carolina. GD
They may not have wanted to take the financial hit from hiring more ppl here and to some degree, we're subsidizing Europe's defense, so they have more $$ for social programs. Of course, Europe has problems resulting from govts' interference in the voluntary exchange of goods and services between individuals. I suspect that this has contributed to the unemployment in Portugal.
