These seats could have been sold as spares, conversion kits, even put into other new cars.

I think this behaviour should be criminalised and I'm not taking about the tax evasion.

People may disagree on if the truck tariff is good policy nor not. But allowing Ford to go through with this weird kabuki dance pageant of waste when it's blatantly clear that their intent is to import a truck is absurd and corrupt.

https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2024/03/11/ford-...

Or even just shipped the fuck back to the factory! Like good god. If you're gonna have like a thousand seat and window combos that just get shipped back and forth between these factories, that's still wasteful, but I dunno, maybe it's purely an emotional point, but the fact that they're manufactured, fitted, shipped, and destroyed just hits so much harder.

Doing this as a dodge this way would be shitty, but at least make an ounce of sense. Doing it the way they actually did, just making and destroying who knows how many products for literally no reason apart from skating by customs is fucking OBSCENE to me.

Edit: A sibling comment here pointed out the FTC "came down hard" on Ford, which some quick back of napkin math translates to roughly 20% of their Q2 2023 profits to account for ten years of this tom-fuckery, covering hundreds of thousands of vans which doubtlessly contained hundreds of thousands if not millions of parts that never served a day of use and were sent to landfill, oh sorry "recycled," by Ford's partner in Ohio. Granted, more than most corporate fines I've done that kind of math for, but also incredible ROI on the part of Ford motor company. Meanwhile mother nature takes another for the team.

I feel sick.

Edit to edit: I maintain that as long as the "penalties" for this kind of horseshit are fines that go to the company and no further, we will never make an ounce of progress on this. I challenge anyone who feels inclined to take it on to explain to me why every Ford executive that oversaw the company while it was doing this should not be personally financially liable for it, in addition to the company itself paying fines. There is no fucking way Ford motor manufactured, shipped, and destroyed millions of van seats and windows without the executives knowing about it.

In prison for what crime? Perhaps feel sick about those writing the laws, instead of those who are following them?

Taxes are pretty arbitrary. Unless you intend to enforce the spirit rather than the letter of the law you're always going to be playing cat and mouse games. People who generate money want to keep it and people who give away money want to take it from people who have money. One will ALWAYS be a step ahead of the other.

If you enforce the spirit of the law people call foul and stop playing the game with you.

Don't get mad at the mice, just build better mouse traps.

I've always found it weird how so many folks will shout at the top of their lungs how good it is to not have any integrity.

A business will never choose to keep a department open at a loss so it can "do it's part" in paying taxes.

In this case the car manufacturer would just choose to not sell that make and model in the states and a whole department has no reason to exist

To put it another way, I believe that you should be even more appalled at the waste that the customs duties would have imposed.

Yes, it would've costed Ford more to comply with the regulations by the letter and by the spirit of what was being asked of them. This should be the BARE MINIMUM we expect from members of the business community. I'm so sick of corporate apologia where some dick-headed corporation finds loopholes and ways to re-categorize things as what they definitely, categorically are not and this is not only often not criticized, but is celebrated by people! The only way this is a good thing is if you take from first principles that it's Ford's duty as an organization to duck the LAW at every conceivable place to keep every last red cent they can, irrespective of the larger harmful effects it has on our world and society. If that's truly the case, then I submit that our society is not in fact for people, it is in fact, for corporations and the people just happen to live in it.

Whether you agree with a law or a regulation or not, you are bound to respect it. If you disagree about a speed limit set on a highway, do 150 through it, and get a ticket and show up to traffic court and argue that the limit should be higher, you will pay your ticket because your opinion is irrelevant to that law. You're more than free (and I would encourage) you to advocate for changing those laws/regulations, to weigh in when public opinion is requested, to vote for politicians who support what you want to see your government do, all of that is completely, 100% above board. But once all those processes are done and the laws are written, you can't simply fucking ignore them because you don't think they're the right laws. That's anarchy, and not the fun kind.