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Now the interesting question to me is why is that a country with a tenth of population can have car, truck and military plane manufacturing yet Canada can’t, ev
by moltar 4mo ago
Now the interesting question to me is why is that a country with a tenth of population can have car, truck and military plane manufacturing yet Canada can’t, even with virtually all resources for inputs, including energy can’t.
- toxik 4mo agoSweden does not have a car industry. The fighter jets are a different matter, very strong technical moat and need to prove the system in combat. You can't just start a fighter jet business.
- michaelscott 4mo agoIt does with Volvo, although I couldn't say how big it is relative to global industry. Within Europe it's a large player
- distances 4mo agoScania is Swedish, too.
- sedatk 4mo agoA Chinese company owns Volvo since 2010 or so.
- turtlesdown11 4mo agoThe car part of Volvo is owned by Geely, Volvo AB makes trucks, buses, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo
- jwandborg 4mo agoVolvo Cars is still headquartered in Sweden, and employ 22.4k people in Sweden out of 40k globally[1]. Given that the market for Volvo is global, it seems to me that Volvo Cars is still overwhelmingly Swedish, while at the same time being overwhelmingly controlled by Geely. [1]; https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/vast/1000-personer-far-lamna-volvo https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/vast/1000-personer-far-lam...
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- lambdasquirrel 4mo agoVolvo is complicated. Basically a lot of these smaller companies and countries realized there was no way they could make the economics work with the cost of electronics and software-related R&D being what they are. So they sold to larger players. But design and final assembly still happens in Gothenburg for high-end models that are typically destined for the EU market. The US now manufactures the SUVs.
- sorenjan 4mo agoVolvo was bought by Ford in 1999 and then sold by Ford to Geely in 2010. It had nothing to do with software related r&d, it was mostly down to Ford needing money after the financial crisis. Volvo have factories in Sweden, Belgium, USA, and China. The new EX60 is manufactured in Sweden. The US factory makes the EX90, XC60, Polestar 3, and until recently the S60 sedan.
- ojl 4mo agoThey also have a lot of R&D, sw dev, etc in Gothenburg.
- gmueckl 4mo agoWhy are you discounting Volvo?
- OakNinja 4mo agoVolvo still produces cars in Sweden. Koenigsegg still build their cars in Ängelholm.
- tredre3 4mo agoBut by that metric Canada also has a car industry? Canada builds 1.5M cars annually.
- danesparza 4mo agoThe Top Gear enthusiast in me loves that you included Koenigsegg in this conversation. But including a company that hand-builds a handful of hypercars annually in a conversation about the auto industry in Sweden is not the flex you think it is.
- moltar 4mo agoFor me (op) it is the flex. My question was why Canada cannot do this.
- diversen7 4mo ago[dead]
- andrewstuart 4mo ago>> Sweden does not have a car industry. Apart from Volvo, Koenigsegg and Polestar and Scania. Apart from that, you’re right.
- ChrisGreenHeur 4mo agoIf Saab wanted to they could spin up a car factory as well. But they are more interested in selling these airplanes the article is about.
- Findecanor 4mo agoBTW, SAAB did produce cars from 1949. General Motors bought 51% of SAAB Automobile in 1990, and it was defunct in 2016.
- Danox 4mo agoSweden had a native car industry they decommissioned themselves, in short, they basically gave up, but they’re not alone Australia, New Zealand did the same and so did Canada, but they’re starting to realize that they were a little bit hasty in giving up…. Then last, but not least the UK basically threw the towel in too on a wide assortment of industries, but they’re now discovering that that was a big mistake.
- robocat 4mo agoNew Zealand had car assembly which isn't a car industry. Although my friend was working at an injection moulding company in Christchurch that did some parts for Holden (GM) in Australia.
- throwa356262 4mo agoWhat do you mean Sweden does not have a car industry? Volvo and Polestar have their HQ in Sweden and huge manufacturing plants. They also develop platforms for some other Gealy brands including Link&co and IIRC also Zeeker. And then there is the Koenigsegg...
- jleyank 4mo agoLooking at Ford, GM, and Stellantis, one can say the US doesn't really have an auto industry either. Certainly not a car industry.
- moltar 4mo agoVolvo, used to have Saab. Scania trucks.
- soupbowl 4mo agoBecause Canada has been poorly managed for a long time by all political parties that have been voted in.
- energy123 4mo agoResources curse
- bawolff 4mo agoThere are trade offs in all things. Trying to do everything yourself does also have a cost. It is not neccesarily better.
- tredre3 4mo agoNot that it invalidate your point, but Sweden has 1/4 the population of Canada, not 1/10.
- petcat 4mo agoCanada has many issues. First and foremost, their entire economy is basically 3 mineral extraction industries stacked on top of each other in a trench coat. They are also (unfortunate?) to share a border with USA and be party to NAFTA. This makes it trivial for educated, professional Canadians to work in the US on a TN visa indefinitely. We know that the doctor and nurse brain-drain from Canada to the US has been ongoing for decades. But it's actually every industry since US firms pay 2-3x more than equivalent Canadian firms. The reality is that Canadians get very good, tax-payer subsidized educations and then immediately go to the US to work for 10+ years and only return later when they need to start drawing on the Canadian social services for things like healthcare and family care. And Canada itself got none of the benefits of that workforce in between. I saw a figure recently that the US issued an all-time-high 800,000 TN admissions to Canadians in 2016. And then in 2023 it surged to nearly 1.3 million.
- turtlesdown11 4mo ago> I saw a figure recently that the US issued an all-time-high 800,000 TN visas to Canadians in 2016. And then in 2023 it surged to nearly 1.3 million. This citation is an order of magnitude off. The US doesn't really track/release visa numbers well, what you're citing might be the number of individual entries using a TN visa - visaholders go back and forth, it's not the total number of visa holders. DHS estimates 130k Canadian visaholders in country in 2024. https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/nonimmigrant/population-estimates/fy24-nonimmigrant-pop-est https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/nonimmigrant/populat... Canada has 22m workers, so 130k working in the States is nothing like what you're claiming. >their entire economy Resource extraction is about ~10% of GDP, compared to 3-5% in the US and 1-2% in mainland Europe. Scandanvian countries have comparable resource extraction % of GDP. It's hardly the entire economy. It's also diversified resource extraction, it's not dependent on oil, etc. Your claim is overblown.
- llm_nerd 4mo ago[flagged]
- petcat 4mo ago
- hylaride 4mo agoThese are extremely expensive programs that the Swedes have historically been willing to pay to maintain as much neutrality as possible in their defence procurement system. A Saab Gripen has almost the same flyway cost as an F-35 because of manufacturing scale differences (maintenance is far cheaper, though) and the Gripen is far less capable (it is one of the best western fighters if a full blown war happens and your bases are all destroyed, though). Sweden had unique defence requirements due to this that wasn't being met by others. Sweden was forced to take their defence seriously due to their geography and political will. Canada has had an easy ride and when the going got expensive, we cancelled our domestic programs (most famously the arrow, but also a lot of other stuff).
- MegaDeKay 4mo agoThere were plenty of good reasons to cancel the Arrow: it was very difficult to fly, it burned fuel like crazy, it had poor maneuverability, etc. A friend of mine is considered an expert on its history and is convinced it was the right call, despite going into his research as a huge fan of the plane.
- hylaride 4mo agoYeah, I agree it was the right decision - if for maybe the wrong reasons. The point I was trying to convey was that it was cancelled with no alternative because it would have been expensive.
- llm_nerd 4mo agoWe have a larger partner speaking the same language and with a largely synonymous culture and a heavily integrated economy as our neighbour. The moment a Canadian company sees success -- in optics, autos, science, medicine, weaponry, etc. -- it is absorbed by a larger US company and suddenly is no longer Canadian, and in many cases any Canadian operations will usually get choked out. There are few examples where this isn't the outcome. This has happened across Canada for well over a century, across every sphere. And in the process the Canadian input is retconned out of existence and Americans ponder why Canada "doesn't make anything". They post ignorant nonsense about how Canada is resource extraction in a trench coat or similar nonsense. Sweden had nothing like this, and they punch way above their weight class because of this. Though that has been changing, for instance with a Chinese company buying Volvo, etc. The only protection against this is...protectionism, whether explicit controls or implicitly by ownership or funding structures. Canada became a leader in nuclear tech by the nuclear industry basically being government owned. It became a transportation powerhouse by a government owned railway. And so on. Change is afoot. Carney has made significant efforts to stop just sending hundreds of billions to the US and most military procurement will focus on Canadian products and innovation. Which leads to lots of gnashing and screaming by propaganda rags like the US-owned PostMedia (yup, even a lot of our media gets absorbed by the US, at least where it isn't explicitly barred from doing so).
- yobbo 4mo ago> Sweden had nothing like this Not entirely true. AstraZeneca and ABB are examples that remain partly Swedish but many companies were merged into big multinationals and eventually marginalised.
- jleyank 4mo agoFWIW, Ozempic, which seems popular, came from a Danish Pharma. There's very large pharma in Sweden, related to the UK.
- moltar 4mo agoWell, couldn’t you say the same thing about Sweden? Germany is right there. They could have bought Volvo, but they didn’t. Scania was independent for a long time and had actively protected from take overs, but eventually still succumbed to VW. Also, Canada lost many things w/o US acquisitions. What happened to Corel? Nortel? Research in Motion?
- kashunstva 4mo agoCanada has historically relied on a relatively stable trading relationship with the U.S. That relationship is a shambles. It remains to be seen how Canada retools itself; I imagine that we will see a blend of on-shoring and new trading sources. So it’s less of an issue of “can’t” and more “hasn’t (yet)”.
- joering2 4mo agoFrankly to me the fact Canada is "retooling itself" knowing well that this nightmare should be over in less than 3 years, and most likely next President will be a Democrat, but yet they keep retooling, means their strong (reliable?) assumption is that Trump Administration won't leave the office at all, similar to how Putin stayed in power in what arguingly is a Democratic Country.
- celsoazevedo 4mo agoThis is Trump's second term and MAGA views won't disappear 3 years from now. Even if they assume that there will be a peaceful and lawful transition of power, I can see why they may be planning on the assumption that the "instability" (from their point of view) will continue into the future.
- joering2 4mo agoI disagree. You literally have one single human being in charge of 3 main branches of government, and multiple smaller agencies. Noone will manage US like Trump does.
- jleyank 4mo agoTrump doesn't "manage" anything. Trump is "managed". The question is who all pull the strings.
- Hikikomori 4mo agoIt's all project 2025 and the heritage foundation running the government.
- tored 4mo agoAs a Great Power, Sweden had a great need for engineers to build forts, canals and other important infrastructure for the Kingdom. These engineers came in handy when the Industrial Revolution started. Thus Sweden has a long history of manufacturing industry.