We never stopped manufacturing, we just stopped employing people.
> We don’t have the infrastructure to manufacture
That's trivially false given we're the second-largest manufacturer in the world. We just don't want to employ people, hence why we can't make an iphone or refine raw materials.
The actual issue is that our business culture is antithetical to a healthy society. The idea of employing Americans is anti-business—there's no willingness to invest, or to train, or to support an employee seen as waste. Until business can find some sort of reason to care about the state of the country, this will continue.
Of course, the government could weigh in, could incentivize, could subsidize, could propagandize, etc, to encourage us to actually build domestic industries. But that would be a titantic course reversal that would take decades of cultural change.
Concur, employee training and retention are at an all-time low. There are no positions available for junior employees, minimal onboarding and mentoring of new employees. Organizations have stopped planning people's careers. Used to be that the employee's career growth was their manager's problem, while the employee could focus on the work. Now the employee must market themselves as often, if not more often, than actually doing the work. Meanwhile organizations see employees as cost centres and a net drain on their revenue sources.
Corporate culture in America is definitely broken. I'm not sure how we can fix it.
> minimal onboarding and mentoring of new employees. Organizations have stopped planning people's careers.
I hear from all the much more senior devs about how they learned OOP in company training after years of C, or how their employers would give bonuses for finished projects, and that sort of thing. I always seem to join the ship when the money train and training train leaves the boat.
I think R&D for tax reasons needs to be changed, we had so many tech advancements used to this day from Bell Labs. Now only Microsoft, Google, Apple etc can afford to do R&D and so all the innovation is essentially only worth while to them if they can profit from it.
Granted I do think if you build something innovative you should be able to monetize it, but it takes investing a lot of blood, sweat, tears and money.
One reason Bell Labs is remembered so fondly for the innovations is that they really only benefited the broader world once Bell was broken up.
I’ll also challenge the assumption that these companies only do R&D if it’s immediately profitable. For example, Microsoft and Google both are investing heavily in quantum computers despite the fact that it’s unclear that that is a profitable endeavor (or profitable to be the ones putting the upfront capital so early). Google also has the X moonshot lab that is trying to do similar things to Bell Labs. I think there’s just a lot of romanticism of the golden age when developments were relatively easier because we hadn’t exhausted the low hanging fruit of applied quantum and material sciences.
There is also the negative effect of over-expensive ip blocking product development as no new product with unclear potential can take on prohibitive license costs.
But then the ip-poachers wait for you at the gates. Investing into the new thing, in a world order where copying the new thing is the best game approach, makes R&D a looser strategy. You need temporary punishment tariffs on products that steal IPs to recuperate the investments and make it a bad strategy - or else..
Patents do not work - because the rule of law does not exists without the international order and goverments have a tendency to trade away such cases for protection of big players.
What you’re describing is monstrously expensive, and doesn’t actually prevent IP violations, it just allows you to recover some of your losses, which is also expensive, and is unrealistic if the violators are fly-by-night operations.
1) The alternative is for millions of local-currency patents in Lesotho to automatically be valid for two decades in USA, EU, and Japan.
2) An of course it doesn't prevent IP violations - Eurocopter (now Airbus helicopters) had to spend millions to enforce their patents against the thieves* at Bell helicopter.
I'm confused by the ending of this article. It seems like two mutually exclusive outcomes happened.
> The court held that the landing gear certified and sold by Bell Helicopter on its Model 429 helicopter, namely the Production Gear, does not infringe the Eurocopter patent. The court invalidated all but one claim of Eurocopter’s patent. Bell Helicopter is, therefore, free to continue all use and sales of its Model 429 helicopter with its existing landing gear.
So it doesn't infringe and they can continue to use the landing gear. But then
> In addition to awarding to Eurocopter damages and punitive damages, the judge also issued an injunction enjoining Bell from manufacturing, using, or selling the infringing landing gear, and also ordered Bell to destroy all infringing landing gears in its possession.
I would actually consider this to be an desirable side effect: if you want governments to enforce your monopoly using their state authority, you better pay for this really well. :-)
I wonder if we could reproduce the magic of Bell Labs by basically re-creating some Ma Bell style businesses: grant a profitable, but regulated monopoly that had the financial security to think long-term and be willing to fund out-of-the-box research to service internal needs or hypotheticals.
It's deep hubris in our leaders that assumes existing capital/values/structures/motivations are sufficient to allow newcomers ( & new generations) to contribute..
However. Bell Labs did it, so what sort of humility existed then that (mostly) does not exist now?!?
Tangentially, I have not personally tried, but it seems possible:
("Unintentionally moderate"[1-2] business thinkers like PG/YC partners do it all the time)
Wonder if hubris is necessary for continued survival of the economy.
It's also fundamental tech and a research pipeline supporting new ones.
There are numerous examples of whole competencies were transferred to a foreign partner, leaving only sales and marketing in the US. TV's for example, gone by 2000, leaving only a swirl of patent walls to further prevent them from coming back. https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2014/10/22/america...
And research? DEC WRL, Bell Labs, Xerox Parc ... Which corp has the gumption to fund any of that again? They'd rather pad the current quarter than invest in the next.
To get employers to invest in employees, they'd need more of a stake in it. Right now if you invest $200,000 to train someone, they can immediately quit and go work somewhere else and you're out $200k, so they don't do that.
A way to fix that would be to e.g. issue student loans for the training and then forgive them over time if the employee continues working there. But that's rather disfavored by the tax code when forgiving the loans is considered taxable income, and you would have people screaming about "abusive" companies sticking you with $200k in debt if you quit right after they give you $200k worth of training.
> you would have people screaming about "abusive" companies sticking you with $200k in debt if you quit right after they give you $200k worth of training.
Because it would be very easy to abuse. It would be oh-so-easy to give an employee training worth $200k - in the company's estimate - and then force them to stick around for years.
"But nobody made them agree to that!"
Sure, and nobody makes anyone take on a bad loan from a shady car dealership, or a bad mortgage sold by the same people who tanked the economy, etc., etc.
And to amplify your point just a bit, if the alternative is losing your healthcare and possibly going homeless, what does "agreeing" even mean anymore?
What you’re describing already exists and are aptly named TRAPs (Training Repayment Agreement Provisions). Companies already abuse these and in fact are illegal in California. Here’s an article covering it from a few years ago:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/more-us-companies-charging-...
> Right now if you invest $200,000 to train someone, they can immediately quit and go work somewhere else and you're out $200k, so they don't do that.
And...why are people immediately quitting to work somewhere else? Your idea of addressing the problem is by saddling employees with debt and forcing them into literal wage slavery rather than fixing the problem of companies not paying people enough to stay.
Nobody is talking about handing out 200k of training upfront. Individual 1-8 week training courses don’t actually cost that much to operate internally and generally allow someone to do something very specific and useful. There’s plenty of ways to boost short term retention like a bonus after 1 year of service.
50+k of training over a 40 year career requires salary bumps for retention, but the first set of training should have paid for itself before you’re offering the next.
> Nobody is talking about handing out 200k of training upfront.
Why not?
> 50k of training over a 40 year career requires salary bumps for retention, but is hardly a major risk.
"Pay 50k for training and then pay a salary bump" is more expensive than "just pay a salary bump to the person the competitor was a sucker enough to pay 50k to train", so how does that work?
Nope. Keeping the same person for 40 years saves far more than 50k of onboarding costs over that timeframe. Employee churn is really expensive but if it’s not coming out of your budget middle management doesn’t care.
Companies do all kinds of objectively dumb things due to poor incentives.
> Keeping the same person for 40 years saves far more than 50k of onboarding costs over that timeframe. Employee churn is really expensive but if it’s not coming out of your budget middle management doesn’t care.
How does that change the number from the perspective of the employee?
The problem is not how to get an employee to stay for 40 years. The problem is, the employee who has just received $50k in training will take whichever job pays more, so the employer who paid the $50k has to offer the same salary as the one who didn't. And then who is going to pay the $50k when they could get the employee that someone else paid the money to train, for the same salary?
> The problem is not how to get an employee to stay for 40 years.
No, you generally need more than 1 set of training over 40 years.
Bob’s been with you for 6 years but you’re about to make him redundant and pay unemployment insurance. Meanwhile you’re looking at 10k of onboarding costs for a new role. Suddenly 10k or possibly significantly more worth of training is saving you money and getting you an employee who is dependable and already knows the business. Yet you almost never see this happening because it’s just got to be cheaper to get someone else to pay for training.
As to stealing employees from companies that just did 5-15k or whatever worth of training, they have onboarding costs and on top of that need to offer more money to get someone to swap jobs. Convincing people to swap jobs is really expensive unless the other company is paying significantly under market rates so don’t do that after you just trained someone.
Isn’t that simply the inherent risk associated with business ventures? Not every investment will yield a profit. I recall reading about Ward Parkinson, one of the founders of Micron Technology. During his tenure at Fairchild Semiconductor, the company paid for his Master’s degree at Stanford. However, upon graduating, he promptly left to work for Reticon.
If more employers gave raises such that an existing employee in a given role was paid the same or more as what they would pay a new hire to fill the same role, I don't think we'd see the level of job hopping that we currently do.
This! My company is mid size and we can’t hire junior people for fear they’ll jump to FANG right when they’re starting to become productive for us. And we can’t afford FANG compensation for senior people.
If you are willing to have a remote team then this is not a problem - lots of great (senior) developers in EU, Asia,... No need to pay FAANG level compensations either. Curiously enough not many US companies do that, or those that do, put rounds and rounds of interviews in front of each candidate. Which is OK I guess - if you pay FAANG salaries. But if not, maybe just limit to 3 interviews, one hour each? If that's not enough to judge a potential hire then I don't know what is. Once the hiring is fixed you should have lots of great candidates available.
You don't even need to go out of the US. Plenty of good US people are down to live in non-FAANG COL areas and thus can have more take-home for less upfront pay.
In networking the situation is just ridiculous. Companies just expect people to know Cisco Nexus, ASA, XE, Palo Alto, Linux, AWS VPC, and do a bit of database and backup admin all for less than $100,000 a year.
That’s sounds like a functioning free market. Either they find the quality of labor they require at that rate, or they don’t. Either you take such a job at that rate because you have the required skills and knowledge and that’s your best offer, or you don’t.
> Organizations have stopped planning people's careers. Used to be that the employee's career growth was their manager's problem, while the employee could focus on the work.
Could you please inform my managers who keep pestering me about career growth of this shift so I could just focus on the work? ktnx
If you don't upskill for free with no additional comp, how will they continue to cram down labor costs to make their quarterly numbers? You are, broadly speaking, treated as an asset to be sweat until you can be replaced.
> Now the employee must market themselves as often, if not more often, than actually doing the work.
Maybe only tangentially related to your post, but this has been on my mind a lot lately. After many years of doing all kinds of tech and business consulting gigs, I decided to somewhat specialize over the last 3 years and have been spending some time on LinkedIn this year.
What I can't figure out is how (arbitrary percentage) 30% of the people I follow do any work when they are on LinkedIn posting/commenting on posts _all_ day.
The layers of work arbitrage are incredibly deep. It's all about connections, I do a lot of Shopify freelancing and I'm typically the 3rd or 4th layer away from the actual business. It's typically something like the business hires a marketing agency, the agency hires a development company. The development company then hires a freelancer. Now I actually do the work myself, but it seems like a ton of those freelancers simply rehire another freelancer in a cheaper country. Then it seems in many cases that foreign freelancer isn't even a developer but just someone who speaks English well enough and then hires the actual non-english speaking coders locally.
It's not much different in other industries though, so many layers of subcontracting to finally get to a potentially illegal immigrant that does the actual work.
Employees have always been responsible for managing their own career growth and always will be. How can it be otherwise? It would be foolish for an employee to let someone else handle career growth for them as their interests aren't aligned (or even known). If you want help with career growth then find a mentor, don't rely on your manager.
Managers should facilitate training to improve employee productivity and help prepare them for a promotion. But that isn't really the same as career growth.
> Employees have always been responsible for managing their own career growth and always will be. How can it be otherwise?
On the contrary, from the 40s to the 70s (possibly well into the 80s) the corporation was heavily invested in your career. Employees were expected to dedicate their lives to the firm, and the firm, in turn, was expected to take care of them. This "free-for-all" employment model is fairly recent.
Outside of government, this shift also coincides with the decline of pensions and the rise of the 401k.
Career growth has always been a shared responsibility between employees and employers. In white-collar fields--especially medicine and engineering--education has long been frontloaded, with formal schooling as the main on-ramp.
Blue-collar jobs, by contrast, have relied more on trade schools, mentorship, and hands-on training. These pathways have steadily eroded since the 1980s.
Much of this traces back to the Open Door Policy with China and the broader Free Trade Agreements that followed. These moved massive segments of industry offshore--along with the structures that once incentivized long-term employee development through education and skill-building.
Revitalizing domestic industry could reintroduce competition among employers, which in turn could restore the pre-1990s incentives for long-term investment in the workforce.
It didn't stop in the 70s. In many countries in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere, it's still common for businesses to retain employees over the arc of their career.
Even the creepy business terminology "human capital" implies something that a business actively wants to grow. That is in stark contrast to how most businesses manage their people today.
I find "human capital" better than "human resources", as it has connotations of something valuable to be invested carefully as opposed to something simply to be consumed and discarded.
Of course, in the end it doesn't really matter, it is all Orwellian anyway.
Not entirely. Businesses don't try to grow things like buildings and inventory, they try to manage them at levels that make sense for their present and projected sales.
(So the same sort of mercenary treatment that employees get)
My bestie works in sales and marketing. Events, promotions, audience engagement. Long time experience with national brands, loves helping local businesses (side hustle).
A huge part of her job is recruiting and hiring. Part of her pitch is proactive career development.
Paraphrasing: I want you to join our team. I also understand that this job is just one stop on your journey. While you're here, what can I do to help you get the skills and experience you want for your next job?
Consequently, she has a HUGE network, built over decades. Something comes up and she knows just the right person. She has her pick of new opportunities.
Wouldn't you love to have her as your boss?
I've had precisely 2 bosses in my career that had any impulse for nurturing, mentoring, career development. Whereas I've tried to be that kind of boss, given the limits of our current system.
> If you want help with career growth then find a mentor, don't rely on your manager.
Your mentors are your peers at work which can include your manager. Career growth is the accumulation of both knowledge and experience which is beneficial to both parties so I dont understand how those are misaligned unless fraud is involved.
No, that's not how it usually works (at least not for professional and managerial employees in the US). Mentors are typically more senior, not peers and not someone in the employee's direct chain of command. They may be in an entirely different organization.
I don't know how you could believe that career growth interests are aligned between employees and their managers. For the majority of employees, their optimal career path will involve changing companies at some point. This is generally not in their current manager's best interest.
As a manager, I disagree. It is entirely within my interest to have a direct do better; this provides me a path in the future to switch orgs when they switch orgs. If I level up or leave, I bring them with. If they level up or leave, they potentially bring me with. Team, self, org in descending order of priority. Companies are temporary, network is what carries you until the end of your career.
It was otherwise. And is IS otherwise in many other rich countries, as well as not-so-rich ones.
In these places, the employer-employee relationship is more of a relationship and less of a transaction to be reassessed every morning.
If you don't believe it, because you've never seen it, then you are probably American, probably young. And seeing other possibilities is a good reason to study (modern!) history, and to travel.
In a broker/agent model agents are people doing most of the client-facing work, but they defer an offset of both liabilities and earnings to a broker. This is how real estate agents, lawyers, teachers, doctors, and many others enter their professions, at least in the US. Because the broker carries civil, and possibly criminal, liable for the violations of their represented agents they have a vested interest in the quality of product/service those agents deliver. In the medical industry the agent phase is described as residency and internship. Its a matter of who actually holds the license that allows a person to perform professionally.
In criminal enterprise drug mules and prostitutes often subscribe to this business model. Drug mules will transport drugs as part of an illegal enterprise and are paid by criminal organizations that have vested interest in the successful completion of the logistical services provided by the drug mules. Likewise, in some geographies prostitutes will voluntarily pay pimps a percentage of their earnings in exchange for physical security and those pimps stake the value of their services on the success and reputation of the services they provide to their prostitute agents.
You also have to understand most of the software industry loves to bitch and cry about all these problems they see in hiring and practicing and yet don't really want any of these problems to be solved.
>We just don't want to employ people, hence why we can't make an iphone or refine raw materials.
This is it. Aside from manufacturing, most recent AI startups are almost universally aligned in the desire to use it to reduce headcount. It's plastered all over their landing pages as a selling point: "use our product and you won't have to hire people."
Business culture is eating its own young and hollowing out the future with such empty goals and sales points.
I'm skeptical of actual results. There are a lot of layoffs attributed to AI but far fewer cases of increased sales attributed to it.
Perhaps it's more accurate to say capitalist culture is eating its own young, due to its fixation on business culture. And I'm saying that as basically a capitalist. Not sure where we go from here.
Do you have a stake in whether your water supply is full of arsenic?
Yup!
Do you have a stake in whether the people in your community work unsafe jobs for poverty wages?
Yup!
From Claude:
"Stakeholder capitalism is a model where businesses focus on serving the interests of all parties affected by the company's operations - including employees, customers, suppliers, communities, and shareholders. The core belief is that companies should create value for all stakeholders, not just investors.
Shareholder supremacy, on the other hand, is a model where a company's primary or sole purpose is to maximize returns for its shareholders. This view, popularized by economist Milton Friedman in the 1970s, holds that businesses have no social responsibility beyond making profits for their owners while following the law."
Shareholder supremacy is a recent meme and it's wildly, obviously antisocial.
I'm American and heavily involved in manufacturing for industrial/mining/agricultural customers.
'We just don't want to employ people' is a gross simplification. We do want to employ people, and lack of skilled labor is a serious problem which has hampered business growth for years,
The first unspoken problem is that very few young people want to live where many factories are located. I can't blame them. I certainly jump through hoops to live in an area well removed from the industry I work in but not everyone has this luxury.
The second is psychological. How many kids do you know who are ready to commit to a future of 35+ years of factory work in their early twenties, even with reasonable pay. This influences manufacturer's hiring practices because of the 'skilled' labor thing. Putting time and resources into training employees when there is a high probability they will make a career change within 3 years isn't really acceptable.
This is HN, so I don't know if this resonates but as a thought experiment, would you take a welding/machine operation/technician position for 25 - 45 USD/hr (based on experience)? Overtime gets you 1.5 base rate and health insurance + dental + 401k is part of the deal. All you need is a GED, proof of eligibility to work in the United States and the ability to pass a physical + drug screen on hiring. After that, no one cares what you do on your own time if you show up, do your job and don't get in an industrial accident. Caveat, you have move away from anything remotely like a 'cultural center' but you do have racial diversity. Also, you will probably be able to afford a house, but it won't be anything grand or anywhere terribly interesting.
There is a dearth of applicants for jobs exactly like what I've posted. Why don't people take them?
> There is a dearth of applicants for jobs exactly like what I've posted. Why don't people take them?
It's pay. It's always pay.
You gave a range so I'm guessing the lower end is starting out, why take that when nearly every entry level job, with far less demand, pays about the same?
Start your pay at $45/hr and people will flood in. If they aren't, it's because the factory is too remote for population to get to. Put that factory in any mid to large midwestern city and it'll be flooded with applicants.
How do I know? About an hour south of Louisville, Amazon keeps building giant warehouses and hiring workers, and people fight over those jobs. They don't pay half of that.
Preach. How long does it take train someone to get them to $45hr level of experience? The truth is that it doesn't. Companies love using yoe as an excuse to pay newer workers less. Manufacturing is not like software engineering where you have to constantly be re-educating yourself.
Staff who’ve been around a while, understand how a company operates and can seed that understanding into new staff are more valuable to companies. For example: if every worker were replaced with an equally skilled worker tomorrow a company regardless would not be able to function. It therefore makes sense that a senior employee can demand a higher wage [than a new starter] even if their direct productivity is no different and so a gradient in wage for seniority is exactly what one would expect to see in a free market.
If you replaced every worker with someone else of equal skill of course manufacturing company would continue to operate.
Making employees replaceable cogs is what industrialization was completely about. It's what happened during globalization. Think about all those seniors who lost their jobs when the factory went overseas. That was successful in large part because the distinction between a junior and a senior is not that great.
There would be some exceptions here for management and execs, but we are not talking about them here.
> If you replaced every worker with someone else of equal skill of course manufacturing company would continue to operate.
No it wouldn't, because a senior worker wouldn't be around to say things like "oh yes we use a jig under this circumstance that we keep over here <points>". Every business has ton of institutional knowledge like that.
It turns out, that isn't worth much. Because they upended the factories and sent them to Mexico and China overnight without a person to point and say where the jig was. Seemingly, they figured it out.
To be clear, I'm not actually disagreeing with your point, I do think it's important to have those people. But companies felt otherwise.
At least in the instances I've been aware of, they usually weren't really "overnight". Usually a good bit of knowledge transfer or actually moving institutional people, sometimes having the other factory coming online in parallel so they can tweak processes, etc. Usually a years-long process. I think few truly overnight shut down one factory and opened the other with those other people having zero knowledge or training on specific processes without experiencing big issues.
In Norway skilled trades generally require a 2-year education and an apprenticeship. After education you start the apprenticeship for which pay starts at like $5-7.5 an hour but every 6 months it increases until you finish the 2 year apprenticeship.
This is for things like process workers in Petro/chemical plants, mechanics for assembly or machining, painters, construction workers, plumbers, electricians, all kinds of stuff. The government also subsidizes the apprentice program so it's very cheap to train young workers.
The people who choose this path generally end up pretty well off, being able to buy a house or apartment by like mid to late twenties and make even more later.
I attended an injection molding conference and one of the panel discussions was about the poor state of hiring and retention. I stayed expecting to hear the standard complaints about the fact that injection molding was considered "obsolete" (really?), the pipeline was too weak so wages were out of hand and there was too much churn. I was interested in which companies were hiring off the people so much that it warranted a panel session.
Then I heard the complaints of what their primary competitor was: Amazon warehouses. They were losing injection molding workers to freakin' Amazon floor jobs!
I lost it and lit off on an absolute rant about how if a company couldn't keep their employees from joining one of the objectively worst employers in the country then they absolutely deserved to go bankrupt.
I, very suddenly, made both a bunch of friends and a bunch of enemies that day.
> This influences manufacturer's hiring practices because of the 'skilled' labor thing. Putting time and resources into training employees when there is a high probability they will make a career change within 3 years isn't really acceptable.
We've had decades of large companies laying people off (effectively) without warning, and the lessons of "don't trust an employer" are... fairly well understood by a lot of folks. If I had the promise of working some place for, say, 20 years, with a statistically 0% chance of being let go because someone wanted to goose the quarterly numbers to get their bonus... yeah, I'd have gone for it years ago. Even 25 years ago, that wasn't much of an option with most companies. Lean/Kaizen/JIT were all big movements by the 90s and ability to ramp down headcount was a requirement for most companies.
Where does 'skilled' labor for specific types of manufacturing processes come from? High school? With slashed budgets and worsening teacher/student ratios?
Businesses could step up and create environments that people competed to work at - pay decently, invest in their workers and community - but that requires a commitment to stick with the people and community even in the lean times. And most companies don't want to, or more likely simply can't, operate that way.
30 years ago I considered positions like that. Some of my family and friends did, and were there for years - decades in some cases. I don't think there's many of those left any more.
You make a good point about the Lean/Kaizen/JIT philosophies + headcount.
I've always been associated with mid-size (< 500 million/yr) where much of that 'wisdom' sounded good but didn't work out so well in practice. Sadly for the consulting folks, it isn't actually possible to lean out an entire supply chain and still maintain the ability to respond to market fluctuations. Being lower on that food chain, if you lay off reliable operators/maintenance during something like the COVID slump then you are screwed when business comes back because you can't rehire/train fast enough to fill orders that are needed 'next month'.
Yeah I think I would say you're right to doubt if this resonates on HN. You're posing it to an audience which has very little GED-level representation. HN more often has people who did well in school and are at a much better disposition for higher-salary jobs.
I'm not part of the target population but my guess is that a large factor has to do with people's tendency to go down the path of life that is most similar to the path they've already tread. If you grew up in a 'cultural center' it's less of a paradigm shift to take the crappy job around the corner rather than move somewhere slightly more remote to start a new career even if in the long run it could actually lead to a more decent life.
Oddly, literally everything you just described is true about my pure remote software engineering position, except I had to get bachelors in computer science first.
I think it's worth specifying even further: wealthy business owners don't want to pay what a US employee costs.
Most jobs are wholly unsustainable. You have to job hop every couple of years to keep up with inflation because God knows you're not getting a raise that keeps you comfortable.
This has led to churn and brain drain and the slow collapse of US domestic business.
It's not that people don't want to work, it's that wages have fallen so far behind the cost of living that it's financial suicide to stay in any one job. Even with all the traps like employer sponsored healthcare, most people just can't afford to be paid the pittance most businesses are willing to pay.
This is a deep societal illness in the US. We've glorified and deified the concept of greed to the point where even talking about income inequality and the unimaginable concentration of wealth is just anathema. It's seeped into the everyday consciousness in the form of "I'm the only one that matters, fuck absolutely everyone else"
I genuinely believe that America will never, ever recover until we address this. We will always be this sick and broken country until the state entirely collapses or we get our shit together and address income inequality.
I have some real serious doubts that we'll ever get there, but it's easy to be pessimistic.
There's always someone to quote some dry statistic that refutes the lived experience of... pretty much anyone. I wonder, what's the deal with people like this? Is the point to convince yourselves it's not that bad?
Yes, indeed, in the US even a poor person is relatively wealthier than someone in a war-torn African country. But humans are social creatures. We compare ourselves not with "the poor kids in Africa", but with the business owner in the adjacent zip code.
As for "unrealistic" expectations: why do business owners expect to take an unrealistic percentage off the top of everyone's labor? What made them worthy of such a huge amount?
You’re coping hard. The USA is (well, was before tariffs and related) so far ahead and richer than the rest of the “first world” that “europoor” is a correct term for those unfortunate souls who weren’t born there.
OK, let's all celebrate King Bezos shutting down Venice to celebrate his union with his plastic appliance. The suffering of his serfs is necessary to enable this show of excess.
The problem is that we're talking about "manufacturing" as one big homogeneous thing. The US obviously makes a bunch of stuff, but it has very limited ability to make lots of kinds of stuff, especially in a hostile trade environment.
The US manufacturing sector is about half the size of China's in terms of value-add, but it's much smaller by any other measure. The US has focussed on high-value verticals like aerospace and pharmaceuticals, where intellectual property provides a deep moat and secure profit margins. That kind of manufacturing doesn't produce mass employment for semi-skilled or unskilled workers, but it does create lots of skilled jobs that are very well paid by global standards.
That's entirely rational from an economic perspective, but it means that US manufacturing is wholly reliant on imports of lower-value materials and commodity parts.
A Chinese manufacturer of machine tools can buy pretty much all of their inputs domestically, because China has a really deep supply chain. They're really only dependent on imports of a handful of raw materials and leading-edge semiconductors. Their US counterparts - we're really just talking about Haas and Hurco - are assembling a bunch of Chinese-made components onto an American casting. To my knowledge, there are no US manufacturers of linear rails, ballscrews or servo motors.
If the US wants to start making that stuff, it's faced with two very hard problems. Firstly, that it'd have to essentially re-run the industrial revolution to build up the capacity to do it; secondly, that either a lot of Americans would have to be willing to work for very low wages, or lots of Americans would have to pay an awful lot more in tax to subsidise those jobs.
It's worth bearing in mind that China is busy moving in the opposite direction - they're investing massively in automation and moving up the value chain as quickly as possible. They're facing the threat of political unrest on a scale they haven't seen since 1989, because of the enormous number of highly-educated young people who are underemployed in unskilled and semi-skilled jobs.
Lots of Americans want to bring back mass manufacturing employment, but very few of them actually want to work in a factory. You can't resolve that contradiction through sheer political will.
I did a tour of a huge beer plant in the US. The 4-5 floors where they made the beer had maybe a dozen people total. I was told back in the day it would have been thousands of workers.
It's not even aerospace and pharmaceuticals. Any manufacturing that comes back onshore will not employ massive amounts of people.
They will automate it. Which, to be fair, will help employ some Americans. But it won't be employing them to work 9-5 in a factory. It will be used to employ Americans to build and maintain the machines building the product.
> The US has focussed on high-value verticals like aerospace
Which is about to take a huge nosedive, as both Europe and China pull back on buying critical systems from the US. And can you blame them?
There's an excellent youtube series (by a Finnish ex-military officer) on the likely impact of recent events on US arms sales to Europe. They do have choices!
Trump and Musk's threats to invade and blackmail (e.g. by cutting off Starlink) will be felt long after they're both gone.
I have worked US manufacturing and manufacturing R&D for most of my career: pharmaceutical, microelectronics, materials, aerospace, etc. The US is awesome at manufacturing when we want to be.
One problem is that "modern MBA/business philosophy" views manufacturing and manufacturing employees as a cost center and there is so much emphasis on maximizing gross margin to increase shareholder value.
So business leaders scrutinize the hell out of anything that increases the cost of their cost centers:
- employee training & development? hell with that.
- Increasing pay to retain good employees in manufacturing? Why? isn't everything mostly automated?
- manufacturing technology development? Not unless you can show a clear and massive net present value on the investment... and, then, the answer is still no for no good reason. I have pitched internal manufacturing development investments where we conservatively estimated ~50% internal rate of return and the projects still didn't get funded.
There is also a belief that outsourcing is easy and business people are often horrible at predicting and assessing the total cost of outsourcing. I have been on teams doing "insource vs. outsource" trade studies and the amount of costs and risks that MBA decision makers don't think about in these situations really surprised me initially... but now I'm use to it.
Anyhow... the US (and Europe for that matter) can absolutely increase manufacturing. It is not "difficult"... but it would be a slow process. I think it is important to differentiate between difficulty and speed.
You could simply make taxes scale inversely with the number of employees. Make the tax scale with a lack of career path. Even more tax if you don't have a system to measure and reward performance. More tax for lack of R&D. They don't have to be huge amounts, just enough for the MBA to stfu.
> The actual issue is that our business culture is antithetical to a healthy society. The idea of employing Americans is anti-business—there's no willingness to invest, or to train, or to support an employee seen as waste. Until business can find some sort of reason to care about the state of the country, this will continue.
I think you're exactly right there.
>> We don’t have the infrastructure to manufacture
> That's trivially false given we're the second-largest manufacturer in the world.
I want to quibble with that a little bit. I don't have the numbers, but relative position matters too. The US could be "second-largest manufacturer in the world" if it only manufactures Dixie cups, other countries manufacture nothing, and China manufactures everything else.
My understanding is Chinese output is so huge, that even if the US had maintained steady or modestly growing manufacturing output from the 70s or whatever, it would be dwarfed by China.
Our biggest exporter is Boeing and sure Boeing produces commercial aircraft but their position has a lot to do with inertia as the accountant leadership of Boeing is doing their best to destroy Boeing by nickel-and-diming every aspect with a complex web of outsourcing that will fall apart the second there is any disruption in international trade.
What China has now is the infrastructure and ecosystem to manufacture. You need some tiny screws made of titanium? Well, there's a factory that produces that down the street.
The last time we got employers to care about employees it was because the unions dragged the bosses into the streets and beat the daylights out of them.
Unions are all conservative trump voters now. Labor isn’t left wing anymore. Arguably never really was (sorry coping anarchists and marxists, but usually the greedy monical wearing boss still leads to better outcomes than most “back against the wall” types we end up with when we let leftists have one iota of power.
This is even showing up a bit in tech now. The number of places that expect some articulation Venn diagram of skill sets is too high.
There are too goddamned many stacks to expect that your best hire is going to already have used everything you’re using. There are people who have used everything, but you’re mostly going to be hiring flakes if you look for those, not Right Tool for the Job types.
> Until business can find some sort of reason to care about the state of the country, this will continue.
The best financial years Puerto Rico had ended when the tax incentives to be there went away. It's a real shame. Puerto Rico was #1 in production, above the US and Japan. You could buy something made in Puerto Rico and you knew it was a high quality product. Its much harder to gain back that level of quality once you've effectively killed such a culture, I can only imagine the detriment in Japan if they lost their work culture and how much harder it would be for them to regain it.
>That's trivially false given we're the second-largest manufacturer in the world.
Sure, but we don't manufacture the things that are typically made in 3rd world countries and the lead time to build that infrastructure is years, and generally would result in us moving down the tech tree ladder from being a consumer economy to a manufacturing economy with all of the negatives associated with that.
This attitude that manufacturing is moving down the tech tree ladder completely misunderstands manufacturing. IME the entire notion was invented by elitist economists and embraced by CEOs looking to justify sending manufacturing overseas for short term profiteering. Regular people bought in because of the promise of cheaper gizmos.
It’s the sort of attitude that infected Boeing and resulted in taking them from the peak of aviation to an embarrassment. Because they don’t know how to lubricate doors or tighten screws.
Building things is hard, and requires significant technology and skills among a lot of people. A service based economy inherently looses that technology and skill.
Tim Cook interviewed and said China isn’t the low cost labor anymore it once was. China has become the place that knows how to manufacture things, especially electronics.
The actual issue is that our business culture is antithetical to a healthy society.
I agree with the unhealthy society and your statement got me thinking. In regards to health what happens when global trade is shut down and a country can not make it's own pharmaceuticals for example? About 64% of people in the US over age 18 are on prescription drugs. Some of those drugs have really dangerous rebound effects if one suddenly stops taking them. Some of those effects can be deadly, especially blood pressure drugs. Most of those drugs come from China, some from India. How quickly can each country start manufacturing and distributing it's own prescription drugs? Would that cause a quick adjustment to the culture or is that not enough?
To clarify, I just Googled for: what percent of american adults are on prescription drugs?
I got back from "AI Overview": Approximately 64.8% of adults in the United States report taking prescription medication at some point in the past 12 months. This figure is based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The key phrase here is "at some point". I guess a huge amount of it is a very short 1-3 week dose of antibiotics.
I can invoke the powers of Google as well. Let's ask it how many Americans are on blood pressure drugs.
"Approximately 51.2% of Americans with hypertension (high blood pressure) are currently taking medication to lower their blood pressure."
That is not a temporary thing. Most of those people will be on drugs the rest of their unnatural lives. So when the availability of said drugs is gone, 51.2% of Americans will go into full rebound and their BP will spike for several days to weeks. Their risk of stroke and heart attack will go off the charts as any ER doctor can attest to. What should we do for those poor souls?
that's 51.2% of Americans with Hypertension, not 51.2% of Americans at large.
CDC says:
Percent of people using at least one prescription drug in the past 30 days: 49.9% (2017-March 2020)
Percent of people using three or more prescription drugs in the past 30 days: 24.7% (2017-March 2020)
Percent of persons using five or more prescription drugs in the past 30 days: 13.5% (2017-March 2020)
Source: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Published by: Health, United States. Table RxUse and NCHS Data Query System, Prescription Medication Use Tables One or more, Three or more, Five or more.
> We never stopped manufacturing, we just stopped employing people.
I don't think it's just that. We manufacture, but we aren't great at the entire chain. China is much better are specialized tooling, etc. We have definitely lost a lot of knowledge in critical parts of the chain.
Which means policies that reverse that are immensely important. The process of offshore our jobs and much I.P. took decades. Getting them back and rebuilding manufacturing support will take a long time, too.
Just need to make steady progress each year with incentives that encourage large leaps in progress.
> We never stopped manufacturing, we just stopped employing people.
That’s a misleading oversimplification. While it’s true we haven’t stopped manufacturing, we did offshore a massive portion of it--especially after the Open Door Policy with China and subsequent free trade agreements. That shift didn’t just change where things are made; it fundamentally altered corporate incentives. Once production moved overseas, the need to invest in domestic labor--training, benefits, long-term employment--shrank accordingly.
Most companies that do manufacturing in USA are oriented to making business-to-business products, where high margins can be achieved.
As an European, there have been many decades since the last time when I have seen any competitive "made in USA" product that is intended to be sold to individuals.
There are products that I buy, which have been designed in USA, e.g. computer CPUs, but none of them have also been made in USA.
When I was young, it was very different, there were many "made in USA" products that could compete with those made elsewhere.
It's shareholder capitalism. Capitalism can be a great thing, but shareholder capitalism defines profits as the only reason for a corporation to exist. Humans are simply resources to extract work or profit from, and destroying the future of the country is an unfortunate externality. CEOs are obligated to behave like sociopaths. Lying, cheating, stealing, and subverting democracy are all good business if it returns value to shareholders. We see this over and over again, and wonder why our society is so fucked up.
And since every major corporation is behaving like this, even if a CEO wanted to give a shit about the country, they can't do anything about it because someone else will be more cutthroat than them and eat their lunch.
The notion of shareholder primacy capitalism is one of those ideas that seems great on paper, much like communism, but its end effects are disastrous.
It seems great cause it’s simple and gives a nice simple answer to “what’s capitalism” and “how to make effective companies”. That intellectual (existential?) laziness is costly long term however.
The idea that “labor is cheaper elsewhere” is simply a neutral statement of economics is wrong — “lower living standards” is not just a economic measure, it’s a political statement about the value of labor and labor conditions. The US and by extension the “western capitalist world” has been exploiting labor since day 0 with chattel then later globally slavery.
The reason Japan was the biggest manufacturer exporting to the US post war, is because the SCAP forcibly rewrote their constitution to be explicitly capitalist. Read “Understanding Defeat” for detailed proof of the 7 year occupation of Japan, explicity to destroy any semblance of Japanese imperial/keretzu culture, and replace it with explicitly capitalist structure. To be fair to MacArthur, they did suggest labor practices, like unionization, but it was a thin veneer suggestion, not forced into cooperatives and syndicates.
China moved into that position post 70s, because Japanese labor began getting “more expensive.” Nixon and Kissinger saw an opportunity to exploit “cheap” labor because there were no protections for workers or environmental protections - so “opening up china,” plus the Nixon shock and floating of interest rates allowed for global capital flight to low cost slave-like conditions. This is why labor and productivity began to separate in 1971, there was a “global south” that now could be exploited.
NAFTA made Mexico and the southern americas the agricultural slave countries etc…starting in the 90s, and on and on just moving the slave-wage ball until there’s nowhere else to exploit.
It’s not a conspiracy to demonstrate that capital will move wherever it needs to in order to exploit “arbitrage opportunities.” Its good business/MBA capitalism 101.
Just like #2 in Austin powers said:
> Dr. Evil, I've spent 30 years of my life turning this two-bit evil empire into a world-class multinational. I was going to have a cover story in "Forbes". But you, like an idiot, wanted to take over the world. And you don't realize there is no world anymore. It's only corporations.
I don't think it's a matter of willingness, but simple global geo economics.
There's places where producing A, whatever A is, is economically more efficient for countless reasons (energy prices, logistics, talent, bureaucracy, cost of labor, etc).
That's not gonna change with whatever investment you want or tariff you put.
But the thing I find more absurd, of all, is that I'd expect HN users to be aware that USA has thrived in the sector economy while offloading things that made more sense to be done elsewhere.
I'd expect HN users to understand that the very positive trade balances like Japan's, Italy's or Germany's run are meaningless and don't make your country richer.
Yet I'm surrounded by users ideologically rushing into some delusional autarchic dystopia of fixing american manufacturing for the sake of it.
That's a narrow perspective. The "benefits" that are granted to a country have a cost and these costs need to be reconciled with on the international stage. This is achieved through tariffs otherwise the playing field isn't fair.
The other side of this coin is cost of living. If housing costs more in the US, so does everything else. If everything costs more, people have to be paid more in order to make a living, and that makes the US less competitive in the global labor market.
Doesn't that feel like a massive overstatement? They have worse working conditions for sure. "Enslavement" is absurd if we are speaking about the macro level.
US corporations benefit today from slave labor by people housed in for-profit prisons where there are incentives to over-prosecute brown and poor people. These include, but aren't limited to:
Literally forced labor camps. Of course, the PRC denies these allegations, but it certainly seems like there's some forced labor due to the numerous reports across many years of a variety of forced labor operations from these camps.
The US has forced prison labor. We can talk about how bad the Chinese government is, but their economy is not built on forced labor anymore than the US is built on prison labor.
I also think any form of forced work in the US prison system is pretty awful, but don’t try to equivocate Chinese “reeducation” camps with regular prison. Not anywhere close to the same thing.
Have you asked any of the inmates at the Angola "working farm" in Louisiana?
Apparently 63% are serving life terms, 27% more than 20 years.
Doesn't seem worse than China's attempt to iron out a seditious, violent sub-culture that was actually detonating bombs amongst civilians? Most seem to have closed, so the maximum term < 10 years.
Neither are good ideas IMHO - but one way worse than the other? Come now.
> Neither are good ideas IMHO - but one way worse than the other? Come now.
Inmates in any prison in the US ostensibly have gone through due process and were convicted of their crimes. You can argue about whether the US justice system is truly fair, but it's (at least in historic years) certainly more fair than rounding up large portions of a specific ethnic minority for 'reeducation'.
How many Americans are dying to and will do tedious labor (not many), as well robots, automation and AI can do a lot of it and or will end up doing a lot of it.
If we want to strengthen America (military & economy) immigration reform is needed! This could be unpopular but such reform could be ...those who want to come here must serve in our armed forces for x amount of years and can bring two to four family members here that are able to start working and contributing to the economy immediately (pay taxes). Rounding up and getting of rid of these eager want to be Americans when we have adversaries with larger armies and we bang the drum on beefing up defense (and our economy) doesn't make sense to me.
Importing immigrants directly into the military sounds like a bad idea. I’m guessing many would be less likely to want to lay their lives down for the new country, so drafting them seems like a great way to end up with a bunch of disloyal troops.
Both the Romans and the US had success with immigrants in the military, provided that they were thoroughly mixed. A unit with 35 ethnicities in it usually does not rebel "like one man".
The Roman way started to fail when they moved to the foederati model, where there would be units of, say, only Goths under a Gothic commander. That proved dangerous.
The Hapsburg empire, in its various incarnations, existed for almost four hundred years (1526-1918), and most of the time, their troops were loyal, so the answer is yes?
But one has to be careful: while their military was diverse, it wasn't really made of immigrants. It was simply built out of very diverse local ethnicities that were settled in the same place for centuries. Which means, for example, that when the Kaiser fought against the Turks, everyone involved regardless of language had an incentive to fight, because their own homes and freedom were at stake.
The traditional incentive that the military gives in these situations is that your spouse and children will be well taken care of if you serve, and even better taken care of if you die in service. Not endorsing that approach, just explaining.
Indeed, come here and expedite citizenship by serving America for an X number of years! In return along with expedited citizenship your partner and any kin can join you with your partner required to work/contribute some to the economy. Heck work in one of these new factories part or full time (if full time the new factories offer free day care).
Personally this concept is a more humane one then rounding/exiling want to be Americans in which the majority are not criminals! No they are hard workers coming here for a better life, why not give that to them and in return they "Make America Even Stronger!" ;-). That's what the current admin wants beef up defense, yet to me with immigration they are taking the wrong approach!
The French Foreign Legion is a famous counterexample to your argument here. They might actually have the best Esprit du Corps in the world. In particular because they have to since they are indeed comprised of random foreigners and historically at least low-level criminals.
The best army/weapon are those never needed to be utilized. Enemies won't pick up fights because your weapon/army are way stronger than theirs. Therefore we cannot regard army/weapon as "not used" or just wasted.
These two to four family member who immigrate would not also be required to serve in the military? If not, what are the criteria used to select the one-out-of-five?
I think it be better if they had to work and contribute to our economy and society. They could work in one these new manufacturing plants, as no doubt if you ask farmers and other businesses that offer grunt work they will say they can not find Americans to do the work but they can find hard working and reliable immigrants to do it! How many immigrants nowadays do you see at a construction site? It's the majority for me here in York, PA.
> China generates over twice as much electricity per person today as the United States. Why?
This appears to be completely wrong? All the stats I can find say that the US has about 4x the per capita electricity generation of China.
Other than that it seems to be mostly good points, especially the overall one: you cannot do this overnight.
> If you’re building a new factory in the United States, your investment will alternate between maybe it will work, and catastrophic loss according to which way the tariffs and the wind blows. No one is building factories right now, and no one is renting them, because there is no certainty that any of these tariffs will last
Policy by amphetamine-driven tweeting is a disaster.
> 12. Enforcement of the tariffs will be uneven and manipulated
Yup. The 145% level seems designed to create smuggling, and the wild variations between countries to create re-labelling. It's chicken tax trucks all over again.
> This is probably the worst economic policy I’ve ever seen
Per Simpsons: this is the worst economic policy you've seen so far. The budget is yet to come.
> If American companies want to sell in China, they must incorporate there, register capital, and name a person to be a legal representative. To sell in Europe, we must register for their tax system and nominate a legal representative. For Europeans and Chinese to sell in the United States, none of this is needed, nor do federal taxes need to be paid.
This is .. not a bad idea, really. It would probably be annoying for small EU and UK exporters but less so than 10% tariffs and even less so than random day of the week tariffs. Maybe one day it could harmonise with the EU VAT system or something.
(also I think the author is imagining that sub-par workers, crime, and drugs don't exist in China, when they almost certainly do, but somewhere out of sight. Possibly due to the internal migration control of hukou combined with media control?)
> Other than that it seems to be mostly good points, especially the overall one: you cannot do this overnight.
It's annoying Americans were given only two choices - offshoring is great and let's keep doing it, and, as you say, the opposite, meth-fueled let's bring back manufacturing overnight. The kind of slow and steady protection and promotion of home-grown industry that China and most of Asia so successfully used to grow their economies was completely absent as even a talking point.
This is the part that is so frustrating to me, and not just with regards to tariffs. It's that I see the extremes being so laughably bad (though not necessarily equally - I'm not "both sides"-ing this), and more ludicrously bad is that I've seen positions that don't follow these extremes as being derided now as "centrism". E.g. before the administration's attack on higher education, I do believe a lot of elite universities had completely jumped the shark with their ideological purity tests like required DEI statements. And importantly, there were thoughtful, measured criticisms of these things, e.g. https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2024/02/10/jon-haidt-goes-aft....
But the administration attack is so ridiculously egregious and demands an even worse, government-imposed ideological alignment, that making logical arguments in this environment feels almost pointless.
> making logical arguments in this environment feels almost pointless.
Unfortunately this is the culmination of social media as a controversy machine, that promotes the worst arguments.
> ideological purity tests like required DEI statements
Example?
There's a controversy industry that cherry picks the worst examples of student-politics excess in these regards and then carefully conflates it with university policy.
As well as the sad truth that as soon as you take away "DEI" requirements the segregationists come back and purge the library, delete all the black Medal of Honor recipients from the website, etc.
At UC Berkeley, over 75% of faculty applicants were rejected solely based on reviewing their diversity statements: https://thehill.com/opinion/education/480603-what-is-uc-davi... Rather conspicuously, Asians had the highest rate of rejection, followed by whites. Latin applicants had the second highest pass rate, Black applicants had the highest. The diversity statements were not anonymized (as in, the reviewers could see the ethnicity of each applicant when reviewing their diversity statement).
Diversity statements were widely suspected of being a smokescreen for racial preferences. Much like the "personality score" Harvard used to curate its desired racial makeup in its student admissions.
If you’re basing your understanding of the subject based on one anti-DEI activist’s misinterpretation of policies he doesn’t actually know anything about, who didn’t talk to anyone at those schools (even critics of the policy), and who very likely misread statistics and intentionally misrepresented processes, then you are not getting a fair picture. This piece you linked to is a mess of unsubstantiated statements. Several of the links are broken but the one that is still around does not say what he says, so I wouldn’t trust any of the rest of his summarization either.
Of course one should not use an opinion piece as the source when that opinion piece is just commenting on information found elsewhere, but also, in this day and age there's no reason to give up when you encounter a broken link: https://web.archive.org/web/20200202194620/https://ofew.berk...
A total of 993 applications were received, of which
893 met basic qualifications. The LSI Committee conducted a first review and evaluated candidates based solely
on contributions to diversity, equity and inclusion. Only candidates that met a high standard in this area were
advanced for further review, narrowing the pool down to 214 for serious consideration.
Ok, so what exactly is the "high standard" here, and what about the standard do you find it objectionable? The fact that something exists doesn't count.
If you don't know, you're just spreading urban legends and ghost stories.
The text in italics is a verbatim quote from the archived PDF I linked, wherein UC Berkeley describes their hiring process. I encourage you to read it if you want to know further details.
> However, other University of California schools have published this information. In one recent search at UC Berkeley employing substantially similar evaluation techniques to those that UC Davis used, there were 893 qualified applicants who submitted complete applications that met the basic job requirements. Of those applicants, 679 were eliminated solely because their diversity statements were deemed inadequate.
Do you have any substantial criticism of the factual claims made here? Or are you just insisting that this is a misinterpretation, without any evidence?
There's no facts to refute - he just states that this conclusion is true without evidence of how he knows that or what the criteria he's using is.
That's the problem with all the DEI hysterics - it's never given any intellectual rigor. Instead, it's all profoundly mid men telling each other ghost stories.
* Of those applicants, 679 were eliminated solely because their diversity statements were deemed inadequate.
If someone seeks to disprove the claim that 76% of applicants were rejected based on their diversity statements, they can find alternate figures for the numerator and denominator and offer reasons why their numbers are more authoritative.
> That's the problem with all the DEI hysterics - it's never given any intellectual rigor. Instead, it's all profoundly mid men telling each other ghost stories.
3 out of the four companies I've worked at engaged in explicit discrimination on the basis of gender. As in, alternate interview pipelines where women got multiple chances to pass coding interviews where men got one. And one company even augmented that approach with outright withholding a portion of headcount for "diverse" applicants (which was defined as women and URM men, and in practice women made up over 95% of "diverse" applicants).
If you haven't been witnessed to discriminatory DEI practices, that's fortunate for you. But that's not been the experience of many people. DEI is widely perceived as a dogwhistle for discrimination, because it often is used to refer to discriminatory hiring practices, and I don't think condescension is a way to convince people otherwise.
You don't know what the "diversity criteria" even is. Neither does the parent article. You assume you do and therefore it is bad because something something woke. That's not being condescending, that's just true.
As I said, the entire DEI thing smacks of hysteria and paranoia. Frankly, DEI programs do very little, in general.
I have seen a lot of guys overvalue their skills and undervalue others and then blame "DEI" instead of their own mediocrity.
When I was young I went to school to become a chemical process technician. This was a very attractive education for women because it allowed them to work in factories and oil rigs without getting their hands dirty. It's mostly just sitting in control rooms and such, taking walks to make sure things are running smoothly.
The companies hiring had gender quotas to meet, so this was one field where they filled a lot of their quota. Our class was exactly 50% men, 50% women. I worked my ass off, we were graded 1-6 where 6 is best and I had all 6es except one 5 in one class.
Everyone applied for apprenticeships to Statoil (now Equinor) and from our class they hired one guy with literally perfect grades, and nearly all the girls. Over 80% of the girls were accepted, girls with a grade average of 4.2 compared to my 5.9 got the job. I didn't and neither did any of the other guys in the class except one.
When I worked at a bank, the DEI initiatives were limited to documenting in my yearly review how many rainbow cakes I ate each year and counting my participation in various celebrations.
But I think I was also a beneficiary of DEI, because my boss once told me I couldn't quit because I was the only representative of my race in our department.
On top of that even the official guidelines are ridiculous. Statements along the lines of saying that people should be treated equally regardless of skin color are officially grounds for rejection.
Of course. The point of this kind of propaganda is to have you reacting so negatively and emotionally that you don't examine the claims calmly and rationally. Emotions > facts. If no-one appalled, then it isn't doing its job.
It’s an overhyped exaggeration at best, but very likely a complete misrepresentation of the policies and how they were used in reality. What you should be outraged by is that lazy hacks can make a living by stirring up fake controversies over intentionally misinterpreting this stuff.
For the schools that have them, I consider legacy admissions to be more appalling. Those are overwhelmingly white.
The other issue is that many of these schools have not been expanding enrolment numbers to population growth. Less seats per-capita mean more exclusivity over time.
Get rid of them both (DEI and legacy admissions) and the government should create a policy that those endowments need to be used to expand the size of the schools.
> As well as the sad truth that as soon as you take away "DEI" requirements the segregationists come back and purge the library, delete all the black Medal of Honor recipients from the website, etc.
This is literally my exact point. There absolutely should be a rational place that denounces both these diversity statement ideological requirements and the egregious memory-holing that the current administration is implementing.
These are statements, not quotas. Basically these are statements where you note that you support teaching all kids, will make efforts to be inclusive and ensure your class has an inclusive environment, etc…
There is no requirement on the race of the applicants.
> these are statements where you note that you support teaching all kids, will make efforts to be inclusive and ensure your class has an inclusive environment
If you look at one example of the actual assessment criteria [1], merely teaching without discrimination or exclusion earns the lowest possible score.
[1] Only mentions activities that are already the expectation of faculty as evidence of commitment and involvement (for example, "I always invite and welcome students from all backgrounds to participate in my research lab, and in fact have mentored several women." - https://web.archive.org/web/20200302212643/https://ofew.berk...
The instructions make it pretty clear what you need to write. This seems reasonable to me as PART of a total application, but not as the gate to get into the review process.
These statements are performative bullshit, and everyone who writes one knows it.
> Basically these are statements where you note that you support teaching all kids
Do you really feel today's university professors need to write an essay saying they support teaching everyone?
> will make efforts to be inclusive and ensure your class has an inclusive environment
Again, say someone is teaching calculus, what does this exactly mean?
It's absolutely makes sense to me that a university has policies in place to ensure classrooms are inclusive and that discrimination does not occur. But these statements are nonsense.
Any policies to "ensure classrooms are inclusive" are going to be decried by some people who say that it's "unfair" for whatever reason. Because when you have a class or classes of people who have been discriminated against for centuries, who are at the bottom of the heap, they don't just magically gain parity with other classes, in terms of being able to take advantage of equal opportunity (the promise) simply because they're no longer legally discriminated against. It takes active policies, not just passive ones, for inclusivity to take root. (Once it's taken root, in time those policies may no longer be necessary.)
> Do you really feel today's university professors need to write an essay saying they support teaching everyone?
Yes, actually. Having it be a very explicit part of the job is a good thing. Because a lot of people absolutely need to be told.
It's why we have sexual harassment training. A lot of people don't need it, a few sociopaths will do whatever they want, but a lot of people do, in fact, need to be told to keep their hands to themselves. It really does make a difference.
>> will make efforts to be inclusive and ensure your class has an inclusive environment
> Again, say someone is teaching calculus, what does this exactly mean?
I honestly got a chuckle out of this, because this is the most STEMlordy thing I've heard in a while.
I'm going to presume you're male, because you'd know why if you'd been the only female in a physics or math class and made uncomfortable and singled out because of it. Often by guys assuming you're a DEI and didn't earn your spot.
If we'd enslaved whites and then turned them second class citizens with minimal rights and very few economic opportunities until fairly recently, putting them in conditions that make it very difficult for them to achieve equal opportunity, then yeah, I wouldn't have a problem with it.
I went to school in south Atlanta, where both student body and teaching staff tended to be overwhelmingly Black. The school had a policy of hiring a certain percentage of non-Black teachers, including white teachers, and it had programs designed specifically to attract students from white and Hispanic communities.
The goal was not to give non-Black students and teachers a leg up; it was to promote diversity and ensure students graduated ready to meet all kinds of different people in the workplace. These policies were popular and uncontroversial, at least while I was there — though I dare say they would be deemed illegal now.
Tangential comment, but I now see people adding disclaimers reiterating their political affiliation to their posts regularly and I want to say that you shouldn't have to justify bilateral criticism. It doesn't imply equal magnitude, and it's only taken that way by bullies in dogmatic bubbles.
The commenter is right that you shouldn't have to state those kinds of beliefs, but pragmatically this is a message board that invites all sorts of responses. Those additional notes are an attempt to head-off annoying and wrongly-based counter-responses built on assumptions that shouldn't have been made. But just because they shouldn't be doesn't mean they won't be.
Your comment evoking a victim complex on the other hand I find a far more annoying element of online discourse.
Thank you, because this is exactly why I did it, and will continue to.
So often when I write a comment I find responses either missing the point, laser focusing on something offhand/tangential I wrote, or imbuing my post with a viewpoint I didn't make. Sometimes the fault is mine, sometimes the fault of the responder.
I state where I'm coming from not as some sort of "tribal identifier", but simply to add clarity, and to stave off misdirected responses that I can find annoying.
I couldn't agree more and worry that even if the country makes it out of this period in one piece the well will have been poisoned on a lot of these topics. We should have big initiatives to make government more efficient, and reduce the national debt, and get back to merit-based processes. But after so much bloviating and fake initiatives that claim to do those things, but actually do the opposite, it's going to be a tough sell to make a real push in the foreseeable future.
You’ve been conned if you think overactive DEI was anything more than a minor annoyance in 99% of American universities. Did some people overdo it in a destructive way? Of course. But it wasn’t anything that was going to lead to major problems. The problems come from the folks who can’t just roll their eyes and move on but instead feel personally attacked and hold a permanent grudge instead of realizing that they themselves probably weren’t all that special.
Uh, I think it does. A lot of people, myself included, have major problems when "overactive DEI" leads to race being a primary, if not the primary, factor in hiring and admissions decisions. This isn't something one should just "roll their eyes over" and move on.
FWIW, that was my original approach, and I thought that the worst excesses of "wokeism" were just caricatures that the right was using to paint all on the left with a broad brush, so I was pretty dismayed when, over time, I felt that a lot of this "race first" thinking had infested many areas of elite universities. Many university professors (ones who would not have in any way identified with being "on the right") who I deeply respect have spoken out about this, sometimes at great professional cost.
> and more ludicrously bad is that I've seen positions that don't follow these extremes as being derided now as "centrism".
You can't stake out a position without getting called some name somebody invented to denigrate that position. Welcome to modern politics on the internet.
The weird part for me is this:
While the economy was evolving, Production was offshored from US for cost-reasons, but also in part to focus on higher-skill labor in US, delegating the low-skill mass-production to China.
Over time, China also developed mid/high level skills, complemented their low-skill production offering with it and now competes in new industries, new tech, etc.
So...to compete with China, the country with 4x the US-population, the solution is that low-skill labor needs to return to US....?
Shouldn't instead the focus be to again foster mid/high-skill labor, moving the part that is offshored again towards low-skill labor...?
I think the mistake here is the model of low-skill/high-skill labor is not a useful distinction. Manufacturing is high skill period, however there are low-infrastructure and high-infrastructure products and factories. The labor wages themselves are a factor, but an increasingly minor factor in product costs. By bypassing investment in US manufacturing skills and infra, the US sat itself on the sidelines for the ability to build, staff, and supply modern low, medium and high infrastructure factories.
It's not impossible to build back, but it would require long term stable policies to favor it at more levels than just tariffs.
The solution is to pay everyone a living wage, regardless of job, and disconnect healthcare from employment. Lots of inertia against those ideas though. So, instead, "good manufacturing jobs" is the parroted point. Any job is a good job if you can live off of it.
(tariffs do nothing to address labor shortages in healthcare, teaching, and other domestic service based sectors, for example)
That’s a solution of human rights and is orthogonal to becoming competitive to China. No question human rights needs to be fulfilled and we need to pay people living wages.
But the conversation here has he orthogonal goal of being competitive with China as well. I can assure you just paying everyone living wages is one of the main reasons why we are not competitive with China. It’s the main reason why China is beating us today.
So paying everyone living wages doesn’t really do anything to solve the problem because the products created by people who are paid living wages are by definition more expensive due to labor costs.
What tariffs do is they allow us to pay people living wages and sell expensive products and still be competitive because products from China are tariffed to be the same price.
> So paying everyone living wages doesn’t really do anything to solve the problem because the products created by people who are paid living wages are by definition more expensive due to labor costs.
They aren't though. In America, "Paying living wages" always means "pay way more", because America underpays labour and overcharges for literally everything (products, services, basic cost of living -- every product on American soil has a insane profit margin on it)
In China, "Paying living wages" doesn't necessarily mean "pay labor more", because they have stronger control over pricing and margins, so it often actually means "make orgs charge way less".
You end up with Chinese folks living in a major city in China, with a 2bed apartment that costs $200USD/month, and a meal out cost $2USD/each, cars that start at like $6k, and they get paid $5USD/hr, but they feel like they're living well, despite only making around $640USD/month, because they can save 10% of their income each month, and have like 40% of their income as discretionary spending, and still get to own their apartment.
But in the US, a 2bed apartment in a big city like that costs at least $2,000/month or more, a meal out there costs at least $20/each, and a basic starter car starts at like $26k, so you can pay someone in a ostensibly-"high labor cost" job of $20/hr, and they feel like their constantly underwater, and have zero chance of ever owning a home, because they only have like 20% of their income as discretionary spending, and they can't save anything at all. (and that's before we even mention differences like how you don't have to worry about being hit with a crazy bill for an ER visit or an Ambulance in China, but Americans have to worry about that 24/7/365).
(It's the same reason many American's dream of getting a job in Europe and leaving the US, because despite making less money-on-paper, you get to generate more real wealth and do so with less life risk and life stress)
The Factories and the labor pool and the infrastructure being absent in the US is hard to solve for, of course -- but it isn't even the hardest part of any of this. The American view of capitalism would have to be completely rewritten to be more diverse, more equitable, and more inclusive to Americans who do actual labor, before Americans could be anywhere close to competitive with most of these Chinese industries.
Yep. With one difference. The US is regressing and now we want to reignite manufacturing without relying on exploitation.
My argument is that this isn't possible. Well let me rephrase that. It is possible but you need to inflict some form of pain to get it going. Tariffs is one way to do this.
I don't think the four year presidency is enough to do this. You need to do this for at least 2 decades.
Those are preferences, and unique to each individual. I work in trades, I work the overnight shift, and I do 4 10's. I wouldn't want to change any of that. Someone else will feel more at home in an office, and that's okay.
The important part is having a job, that you enjoy, and that allows you to live comfortably while saving for the future. It can be in IT, sales, management, maintenance, whatever - but some people will rather leave a more tangible, visceral, and physical difference in their work at the end of the day, and their preference does not make it a worse job.
> Those are preferences, and unique to each individual. I work in trades, I work the overnight shift, and I do 4 10's. I wouldn't want to change any of that. Someone else will feel more at home in an office, and that's okay.
No, those are not only preferences, they also have objective health impacts.
Working nights typically decreases life expectancy.
The distinction is between high- and low- skill politicians and managers, not labour.
One of the foundations of conservatism is the priority of hierarchy over effectiveness. In a conservative culture it doesn't matter how well things work as long as the right people in charge.
We're seeing the limit of this now, where it's literally more important to maintain hierarchy by denying facts and rationality than to "lose face" by admitting that power isn't absolute.
You can't run a modern country like this. You can't plan for the future, make effective decisions, govern, have a working legal system, build housing, create health care - anything at all - when all decisions are made according to the whims of a despot.
Power and resources - including wealth - have to be distributed. Or at least there has to be the illusion they're somewhat distributed. Anything else guarantees terminal contraction and decay.
Not disagreeing with you, but isn't the issue that the US stopped investing in the skills and infra which made mass-production low-skill in the first place?
Instead, the offshore-destinations kept offering more and more services in the value-chain, until the entire skillset to actually create the low-skill labor processes to offshore was replaced with "let the offshore company manage".
Yes climbing the value chain was a necessity for nations like China. But in the US popularized in the 90's, was a business strategy trend that strongly discounted the value of long term capital investments - particularly for this discussion, investment in factories. They do require extra management attention and they do tie companies to strategies in longer time frames at lower margins - but they deliver long term value and long term synergistic growth benefits (in the vein of go slow to go fast). Many US business elected to chase short term growth, and short term and higher margins and minimize long term investments.
See a list of leading US companies that are off of being king of the hill - Boeing, GE, Intel, ... leading industrial US companies continually divested from manufacturing, or shorted long term investment, not because it wasn't profitable, but because it wasn't profitable enough in the moment. It took decades, and many dividends and stock growth was taken in the middle, but the shortfall manifests in time.
Intel never outsourced its production, and it turned out to be the wrong call for it. They just made losing tech bets, while they kept investing in manufacturing.
You make that sound like it was emanating from the business community - the US has had a pretty significant period in there of 0% interest rates determined by a central committee. Return on capital doesn't really matter in a low interest rate environment, the important thing is access to the lending markets. Investors making sensible investments would have been eaten alive by those focusing on companies that were living off credit in ill-advised ways.
Uber still hasn't managed to make a net profit over its lifetime as a company, by the way.
I agree with the rest of your comment, though. The US public markets reward creative accounting and mortgaging the future for quarterly gains. GE and Jack Welch are a great historical example.
Maybe, but 0% interest should have make it easy to invest in capital intensive endeavors that would have turned into great protective moats when the interest rates inevitably bumped up. Did that happen with factories and manufacturing?
I also think a significant influence on the Fed was a financialized business community demanding 0% interest.
> Maybe, but 0% interest should have make it easy to invest in capital intensive endeavors that would have turned into great protective moats when the interest rates inevitably bumped up.
It doesn't - if you look at the situation in real terms, the amount of resources available to invest is about the same (probably shrinking because some are diverted to people who aren't creditworthy and consume them). So the major effect of artificially low interest rates is to add a whole heap of artificially supported highly wasteful companies to the mix.
All that changes is the market started rewarding people with access to credit instead of people who were responsible and effective. The credit people aren't particularly capable and it'd be better if they had been forced out.
China invested their low interest fiscal capacity into developing over decades via coordinated policy of their central bank / industrial strategy nudges to their businesses. China's factory ecosystem and the ability to build stuff meets my definition of a protective moat. Its very hard to replace and one can only contemplate it over relatively long time frames.
US businesses were free to do the same over the past low interest environment, but we did not have the same incentives, not inclinations in terms of prevailing business strategic appetite for factories. In contrast, for big tech, there was interest and appetite for it and significant capability with protective moats were built - but one could argue that software based tech moats may be faster to bypass.
>Many US business elected to chase short term growth, and short term and higher margins and minimize long term investments.
I would like to add that this was due to the influence of Milton Friedman. He put the emphasis on shareholder returns being the most important, without considering the survival of the company itself.
More generally, the financialization of the US economy (and of the Western economy more generally speaking) has a big part of the blame in this.
Yes, more evolved financial markets provided easier access capital, but, as it so happens in those types of situations, access to capital and enjoyment of said (liquid/financial) capital became a target in itself, the rest of society didn't matter. In fact, the whole (Western) society was moulded around (liquid/financial) capital, it became its raison d'être.
Actually I think it’s variation of this. Tariffs can protect high skill jobs with high value product output. They can also force the Chinese to make cheap stuff even cheaper ( back down below $1 goods plus tariffs ).
We don’t want the Chinese making high value goods at slightly lower prices. We want Americans making high value goods and we want to push cheap stuff as cheap as possible. Next step is enforcing environmental rules on Chinese goods and requiring escrow of the funds to pay the Chinese in American accounts until the goods are inspected and pass.
America already makes high value goods in China and takes most of the value from them since they did the IP and the software for those products. China desperately wants in on that, they are no longer happy making the product while America takes most of the profit! They would swap places with America in a heartbeat if that’s what Trump is offering.
Your second links puts the number of slaves in China at 4 per 1000. The USA is at 3.3 per 1000. Why not mention that the USA could make more use of their slaves?
> The labor wages themselves are a factor, but an increasingly minor factor in product costs.
Not disagree with your main points, but labor inputs are still very much a huge part of product costs, and often the biggest driver of where to build a new factory when a company is scaling up. Companies aim to build their new factories wherever there's a sufficient pool of cheap labor with the necessary skills.
> Companies aim to build their new factories wherever there's a sufficient pool of cheap labor with the necessary skills.
Of course, even where labor cost is truly inconsequential, you would still do that as all the correlations that come alongside cheap labor are still very attractive to manufacturing.
> I think the mistake here is the model of low-skill/high-skill labor is not a useful distinction.
IMHO it still is. There are tasks, especially in assembly, that for now require humans to do because robots can't match our dexterity. Stuff like mounting through-hole components like a cable from the battery compartment to the main PCB. That's a few seconds worth of time, and you need barely more than a few days worth of training to get a worker up to speed - a low-skill job. China, Thailand, Vietnam and a bunch of other places have an ample supply of people coming out of utter poverty, which means the pressure on wages is massive - a Chinese worker on average earns about 13200 dollars a year [1], an American worker is 3x-4x that amount and more if the shop is unionized. And on top of that, Chinese workers work 996, American or European workers have much MUCH more employee rights.
The problem is, low-skill employment opportunities are going down and down because automation gets better. For now, China can compete because Chinese workers are cheaper than machines... but once that changes, it's going to get nasty.
> The labor wages themselves are a factor, but an increasingly minor factor in product costs.
There's soft factors as well. Stuff like workplace safety/OSHA regulations, environmental regulations... Silicon Valley is a bunch of Superfund sites from decades of toxic emissions. China? They barely have regulations in place, and other sweatshop countries are even worse.
The core problem we're talking about anyway is that a certain percentage of any population is just, plain and simple, dumb as rocks. Over half the US population is barely literate [2]. No matter how good your education systems are, no matter how much money you invest into equality in schools, no matter how much you protect them from stuff like lead - they are dumb, will remain dumb, and probably their children will also remain dumb. In ye olde times you put them on farms, meatpacking or in factories so they had gainful employment... but that all went away, and now we got hordes of utterly dumb people with no hope of ever getting smart and, crucially, no hope of ever getting a meaningful job.
Moving the low-cost jobs offshore was fine until automation filled a lot of those jobs. Now the high skilled automation skills and infrastructure (production lines and robots) are also offshore. I have done my fair share of western factory tours and the number of people on the factory floor is soberingly low... they are simply not needed, as they line runs like a vast, complicated machine.
Japan led in automation in the 90s before the rise of China put a stop to those investments paying off. Now China is making those same investments at a time when the tech is much better. America could solve its manufacturing problem in the future just by importing China automation tech.
It is theoretical, I also doubt China would help the USA develop like that directly and lose its advantage. We would have to trade something really valuable in return (like modern semiconductor or jet turbine tech).
Trump et al. really run a motte-and-bailey argument here. They woo reasonable people who agree that critical industries: food, energy, defense-adjacent, metals, etc. - must have substantial capacity on-shore or at least very near. They then flip to what amounts to massive handouts for his rust belt base, basically saying we should make everything here.
The obvious answer is this:
1. it doesn't matter if our t-shirts are made in Bangladesh.
2. it does matter if our stuff is made in an enemy nation (china).
3. U.S. labor is too expensive to move back to mass manufacturing the way we used to do it, c.f. baumol's cost disease.
4. offshoring and illegal labor have suppressed investment in automation and manufacturing technology for decades, which will be painful to undo.
The sensible outcome of these facts is
1. Focus on moving everything out of china to other cheap countries with reasonable levels of human capital.
2. Focus on re-shoring critical industries.
3. Launch moonshot investments into robotics and automation. Bringing back a big chunk of manufacturing is sustainable; bringing back jobs is not.
4. Invest in large-scale roll-out of SMR energy so we have reliable power for this new industrial build.
I do disagree somewhat with point 4. I think this is frequently overstated:
Building and operating automated factories is just as wage-dependent as anything else (just the coefficients are a bit smaller). You still need engineers, construction crews, supervisors, repair crews, etc. (and those could all be doing something more profitable as well).
You can see this very clearly in the EU, where there is a pretty smooth wage-gradient, and even the super highly automated automotive manufacturing has moved down that gradient towards Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, despite language/culture barriers.
> Bringing back a big chunk of manufacturing is sustainable; bringing back jobs is not.
I think a decent sized manufacturing industry is a realistic goal long term. But longer term US global supremacy in it is not even a realistic goal to begin with, because not only are you gonna fight against the wage gradient now, you are also gonna face the fact that the US is only ~5% global population, and manufacturing will naturally drift towards the very biggest markets for its goods, which the US probably won't be in half a century or so, simply because of demographics and economical growth in China/India generally.
> 3. Launch moonshot investments into robotics and automation. Bringing back a big chunk of manufacturing is sustainable; bringing back jobs is not.
Absent sufficient jobs, or some other arrangement for the masses that provides both material comfort and some sense of purpose, you'll never get to the automation because you will likely have a revolution first.
So basically, Biden's CHIPS act plus infrastructure (energy, roads, etc.) investments (e.g., solar and wind and battery part of Biden's IRA plus additional baseload). Yeah, we had all that going under the previous administration, and the current administration is distracting us from their dismantling of these sensible investments and incentives by strangling the entire global economy. Is it still "fringe" to think Trump is a foreign asset?
Ya, but not being intact doesn’t mean completely destroyed. I just don’t think the Europeans will ever trust the USA enough again to let them have a close relationship, even if Trump’s presidency ends with the US still a democracy.
Thing is, manufacturing in America is up. The 2008 crises dealt a blow, but manufacturing has been building-back. I don't think people realize how many high-value items are made in the United States. Let the East Asians make our mass-consumer junk while we focus on the high-value stuff.
Just goes to show the administration isn't working with facts and doing the hard-nosed analysis required to drive effective policy.
The administration is probably aware of this and doesn't care. A huge portion of his base were rust belt voters who want what are essentially handouts, which trump intends to achieve by forcing the American consumer to pay $30/hour for el cheapo goods that could be made elsewhere and have no tangible security impact.
You're mistaking the rhetoric he uses to sell this idiocy to the rest of the country for a good-faith argument.
Yeah personally I buy very little and live pretty minimally so I'm not impacted much either way. I think most people's takes, however, are influenced by what is best for their pocketbooks short-term rather than for the nation long-term. And Trump is influenced by what's best for him short-term.
I'm looking at the first chart, "Manufacturing Sector: Real Sectoral Output for All Workers" [1]. It grew until Q2 2000, when it was at 97.2. In Q4 2024 it was at 98.6. And let's not ignore how almost all leading semiconductor manufacturing (which are in and required for nearly everything) has moved to East Asia.
I didn't notice it before, but these are not per capita numbers. In 2000, the US population was 281 million, and in 2024 it was 340 million [1]. So per capita, manufacturing went from 97.2 in 2000, to 81.5 in 2024.
agreed but Trump just gutted the CHIPS act for no other reason than because it was enacted by Biden (the typical "undo everything the last prez did" just like Trump 1.0).
You can argue that Intel is a badly run company, not worth saving etc etc, but if want to save US manufacturing, then Intel, and its ecosystem, would be the first place to start. Otherwise, TSMC, Samsung and China (still playing second-fiddle but investing billions to catch up) will dominate. Certainly better than trying to keep coal plants open.
Ideology aside it's really hard to find _any_ rational thought behind these moves.
It turns out good policy takes a long time to play out and isn't well suited for the current destabilized US political system where nothing good gets done and the rare things that do get reversed within four years.
That IS what Biden was trying to do though with the CHIPS Incentive Act. He was trying to onshore production of semiconductors in a partnership with TSMC. Didn't do him any favors, and Harris lost the state of Arizona anyway. Americans had the choice between a party that was serious about trying to onshore some manufacturing and a party that wasn't, and it made the wrong choice because vibes, basically.
This may be more accurate than you realize. Both Democrat and old Republican party rhetoric and policies were pro-globalization/offshoring, with the occasional exception such as CHIPS (and corn subsidies). It's not surprising nobody believed they were changing direction, if for every "we're bringing semiconductors back", they heard ten "your car is German your phone is Chinese your tacos are Mexican, how dare you interfere with glorious Free Trade!"
Also one can't ignore that the GOP managed to remarked the CHIPS act as a key source of inflation, which they also managed to pin on "Bidenomics". Which was another source of "vibes, basically"
Weren't we hearing for years about how it went to waste because Intel did stock buybacks or whatever using the CHIPS money. Now we are supposed to believe it's critical?
CHIPS incentive funding is way bigger than just Intel, so it’s a bit disingenuous to write off the whole program just because of one (or even several) high profile bad actor. We should have a nuanced discussion and fix the shortcomings of our programs, but at least assess things in a balanced way.
If you check the transcript of the confirmation hearing for the current Commerce secretary, practically every Senator brags about their state’s CHIPS funded R&D hub. Lots of growth in small and medium businesses there. And CHIPS incentive funding played a huge role in bringing the new TSMC fab in Arizona
This entire post is so wrong, it is difficult to know where to start. The first sentence about taxes is wrong. The second statement is an entirely unsupported opinion. The final statement miscategorized "cost centers" as some sort of federal investment? As for "clear path", the road US exceptionalism is paved with the gold derived from sensible investments in R&D and tech advancement. There was no clear path to paying back our investment in the federal highway system, but it did pay back indeed. There was no clear path to paying back our investments in basic physics, chemistry, and biology, but it did pay back indeed.
> R&D is a cost center that can no longer be written off of a company’s taxes.
Can you elaborate on this? It was my understanding a company only pays taxes on profit. So isn't the revenue that goes into R&D effectively taxed at 0%, since at that point it's not yet profit? I.e. only dividend payouts get taxed.
2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made it less beneficial to use R&D for tax credits because they had to be amortized over five years. Not good when you're an MBA looking to financially engineer your way into a fat bonus.
> It's annoying Americans were given only two choices - offshoring is great and let's keep doing it, and, as you say, the opposite, meth-fueled let's bring back manufacturing overnight.
There were a lot of slower manufacturing on-shoring incentives during the Biden administration that would have presumably continued under the Harris administration. Mainly around green energy and electric vehicle manufacturing incentives - which have successfully resulted in new auto, battery, and supply chain factories being built mostly in red states - and semiconductor manufacturing. The Biden administration also maintained and increased tariffs on specific types of products coming from China including EVs.
So I don't think your categorization of the two choices Americans were given is quite accurate.
As someone watching EV & battery plants break ground in my state (GA), this is absolutely my take.
Biden's infrastructure and funding bills were basically doing exactly this, and their foreign policy largely aligned with this goal as well.
I was not a huge Biden fan early in his presidency (Breaking the rail union strike and the complete lackluster response to actually prosecuting criminality in the outgoing admin were not my desired policies - democrats are markedly too corporatist in general).
But his infrastructure bills were sorely needed practical steps to doing a lot of good for a lot of folks in the US. There's a reason so many politicians then tried to take credit for them (incl Trump).
We were getting the slow and steady version at least for chip manufacturing with the CHIPS Act but Trump has a major need to get credit for everything so that's being torn apart too.
The US faces a much tougher hill to climb though in regards to bringing manufacturing back. China had it easy because they had most of what you could want; a huge labor force that could upskill to manufacturing (the rural poor population), cheap labor (kind of an extension to point 1 but also includes their lower COL and wage expectations over all), and low environmental barriers.
To bring manufacturing back to the US is a way harder lift; we have a lot tighter labor market, if we shift a lot of people to manufacturing someone needs to take the jobs they leave. We (well I at least don't enjoy the idea of going back to when rivers caught fire on the regular) don't want to strip environmental protections back to a level to make it cheap to dispose of waste. The best targets are low labor, high price, high skill goods, like, I don't know, chip manufacturing!
>The US faces a much tougher hill to climb though in regards to bringing manufacturing back.
I saw a headline yesterday that says there are more pets than children in Japan. How long until this is true in the US? The truth of the matter is that there is no workforce left in the United States, and will be less of one by the time manufacturing does spin up. In WWII, the Army was happy at how many of the young men there had come from farms and were familiar with using/driving heavy equipment, how many knew some welding, etc. Then after the war, that translated right back into mnufacturing there these now older men were familiar with "making things". They could do actual labor. How well will the part-time baristas and Uber Eats delivery drivers and Dollar General shelf stockers do on the assembly line?
>if we shift a lot of people to manufacturing someone needs to take the jobs they leave.
If we could bring back manufacturing, then we would need to restructure our society such that those jobs lesser/menial jobs could go undone (or be automated). But we can't really bring it back, and they will bring in others on any number of weird visas no one has really heard of to do the lesser/menial jobs which are the only ones left. The people who set this in motion aren't even just retired, they're already dead of old age and there's nothing anyone can do about what's coming.
People are part-time baristas and Uber Eats delivery drivers because there aren’t other jobs available, and people can pick up skills faster than you think.
I know a lot of people in the Bay Area with serious fabrication skills (mainly applied to art), who would love to have a stable job using those skills in a factory setting, but who are constantly looking for gig work instead.
There were two different fabrication jobs I nearly took the last time I was looking for work. I have what amounts to a second job as a creative producer and art fabricator, but it doesn’t pay the bills, so I need a day job. All else being equal, if factory work was enough to pay the bills, I’d choose that over a full time job with a heavy mental load.
It’s easy to dismiss factory work as menial, but like, seriously watch Starbucks baristas working during a morning rush, when there are tons of mobile app orders and also tons of people in line. It’s an assembly line. Different technical skills, but similar structure and pace. And at least in a factory you can sit down.
tl;dr I think we’re vastly underestimating the capabilities of our existing workforce, and unfairly dismissing factory work as a viable replacement for certain kinds of jobs.
>and people can pick up skills faster than you think.
Possibly. But they can't change the attitudes that created them from childhood up. The barista that complains on r/antiwork that their manager is a douche and that they're taking another mental health day because standing upright is too challenging for an hour at a stretch isn't going to like mandatory overtime spot welding or manning the torque wrench. Can they be taught to do it? Yeh, probably, theoretically at least. Supposing they don't get out because they'd rather be scrolling on a phone.
I can foresee this, it's not prophecy... just common sense. But I suppose other people need to run the experiment and see the results for themselves.
Out of high school, I must have worked 4 or 5 factory jobs (even in the early 1990s that was drying up), and so I have some idea what this is like. It's not a long-form media article for me. I don't think it's menial. When I use that word, I'm talking about the person at the cash register at Dollar Tree, or the job where you scrub the toilets at Wendy's.
>I think we’re vastly underestimating the capabilities of our existing workforce,
Maybe. But I'm not understating its size, or the demographic projections that say it's shrinking quickly.
>and unfairly dismissing factory work as a viable replacement for certain kinds of jobs.
They'd be great. But you can't just make a magic wand and have them appear, and if you could you'd never fill the positions.
Well, money talks and it's hard to choose the other option. On one hand bring manufacturing back to US and pay them higher, because otherwise the pay in McDonald's is better with a less demanding physical (cmiiw, don't live in US).
On the other hand, keep manufacturing outside of US for cheaper labor to keep price low and having bigger margin. It's an easy choice to make.
And again this is not a US specific problem, it's almost all of countries nowadays have a massive wealth gap that makes people racing to the bottom of living / working standard.
The thing is also that absolutely nothing about the overall situation changed meaningfully over the last 50 years or so.
People had the exact same concerns and fears when electronics manufacturing started shifting to Japan like 50 years ago-- they went in the same way up the value chain that China did, and they started losing a lot of the industry with rising wages, too, exactly like what we see with China => Vietnam/Indonesia/... nowadays.
I think 90% of the whole political debate about the economy is misplaced nostalgia combined with problematic local wealth inequality-- poor countries lifting themselves up by manufacturing stuff for low wages is how the whole system is actually supposed to work from my perspective; describing that as "ripping off the American people" is completely unhinged, misinformed self-delusion to me.
> I think 90% of the whole political debate about the economy is misplaced nostalgia combined with problematic local wealth inequality
When Trump said that new manufacturing facilities would be fast-tracked to being able to build their own on-site power plants because the grid is "at risk of bombing", I've come to think that the whole political debate is really about: What the hell are we going to do if WWIII happens?
Manufacturing capability and capacity is an incredibly precious resource if you find yourself in a large scale war, and there is growing concern (realistic or not) that America has given it away/lost it. It makes no difference in peaceful times, but there is growing belief that the era of peace is coming to an end.
In fact, if you take a higher level view of what is going on, like the wanting to annex Canada and Greenland, it seems the entire motivation for it all is preparing for the possibility of war with Russia (and China).
> When Trump said that new manufacturing facilities would be fast-tracked to being able to build their own on-site power plants because the grid is "at risk of bombing", I've come to think that the whole political debate is really about: What the hell are we going to do if WWIII happens?
I'm not buying that whole argument. At all. Because this looks too much like a "lets find favorable talking points for the middling plans we already put in motion"-exercise.
Can you honestly argue that current economic policy and decisionmaking was mainly driven by strategic military interests and planning, as opposed to Trump being a big fan of tariffs as a concept?
Because I don't think you can. And I think we don't need more than a glance at the liberation day proposals to identify this; if the aim was to war-proof US supply chains, then you would expect a big focus on military relevance of tariffed goods, coupled with long term investments into defense-relevant local industry and a glut of defense-spending in general.
Instead we got blanket tariffs that were so ill-conceived, they mostly had to be rolled back/suspended the next day, and generally pretty much no apparent guiding focus or much thought at all.
Concerning possible war: Russia is not a credible military opponent to the US and is not gonna be one within decades, either. Their land army basically got stopped by a country a fifth of their size on mainly donated (and frequently old) western equipment, and the Russian Navy embarassed itself even worse.
China is a somewhat credible opponent, but what would they even go to war over that would actually affect the US? Panama? They might be more serious about taking Taiwan back, but I honestly doubt that the US would involve itself in that business too much anyway; considering how the whole support for the Ukraine, whose territorial integrity it formally agreed on to protect, amounted to some military hand-me-downs and a bit of intel sharing (no longer even that from what I know?), I would NOT hold my breath waiting for US carriers in a Taiwan invasion...
> Can you honestly argue that current economic policy and decisionmaking was mainly driven by strategic military interests and planning, as opposed to Trump being a big fan of tariffs as a concept?
Well, like we established in a discussion here yesterday, argument only takes place if you don't know. It is the mind's way to explore and learn. So, yes, obviously I could as I don't have enough information to know for sure. If I did, there would be nothing argue about, now would there? I'd already know everything there is to know. It would be a pointless endeavour.
But I don't think an argument is what you are actually looking for. It seems you're simply looking for someone to do free work for you. As great as that may sound to you, there is no reason for anyone else to cater to that. For the sake of good faith, I'll spare you anything more that would be serving to me.
They gave you plenty of things to rebut or discuss, but instead of doing any of that you got hung up on a rhetorical device that is used to imply poor or empty argumentation which, frankly, seems to be on point.
>the whole support for the Ukraine, whose territorial integrity it formally agreed on to protect, amounted to some military hand-me-downs and a bit of intel sharing (no longer even that from what I know?)
Let's not forget that Trump and his clown show are now attempting to bully Ukraine into paying the full, inflated to the max, US government contractor price for the new versions of those hand-me-downs. Partly because that was how the accounting was done - very often, $X of "military aid to Ukraine" = $X spent on a new weapon for US military to replace the decades old weapon to be sent to Ukraine.
well, if the first step to prepare for WWIII is threatening to annex nearest allies with their own sovereignty (Canada), I'd say it's a very very bad preparation. Secondly, imposing tariff for raw materials and tools while you don't have all the groundwork domestically to do the manufacturing, is also a very very bad preparation. If this is the best US can get, I'm disappointed.
Seeing it as a "rip off" is indeed delusion, but turning a blind eye to the dangers of becoming (ever more) dependent on a foreign country is an even worse folly.
> The kind of slow and steady protection and promotion of home-grown industry that China and most of Asia so successfully used to grow their economies was completely absent as even a talking point
The slow and steady way that post-WW2 Korea and Japan did needs a unanimously agreed 10-20 year long game plan between industry and government, which is incompatible with democracies who change colors and strategies every 4 years where the new administration begins to tear down everything the previous administration did because they serve different voter bases and corporate lobby groups.
It is also incompatible with the US since a lot of corporations made bank due to offshoring and will fight it every way they can since they don't want to deal with costly US labor who can unionize or sue you for millions if they break a finger at work. Even TSMC Arizona had to bring half the workers from Taiwan, and it's not like they're making tchotchkes.
They were brought from Taiwan due to their expertise and familiarity with TSMC processes. America doesn’t have a glut of people with EUV fab experience — they all already work for Intel.
Sure, but it's not like they're paying them super competitive wages. Some people on HN said the Taiwanese TSMC Arizona workers already started applying at Intel.
If you want to kick-start manufacturing, you're gonna have to attract people somehow initially, either through more money, or free education/training, etc
>The slow and steady way that post-WW2 Korea and Japan did needs a unanimously agreed 10-20 year long game plan between industry and government, which is incompatible with democracies who change colors and strategies every 4 years where the new administration begins to tear down everything the previous administration did because they serve different voter bases and corporate lobby groups.
The message of "we're gonna find some way to undo some of the damage of off shoring and find some way to put heavy industry back to work" has been included in one way or another in every presidential candidates platform at least as far back as Obama's first term.
The specifics change from party to party and candidate to candidate but this isn't a new thing. The common man has been clamoring for some sort of change from the status quo for the better part of a generation now. It's only recently that the situation has become such a priority that elections are won or lost on it.
I fully expect that whatever administration comes next will continue on the path of on-shoring, if perhaps in a more reasonable way.
>It is also incompatible with the US since a lot of corporations made bank due to offshoring and will fight it every way they can since they don't want to deal with costly US labor who can unionize or sue you for millions if they break a finger at work
The people who actually run manufacturing and heavy industry really resent the current off-shoring status quo. They only do it because the sum total of other policy pushed by short sighted wall street financiers and/or environmental/labor advocates makes it the only viable option. I think they'd be happy to come back if doing so was financially viable, they just want it to be predictable (something current policy making surely isn't, lol) so they can plan around it because investments in those industries are made on decades long timelines.
I think we're at the point now where there's the political will to let the punch press eat some fingers to keep the factory open.
There's various forms of democracy and many are not as chaotic as the US kind in regards to long term plans.
A good example is the general global approach to Net Zero. It's slow, methodical, science based, negotiated.
But if anyone brings up planning for 2050 it's usually in the context of "It's all bullshit, politicians are crap, they're just lying to you and kicking the can down the road till they retire" (and if you scratch the surface you'll have even chance that the person saying that has been radicalised into not even believing there's a problem to be solved).
But only the US is in and out of the Paris agreement etc.
What makes the US more chaotic (and UK to some extent and probably more) is the political system first-past-the-post which does nothing to promote collaboration. Quite the contrary the winner does its best to crush every sprout of the loser to make his future win more likely. Now if you had a few parties which would be forced to forge alliances to govern, they would probably govern in alliances in the following terms as well so some of the politics for sure get carried over. But, such ideas help now nobody, the current system is how it is.
Countries change policies all the time based on the whishes of industry lobby groups or voters, not just the US. People focusing exclusively on what Trump is doing are myopic or arguing in bad faith.
And the global approach to net zero is not global, nor is it binding, it's more of a gentlemen's agreement bet which is basically worthless. Ideologically it sounds good, the issues are always when the tires hit the road, and then some spanners get thrown in on top: wars, pandemics, revolutions, natural disasters, political feuds, etc.
So yeah, outside of bubbles of privileged mid-upper class people in safe rich countries, nobody gives a crap about what's gonna happen in 2050 when they can't pay next month's rent/mortgage or their car doesn't start and their bank balance is red.
Capitalism got us chasing next quarter returns at the expense of what's gonna happen in 2050, so we'll be kicking the can down the road until everything falls apart, first very slowly, and then very suddenly.
> Countries change policies all the time based on the whishes of industry lobby groups or voters, not just the US.
It is irrelevant what other countries do.
What matters is whether or not other countries and industries trust that a country has sufficient stability to do business in and with. If there are actual or perceived signals that suggest chaos, rational people will not be interested to be tethered to that dispensation.
> The kind of slow and steady protection and promotion of home-grown industry that China and most of Asia so successfully used to grow their economies was completely absent as even a talking point.
I think this is because China is an autocracy, so they can make long-term plans. Democracies that swing as wildly as the US currently does is no place for that, and that's not limited to the new administration.
Did America stop being a democracy under FDR? Conflating specific term limits with autocracy/democracy is a bit dramatic.
There isn't anything physically stopping America from doing what China is doing. We literally did it first (in modernity)! Albeit for too short a time before the robber barons and foreign interests retook control.
I think what I wrote here covers what you're saying:
> Democracies that swing as wildly as the US currently does
It's not "robber barons" etc. It's just two very different worldviews existing in one place that cause big swings in policy when the other one is elected.
I'm not talking about Red vs. Blue. US national policy doesn't actually swing that much when Red switches to Blue and so on. Yes, Trump abandoned this or that agreement, but Biden generally didn't reverse.
I believe Lee Kuan Yew said "In China, you can't change the government but you can change the policy. In America you can change the government but you can't change the policy", referring to the postwar neoliberal / Deng era.
>It's annoying Americans were given only two choices - offshoring is great and let's keep doing it, and, as you say, the opposite, meth-fueled let's bring back manufacturing overnight.
Excuse me, but I am old enough to remember Biden's program such as CHIPS, a slow and steady protection and promotion of home-grown industry.
America had the choice. It chose wrong. Are Americans going to assume the consequences of their choices or are they going to lie to themselves they weren't given the choice? That last option would fit more with the "character" of the America nowadays, the one who voted Trump: make mistakes and blame someone else for it.
Was it absent? The "Green New Deal" was hitting on some of that. You can't beat "<Some other country> is going to pay for it" and "Coal jobs are going to come back", especially when there's no accountability or fact checking.
But Americans were given that choice? The chips act was an industrial policy play based on the industrial policy playbook of east asian countries like South Korea and Taiwan.
I'm not a fan of industrial policy or the chips act, but it seems to be just the choice you are asking for.
I find it annoying that you think the other choice was “offshoring is great.” Spending on US factory construction surged under Biden. This was largely due to stuff like the IRA and the CHIPS Act. If voters had made different choices in November 2024, in Congress as well as the Presidency, I think we could have had even more aggressive industrial policy — instead of this absolute shitshow that will permanently damage the US’s economic position.
On the other hand, I am a believer in the idea that voters get the government they deserve. So maybe we deserve this.
There are carrots and sticks. The current plan seems to be to cut down giant trees at random and hope they don't fall on anything important. If they do there will need to be government welfare applied anyway to keep businesses alive just like during the previous Trump administration.
I've mostly decided to stop arguing about this stuff, since it's fairly obvious that Trump is going to ruin the economy and discredit his party for a generation.
The candidate who opposed Trump during the primaries would have done something very similar to what you said. But then she was born with ovaries so the Republican Party wanted nothing to do with her as the top boss.
Democrat voters didn’t want anything to do with her during the 2020 primaries and didn’t turn out as much for her in 2024 as they did for Biden in 2020, so who are the real misogynists here?
And this is why Democrats lost. Why admit and address that perhaps they ran a candidate that was deeply unpopular, even within her own party, when they could just instead blame the “misogynistic Republican” boogeyman.
Ah my mistake, I missed that this was referencing the Republican primaries here. Forgive me, the whole "Harris wasn't elected because Americans are misogynists" trope has been repeated so often I had that burned into my brain.
Addressing the primaries, no one was beating Trump, it has nothing to do with his closest but still far distant challenger being a woman.
Republicans would have voted for a Republican woman, they aren't the misogynists. Its more common for conservatives to elect women than for progressives to around the world, most female national leaders are right wing.
The reason there aren't many women in the Republican party isn't the voters, its that not many women likes right wing politics no matter where in the world you are.
> Democrat voters didn’t want anything to do with her during the 2020 primaries and didn’t turn out as much for her in 2024 as they did for Biden in 2020, so who are the real misogynists here?
Are you talking about Harris? I'm pretty sure she wasn't in the republican primaries so that isn't who the previous comment was talking about.
NO candidate should get a free pass. They should _all_ _always_ have to primary. That would have likely sorted out Biden earlier in the cycle and we might have had real choices other than Harris to replace the incumbent who flubbed that debate so badly that it was clear they were not going to get elected.
> China generates over twice as much electricity per person today as the United States. Why?
>> This appears to be completely wrong? All the stats I can find say that the US has about 4x the per capita electricity generation of China.
I believe the comparison is absolute production, not per person.
Anything else would be odd. Considering China has 4x the capita of US it would mean that in absolute terms China is producing 8x the energy of the US. In reality it seems to be roughly 2x (although both sources are a bit outdated):
US 2023: 4.18 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity from utility-scale generators. Additionally, small-scale solar photovoltaic systems contributed around 73.62 billion kWh 1.
China 2021: 8.53 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity
--
But the staggering difference is how much of the electricity is attributed to the Industrial sector:
China: 70% (~6 trillion kWh)
US: 26% (~1 trillion kWh)
So overall China allocates 6x the electricity to production compared to US...
China electricity consumption is growing by 6-8% a year and is likely to hit 10500 trillion kilowatt-hours in 2025. Which at $0.10/kwh the avg is a $1 trillion dollars. Though from what I understand in China home users are charged about $0.07 and industry $0.08 so $7-800 billion a year on electricity alone.
They are rapidly moving to renewable with grid scale BESS auctions avg $66-68/kw they are likely to have electricity prices at $0.01-0.02 over the next few years. I think it will be extremely tough to compete with China in manufacturing unless there is huge investment in renewable and storage systems to keep electricity prices competitive with China who are going to move on from coal over the next decade.
Not only that. Renewable tech is also a major export sector for China. Most batteries and solar panels bought elsewhere are Chinese. And they are dominating EV manufacturing and manufacturing of pretty much everything else. China has invested and is now getting enormous returns on investment. The rest of the world has divested and is now missing out. Not investing enough was a mistake that needs to be corrected.
It used to be that the Chinese economy was based on just cheap labor. It's now increasingly based on cheap energy and automation. Replicating that elsewhere needs to start with modernizing energy infrastructure. Without that, there is no chance of competing. Manufacturing is energy intensive. So, cheap energy is indeed a key enabler.
The cost per kwh is a good one to call out. I think the medium term target for that should be < 1 cent per kwh. Effectively it trends to zero because there is very little marginal with solar, wind, and batteries other than the depreciation of infrastructure, equipment, etc. over time.
> I believe the comparison is absolute production, not per person
Original article definitely said "per person".
China allocates much more to industry and/because it allocates much less to personal consumption. Especially things like air conditioning. US per person consumption is still 2x that of EU average.
Yes, not your fault, I believe the AUTHOR meant to compare absolute production.
> China allocates much more to industry and/because it allocates much less to personal consumption
Let's not fall into the same hole: In relative terms, US residential is more than 2x of China's residential power use, but that's relative to the much larger production use. In absolute terms their residential power-allocation is not that different actually:
CN: 15% (1.2 trillion kWh)
US: 35% (1.46 trillion kWh)
Now, on a per-capita basis the difference is staggering, as China consumes 20% less to serve 4x the population...
China is also more electrified generally than the US. They only just pulled ahead but the rate of change is startling.
Since 2000 they've gone from 10% of final energy being electricity to nearly 26% while the US has been basically flat around 23% and they are both predicted to grow (or not grow) at roughly the same in the next few years.
I did some quick research on this. McKinsey has a pretty slick-looking web-facing report titled "Global Energy Perspective 2024" report [1] has a table [2] showing breakdowns by industry.
Because VAT is collected at the border on imports, some people (wrongly) consider VATs a tariff. Considering that VAT is rebated on exports, VATs are trade neutral.
Sales tax as implemented in the US is not as tax efficient as VAT due to the impact of sales taxation on intermediate transactions during manufacturing. VAT only taxes the incrementally the value added at each transaction) whereas sales tax applies to the entire value at each stage.
Hmm how is it different in the US do you not get back in the sales tax that you paid for your input. Here the middle man pay tax on the buying price and then collects on the sell price. Then has to pay the government minus what they paid as input sale tax. So all increments on the price gets taxed till the end user. But the tax itself is not taxed again.
Many B2B transactions are tax-exempt but it's complicated. And gets really complicated once international transactions are considered. And also whether the company has a physical nexus in the place the product is being purchased. All in all, I think it would be simpler if the US adopted VAT. But that seems very unlikely.
Last I checked VAT is the same rate regardless if the product is made in China or by pinguins on Antarctica so why anyone in the US gives a damn is beyond me.
At an individual level, it’s not more complicated: it’s reimbursed instead of exempted. And if you’re charging it, it’s easier, since you simply always charge instead of maintaining your list of exceptions.
On crime they most centrically do, watch the China Show (not the bloomberg one) on youtube. One example given on the show is that Once you go into northern villages and small towns you start seeing propganda posters on why you shouldn't take drugs. Homelessness is widespread and present too but you just wont see it in city centers more on the outstkirts.
Police in cities will beat homeless people and get them back on buses to where their hukou is, so the homeless that remain are very good at hiding. Hostile architecture is also very common in China. But there is a lot of sub quality housing (eg in sub-basements that lack windows or good ventilation) that allow much of the working poor to at least be technically housed even in expensive cities (many restaurants also provide housing for their staff in the dining area after closing, or did at least 20 years ago). The outskirts used to have more slums than they had today in Beijing, most of the slums have moved into sub-basements as far as I can tell (called the “ant tribe”).
Crime really is much lower than it was a decade ago. People have more money, societal trust is higher. Drug use in clubs has always been a thing, but China differs from the USA in that their is no social support at all for addicts (so they either get clean with help from their family or they die).
Do not watch it please unless you want to consume worldview-distoring propaganda and become more ignorant as a result. It's made by 2 American expats who gotten kicked out of China when visa-requirements were tightened, and no-skill immigrants were no longer welcome.
They've become anti-China youtubers serving the hungry China-hating audience on how China is bad and a paper tiger.
Instead watch this guy (https://www.youtube.com/@Awakening_Richard). I'm not saying he's unbiased, either, but he's thoughtful and I think he brings insight into how the Chinese intelligentsia thinks about how the world works.
But back to your point - it's oft repeated that Chinese population decline will destroy China in the long run and poverty in Chinese society.
The TLDR version is that about half of the Chinese population lives in desperate poverty (and are economically invisible), and just a couple decades ago 90+% of Chinese lived like this. One cannot bring about a transformation into an industrialized wealthy lifestyle overnight, but coming from the experience of the past decades, the Chinese have been remarkably effective in this, and the following decades will see these people lifted up to modern societal standards as well.
By this alone, one can conservatively expect a doubling of Chinese GDP, as there will be twice as many consumers and laborers who consume and work at the level of the current workforce.
This also means that China has a huge and high marginal utility domestic demand for goods, and even if sanctioned, they wont run of people to sell to.
When I visited China, the expats told me that recreational drug supplychains were strictly compartmentalized. There was the supply of illicit drugs for Westerners (imported by the sons of Nigerian businessmen, the cliche went), the supply of illicit drugs for Chinese people (who only dealt with Chinese people), and then there were the vast array of drugs that are completely legal to get over the counter in China without a prescription (at a pharmacy or CTM shop) that would be controlled substances in a US pharmacy.
That the official line from the CCP was that China had no drug problems, no prostitution, a variety of other things†, and that there were no gay people in China; That these were all Western ailments.
Urban China is a panopticon state not only digitally, but culturally. Housing is much tighter than the US, walls thinner. Your underwear is hung out to dry in clear view. "Privacy" in terms of politeness norms mostly consists of pretending you don't see or hear a thing. Neighbors generally know a lot about what each other are doing. 7% of the population are Party members, and in Marxist-Leninist systems this connotes something closer to earning a military officer commission; The Party is not trivial to apply to, the Party is strictly regimented, Party rules are held above and before the civil law, Party members are expected to be informers and have a strict lawful-good orientation from the perspective of the regime. Penalties for commerce in illicit drugs are even more extreme than the US, and due process is not bound by the same presumptions.
There are lots of factors conspiring against the sort of informal US inner city street drug distribution being as big of a deal in China.
Disclaimer: All my information is more than a decade out of date, and was only ever a thin slice of opinions from mostly Westerners in some first tier cities.
† From an academic paper: "2 The Six Evils are prostitution, drugs, selling women and children, pornography, gambling, and feudal superstition. Criminal gangs, or triads, are often counted as a seventh evil. These vices represent impediments to modernization and throwbacks to social problems that were present prior to the Communist takeover. Elevation of a problem to an "evil" symbolizes that the Beijing regime will mount a "campaign" or "struggle" against it."
> The Party is not trivial to apply to, the Party is strictly regimented, Party rules are held above and before the civil law, Party members are expected to be informers and have a strict lawful-good orientation from the perspective of the regime.
> hat the official line from the CCP was that China had no drug problems, no prostitution, a variety of other things
Reminds me of a book I read years ago about the Soviet Union. Officially prostitution didn't exist there either, so there were no laws on the books about it. Enforcement usually was around various "antisocial" laws and usually for the street-walkers. Crime in general was mostly fine, so long as it wasn't a threat to the state, against well-connected people, or otherwise visible.
No wonder Russia got so bad after the strong state dissipated.
Regarding the potential to annoy small businesses, it’s actually pretty easy to hire a firm to represent you in the EU. You’ll need a lawyer at some point anyway so it’s often the same firm.
If we had the same requirements here in the US it would likely become the same.
Delaware / Ohio corporations? I think those already exist for 'business friendly' incorporation states. Might also be Nevada and Texas, though I'm more speculating there or recalling singular offhand cases I heard about.
Once again, want to point out how this is simply American leadership not wanting to accept their loss and move on. For the first time in the history they're not being perceived as the "global leader", and that's not acceptable from their POV. Now it's just freaking out and hoping that some extreme policy changes will change the course. From my personal experience, most people act this way when they're in distress and can't think ahead because of all the externalities.
This isn't just ego. This is an impending existential issue.
America needs to increase manufacturing capacity if it wants to maintain hegemony and possibly world peace.
China will soon have the ability to take Taiwan and Korea and Japan. If that happens it's game over for any American interests and perhaps democracy as a whole.
Wargames[0] paint a grim picture of an upcoming conflict between China and America over Taiwan with the US barely winning at a great cost including the loss of many ships, aircraft, and the depletion of missile stocks.
The Chinese have a naval production of 260 times that of America and account for an ungodly amount of global steel production so they'll be able to bounce back faster than the US can. With a lead time for producing American missiles measured in months and years it will be just a matter of time before they take the countries in the region that are critical to American manufacturing if they're so inclined.
Do you think that global hegemony by force is long-term (centuries) sustainable at all?
What makes you confident that this could ever work on a longer term? The US is only ~5% of people globally, and I would expect any industrial/technological lead to melt over the years unless there is a monumental, continuous difference in spending (like what the US military did since WW2).
But I see no indication that you can keep that situation stable over the long term, and I honestly think that attempts like the current tariff approach don't help one bit in the long run while having massive harmful side effects (price inflation, loss of planning stability/soft power/productivity).
Global hegemony of the US is based not on 5% of people, rather the US sphere of influence. US, Canada, EU, Japan, Australia, South Korea, etc. The combination is immensely rich, powerful and advanced. Even more so when you keep India on board as well.
It at least stands a fighting chance if it wasn't the case that this alliance is being destroyed before our eyes.
I will admit that even an integrated alliance cannot push around China in the way it could decades ago.
> America needs to increase manufacturing capacity if it wants to maintain hegemony and possibly world peace.
That does not make sense.
Low value manufacturing has been disappearing from the US for decades and arguably the US -- up until the recent turmoil -- has continued to maintain its hegemony.
Great, but as I said, it does not make sense for the US to chase low value manufacturing.
Apparel, shoes, things you might find in a big box store -- zero sense. Low value manufacturing - leave it to China, Vietnam, India.
Jet engines? Advanced polymer materials? Batteries? All make sense! CHIPS act was intended to accelerate US IC R&D and manufacturing...which was cancelled.
I am concerned that the United States does not have the industrial capacity or institutional knowledge to make relatively simple but essential things for war.
In a protracted conflict with China will the US have the industrial capacity to produce enough ammunition? Does the US have a sufficient stockpile of ammunition to buy enough time to scale up the industrial capacity to manufacture more ammunition? Are there enough skilled people in the US who can teach more people to become skilled in this endeavour in time?
Does the US even have enough industrial capacity to produce enough iron, aluminum, nickel, copper and other such things to do this?
It is specifically "US hegemony" and not "western democracy hegemony" because the US is so extraordinarily powerful in economy and military.
Interests/culture with other democracies aligns well enough (and the power differential is large enough!) that US leadership is tolerated/supported.
But Canada, EU, Australia, Japan are NOT vasall states: If interests would clash and/or the US lose a lot of its relative power, those would cease being majority supporters and push for domestic interests instead.
Calling them "fairweather friends" might be too cynical but I think it's much more accurate than considering them integral parts of the US hegemony.
I think "centuries", plural, is too long for anything much to last since the industrial era. I'm not comfortable guessing past 2032 even without any questions about AI.
The United Kingdom of England and Scotland didn't exist until 1707, and even that was sans-Ireland until 1800.
And yet, even with the biggest empire the world had ever known, WW1 could only be won with the support of another huge empire (France) and the subsequent arrival of the USA; shortly after this, most of Ireland became semi-independent.
WW2 was "won", again with huge support, but a pyrrhic victory from the UK's point of view, and India soon after became independent. The Suez Crisis was 1956, and showed that the old empires of the UK (and France, Union française) were no longer economically hegemonic — even when working together — and the US had replaced them in this role.
Looking into the future, there's no way to guess. The more tech advances, the easier it becomes for a single person to cause enormous, world-altering impacts: hackers are already relevant on the geopolitical stage; there's good reason to think that quality of life is directly related to how much energy a person can process, but once you have sufficient energy per-capita, it's not hard to use a cyclotron to brute-force the purification of weapons grade uranium, or to transmute depleted uranium into plutonium; simple genetic manipulation has been a standard technique for first year biology students for at least two decades, and can be done in a home lab, and at some point we will have risks from someone trying to use this for evil rather than decorative bioluminescence. All these things can topple a hegemon that spends its tomorrows looking at yesterday's battlefield.
The UK continues to exist because it was replaced by a democratic American hegemony.
If an authoritarian country like China achieves hegemony the continued existence of democracy is at risk.
I want to live in a democratic world, not an authoritarian one.
America's democracy is a flawed one but of the two choices -- American hegemony or Chinese hegemony it is the best path to a flourishing global liberal democracy.
Can you foresee Chinese hegemony leading to increased democracy, individual property rights, due process, and rule of law?
No, I do not, but I also do not much stock in America's policy of spreading democracy. I believe that America will do best by setting a good example at home, and it is failing in this regard. China is obviously not a democracy.
My fear is that people will look at China's might and economic success and conclude that democracy is overrated.
France and Spain continue to exist and they were former hegemons. China has stably existed with long periods of turning inwards after more regional hedgemony.
It's really straight forward -- Do you consider things like liberal democracy, property rights, freedom of expression, freedom of thought, freedom of association, due process, and the rule of law to be essential features of society?
If you don't -- Chinese hegemony and the path it will lead the world down is the one for you.
If you do -- Then American hegemony with all its flaws is something worth fighting for.
It’s hard to convince people to think the US is in any position to protect those principles when the current administration is attacking each and every one them head on.
Being ideals, all of those ideals in reality are implemented with different tradeoffs in different nations with different risks going forward. Discussing in more detail how one arrives at that particular choice of options is more interesting than an end presentation of what looks like a fallacy of false dichotomy.
People value freedom in different ways. Personally, I would ally myself with tomorrow’s bully, rather than today’s. I understand the implications, but it looks like most of nations are shifting in the same manner.
One note, some of the things you’ve listed has been proven as “mostly on paper, once people get their way, mental gymnastics will overcome the reason” in the past month. For a bastion of “freedom and democracy”, it’s really not looking like one from outside.
Authorian to democracy transition happens more often than democracies come back from severe backslides, which... is basically never. I struggle to think of an example.
Stop and think about this for a moment -- do you think that China doesn't spread authoritarianism across the globe because they don't want to or simply because they can't do it yet?
One is actively threatening, and one may threaten in the future.
Also, I am Canadian, but I could also be Panamanian, or Danish. Maybe it would be different if I were Taiwanese or Vietnamese or Japanese, but, China is far away and playing nice, and America is close and not.
It’d be amazing, but I don’t have a lot to do with that one way or the other. If it happens, I might reconsider my stance on US v China. Right now it looks unlikely.
They were really close to not existing. France stopped existing, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Yugoslavia, Greece, all stopped existing. China, Thailand, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Myanmar, New Guinea, Guam, East Timor, and Nauru all stopped existing.
It certainly was. You think nuclear weapons are less or more likely to have countries not exist anymore? If you believe MAD works, then countries can easily not exist the conventional warfare way. If you think MAD won't work, countries can easily not exist the nuclear war way. The only difference is speed.
Of your list I've been to France, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, France (you seem to have it twice for some reason), Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore.
They all most definitely did not stop existing.
Also I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about when you say the United Kingdom came really close to not existing.
I did. Austria, Belgium, France etc all existed during WW2. They were occupied, but they existed. Also lots of countries you listed definitely don't meet any sort of reasonable definition of "hegemon".
To pick another example, Singapore was a crown colony before the war, then they were occupied by Japan during WW2, then they were a single nation with what is now Malaysia, then in the 1960s they two countries became independent from each other. They didn't under any reasonable reading of the situation cease to exist and they also have never been a hegemon of any kind.
So what's your criteria for existing, dirt in the same place? Their governments were dissolved. That means they don't exist anymore. Does the confederacy exist since the boarders are the same and the dirt is in the same place? I would argue not.
>Also lots of countries you listed definitely don't meet any sort of reasonable definition of "hegemon".
I agree, just pointing out countries that no longer existed.
Genuinely, USA as of now is threat to both peace and democracy - both at home and abroad. Whether it manages to bring back manufacturing is irrelevant to that.
> America needs to increase manufacturing capacity if it wants to maintain hegemony and possibly world peace.
This argument is based on experiences in WWII, i.e. the previous war. You need to be cautious about basing military doctrine on the previous war. I’m not sure the next war will be won by churning out aircraft carriers.
I don't know why people keep thinking that China will attack Taiwan. It took HK and Macao without a shot. I think China is following Sun Tzu.
"subduing the enemy without fighting," is the epitome of strategic thinking in his book, The Art of War. This means achieving victory through cunning, deception, and maneuvering, rather than through direct confrontation and bloodshed"
They are increasing their military knowing that US military costs 4+x as much. It might be 4x better so don't fight. Just bankrupt the US. Trump wants a $1T military budget next year.
Why would China want to conquer the West? Buying what it wants is cheaper than an uncertain military battle fought with Nukes.
1) Historical claims - the CCP views Taiwan as a breakaway province and considers unification important. After the Chinese Civil War ended in 1948, the defeated Republic of China (ROC) government fled to Taiwan while the CCP took control of China.
2) Political legitimacy - successful unification would be a nationalist victory for the CCP
3) Strategic importance - key geographic asset. It lies in the first island chain, a line of US-aligned territories that can potentially restrict China's naval access to the Pacific. Control over Taiwan gives China more leverage over sea lanes critical to global trade and security influence in East Asia
4) Economic, technology bonus points - Taiwan is a global tech powerhouse, especially in semiconductors. TSMC is the world's leading chipmaker.
5) Global power dynamics - unification would weaken US influence in the region
1-2 really just do not matter; I can't imagine anyone in the CCP views that as more important than their own internal matters.
3 as I said, they can just negotiate and throw money at the problem; it's cheaper than fighting a war.
4 they can already buy hardware from them and was doing so just fine before US stepped in. DeepSeek seemed to do fine and China may likely surpass Western AI development in the near future
5 I don't see how that's the case when the US has very little presence in TW compared to SK or JP. Taiwan is a hair on a gorilla's right knee.
1 and 2 are the biggest reasons by far and matter a lot.
Dictators are people too, they are susceptible as anyone to their minds being poisoned by too much nationalism. And even if it wasn't for that they would still view it as a way to get back flagging support from a nationalistic public(even dictators need a minimal amount of support from the population).
They do see Taiwan as an internal matter, that's the problem they don't recognize this sovereignty and don't like or understand Democracy.
It's like Russia with Ukraine but they'll also claim Taiwan isn't a country because even most western nations technically don't recognize them. It makes me think we made a mistake not recognizing Taiwan as it's own country back in the 90s when China was less powerful.
Just answering your question "What I still don't get is what could China possibly want with Taiwan?".
If you don't believe the rational I sketched, informed by analyses such as that by the Council of Foreign Relations[1], you can also learn more by reading directly from China's Mission in the EU about the China One principle: http://eu.china-mission.gov.cn/eng/more/20220812Taiwan/20220...
Are you trying to evaluate their intelligence or predict their actions? I for one agree that attacking Taiwan is strategic folly. That doesn't mean they won't do it. Invading Ukraine was strategic folly too. The CCP are smarter than Putin, but not immune to mistakes. And again, look at their built strategy.
Regardless of the reasons (mostly political rather than rational, as my sibling comment laid out), the beach invasion barges we've been seeing are IMO a dead giveaway of intent and resolve to take Taiwan. Between that and American fecklessness, if I was Taiwanese I would be shitting my pants.
I'll charitably assume you meant first time in post-war history.
USA as "The Global leader" didn't emerge until after Europe was ravaged first by The Great War and then WWII.
No-one was looking toward the USA for leadership during The Great Game. Even by the time of the outbreak of WW1, the size of the USA's army was very small, half the size of the British army, which was itself considered small compared to the French and German armies.
US foreign policy was still inward looking, protectionist and isolationist until it could no longer ignore the case for war.
The foreign power projection really didn't kick into gear until 1945 onward and the determination not to let too much of the world fall to communist ideas.
I was a few drinks in on a sunny Tokyo day when I wrote it, my bad. But yeah, sorry, that’s what I meant. Basically since gaining the “leadership”, which you’re completely right about.
That is really the big problem with the current policy in the US: it's completely unclear what the policy is and how long it will last. This is not a stable climate for investment. Would you invest in a country where the president plays Russian roulette with the economy?
Most corporations will wait it out. Corporations that have an established interest (like Big Tech) will bribe Trump to get the exemptions they need to continue their business. Everybody else will have to decide how much they will want to depend on such an openly corrupt system. There industries that see no problem in dealing with corrupt regimes.
> To sell in Europe, we must register for their tax system and nominate a legal representative.
American companies? Register for EU tax system?
I can buy from anyone in the US and worldwide for that matter, and as long as they're willing to figure out shipping they don't need to register anywhere, I can handle taxes myself when receiving.
Individuals (sole traders, contractors etc) can claim VAT rebates. You don’t have to have a lawyer or an accountant if you’re prepared to figure out the rules yourself.
Tl;Dr: The author makes a strong case for broader, higher tariffs but understands it is impossible to help American manufacturing knowing that the next administration will cave to China and Wall-street and immediately move to undo everything. The solution is to work together to make American protectionism work.
1. They are not high enough: Correct. Raise them more.
2. America's industrial supply chain is weak: That is why we need to bring the factories and resource extraction home.
3. We don't know how to make it: Perhaps we can steal the IP like China? We will figure it out.
4. The effective cost of labor in the US is higher than is looks: Then raise the tariffs higher.
5. We don't have the infrastructure to manufacture: You have to build it first, This will get cheaper and easier as we continue to bring industry home.
6. Made in America will take time: Blaming permitting time and Bureaucracy is a ridiculous excuse. The federal government can override all state and local requirements here. Its a choice to slow projects down.
7. Uncertainty and Complexity around tariffs: Democrats will have a hard time undoing progress if there is movement to reshore industry. War over Taiwan seems basically inevitable and this will harden resolve.
8. Most Americans are going to hate manufacturing: Most (well a very large and non-negligible percent of) Americans are going to loose their jobs because of AI. Most of us hate our jobs already, manufacturing will pay better. There are always endless service industries...like delivering food, if they do not like supervising a robotics controlled factory. It is disingenuous to imagine a return of American manufacturing without Huge AI and robotics investments. More factories will be lights out than the alternative. The jobs will be in servicing the robots, computer systems and quality control. We aren't talking Rosie the Riveter and the author must know it.
9. The labor does not exist to make good products: This is why there must be some discrimination over tariffs and why they should not be a simple even percentage. We can choose to bring back GPU manufacturing but pass on fast fashion. And during the process of negotiation we can give up those industries we do not want in exchange for support of a China embargo.
10. Automation will not save us: The author cannot imagine a world where manufacturing is not motivated by global trade. They fail to understand that it does not matter how much more productive China is when protectionist policies prevent trade. The goal is to get America to a place where it can manufacture everything it NEEDS on its own.
11. Americans file lawsuits: Good- this will increase the quality of goods we enjoy and we can get past the disposable foreign garbage that floods our markets.
12. enforcement will be uneven and manipulated: so get on board and help to improve it, stop undermining the attempt to help this country.
13. tariff policies structured in wrong way: Really not a terrible idea to have a disparity in tariff between input goods and finished goods but it is a half measure. We need the entire supply chain from resource harvesting, to tooling, to components to final finished manufacturing if we want to ensure national security in a world post-NATO.
14. Michael Jordan sucked at baseball: Was there serious consequence to MJ trying his hand at baseball? We got through COVID. We have survived massive supply disruptions and the market has been pumping as hard as ever. If you are not currently retired it is absurd to worry about fluctuations in the stock market. And if you are, you likely invested in companies that sold out America.
> The goal is to get America to a place where it can manufacture everything it NEEDS on its own.
That is just incredibly stupid.
The only country that tries to do this is the hellhole known as North Korea and even they fail. No country is an island and doing this will just ensure America becomes a third world country or worse
The other day I saw the results of a poll [1] where 80% of Americans thought the *country* would be better off if more Americans worked in factories. However, only 20% of Americans thought that *they* would be better off if more Americans worked in factories. It was surprisingly bipartisan.
In other words, people like the idea of this, but no one actually wants this.
Americans are cosplaying (voting their belief system, not what they'll do, the "revealed preference"), as they do as farmers [1] [2] [3] [4], as they do as "rural Americans" [5]. It is an identity crisis for tens of millions of people [6]. Their crisis is our shared political turmoil. Happiness is reality minus expectations.
From the piece: "The people most excited about this new tariff policy tend to be those who’ve never actually made anything, because if you have, you’d know how hard the work is."
Agreed and the same people do a lot of their shopping at Amazon/Dollar General/Wal-Mart where low price goods are only possible because they are made off shore for much much lower wages. Bringing that manufacturing back here would destroy their buying power.
I do find it interesting that a lot of these same people are against raising the minimum wage because "it will bankrupt all the businesses" but somehow think that bringing manufacturing for the goods they buy back to the US won't do the same. At best, going from off-shore labor costs of say $15/day to $15/hour (minimum for US workers) is an 8x multiplier and will somehow magically work but a 1.5 multiplier on minimum wage is just untenable for any business.
Honestly, it is mostly an emotional response around "fairness". They don't want others getting a "raise" when they don't "deserve it". However, everything they get is 1000% deserved. The greatest trick the rich ever pulled was convincing the middle class that all their woes are the fault of the poor. The political comic of "That foreigner wants your cookie!" captures it pretty well (imo).
Offhand, I believe that trick started with tribalism (generally, the 'other' is the most obvious scape goat), became racism in various forms (they look different / go to a different church it's /their/ fault), and has shifted to classism with thinly veiled racism included.
It's not much different than how a young child will blame anyone else for something that's gone wrong / they got caught doing. Maybe our society should do a better job promoting responsibility and allowing parents to offer oppertunities for children to be responsible; instead of infantalizing everyone entirely until some magical number has passed and suddenly they're an adult who was never previously empowered to be responsible.
Othering has driven a lot of the hate and derisiveness of the 21st century. A lot of the political messaging and advertising tends to specifically focus on othering.
The control and status they've had is diminishing, and they are taking it out on the rest of us. Regardless, it will be lost. People are tricky. Onward.
> people like the idea of this, but no one actually wants this
As others have pointed out, this is not a contradiction. (Read their reply.)
However, the question of 'Do YOU want to work in a factory?' is heavily influenced by the fact that we don't see factory work as a high-paying career, or a career at all. Part of the solution to the factory problem is enhancing the value proposition for the employees.
I am ambivalent toward tariffs, but the idea is that if we make foreign products more expensive then the higher price of domestic goods becomes more palatable by comparison. If paying domestic workers more raises the price of domestic goods, and if people are willing to pay that price for whatever reason, you will start to see growth in manufacturing.
It's also silly to reject long-term goals simply because achieving them is difficult.
> If paying domestic workers more raises the price of domestic goods, and if people are willing to pay that price for whatever reason, you will start to see growth in manufacturing.
We ran this experiment for decades. It turns out that Americans are not willing to pay the higher prices, which led to our manufacturing consolidating around higher-value items.
This notion that we should move Americans from high-productivity jobs to lower-productivity jobs, and that such move will somehow enhance our prosperity is nutty. Lower-productivity jobs mean less income for workers, means less income in the system, means lower prosperity for all Americans. Moving tens of millions Americans to higher-productivity jobs while maintaining relatively low unemployment has to be seen as one of the economic success stories of the modern age.
Separately, Americans do not feel like this happened. That's a different discussion, about allocation of wealth. Our poorest states have higher GDPs per capita than many "rich" western EU countries. Mississippi has a higher GDP per capita than the UK. The difference is that the US has designed a system where every citizen lives a precarious existence, potentially a few months from destitution while other rich countries have not done that. We are allowed to make different choices in the US if we don't like this outcome.
> We ran this experiment for decades. It turns out that Americans are not willing to pay the higher prices, which led to our manufacturing consolidating around higher-value items.
But did we run that experiment while foreign alternatives were nearly or equally expensive? That's the real test, and whether foolish or not that's what they are trying to do with tariffs.
> Lower-productivity jobs mean less income for workers
Are you suggesting former factory workers all became scientists and engineers? If that's true then fantastic. But I'd like to see evidence that what they are doing now is somehow more productive.
> Our poorest states have higher GDPs per capita than many "rich" western EU countries.
Is the result of that a higher median income, or is it a reflection of a higher wealth inequality?
> But did we run that experiment while foreign alternatives were nearly or equally expensive?
Tariffs will have to go a lot higher than 145% for this to be a relevant question. US labor (and now due to tariffs, raw materials) costs are so much higher that frequently even doubling the import price would not make US cost-competitive.
> Are you suggesting former factory workers all became scientists and engineers?
No, I am suggesting that those people currently work in jobs that support higher productivity of the overall labor force, and that higher productivity creates the conditions necessary for increased prosperity for Americans.
Let's take QA for example as something that is often thought of as lower-skilled (but which is not) job that a hypothetical former factory worker could retrain to do. A person could QA a T-shirt or QA the Netflix app. The Netflix QA impacts more flow of money than a T-shirt QA, and so supports higher income for everyone working at Netflix than those working in a T-shirt factory. It is not possible for a person to manually QA enough shirts to have a similar economic impact as QAing the Netflix app.
Or compare the typical factory worker to a profession that is often denigrated in the US: retail. A factory worker making cutlery or light bulbs will generate less money for the economy than the average Costco employee[1].
Or look at a company that moves these goods around, like UPS. $360k revenue per employee @ 21% gross margin.
> Is the result of that a higher median income, or is it a reflection of a higher wealth inequality?
This is the continued choice of the US polity to not use our wealth to improve our common good. We instead choose to allocate it in ways that are markedly different from other rich and developing nations. So a high-productivity state with a higher GDP per capita than the UK is "poor" because our chosen combination of labor laws, tax laws, etc. are designed to produce that outcome. There used to be robust debate about the best way to make our economy less anxiety-inducing for individuals, but that discourse ended and everybody pretty much accepts that this is how it has to be. Nonetheless, we are allowed to choose differently.
1 - Costco produces close to $100k of gross profit per employee. This is multiples of the prevailing wage even in rich countries in Western Europe, much less countries like China.
> A factory worker making cutlery or light bulbs will generate less money for the economy than the average Costco employee.
The good news is that we don't need to calculate the value of an employee, because the market itself makes it loud and clear: wages. The higher the wages, the higher the value. In any sane company, the less valuable an individual is to the bottom line, the less they get paid.
So then, if the wages of a factory job start to eclipse that of other fields, that's all the evidence we need of higher productivity/value/whatever-you-want-to-call-it.
> > Our poorest states have higher GDPs per capita than many "rich" western EU countries.
Not the OP, but poor as used here seems to refer to average quality of life , quality of infrastructure, etc.
> Is the result of that a higher median income, or is it a reflection of a higher wealth inequality?
Higher wealth inequality leading to stretched public services and infrastructure, which lead to lower quality of life , despite higher nominal GDP per capita.
You are probably much better off being a poor person in Spain (33k GDP/capita) vs Mississippi (40k GDP per capita), because at least you don't need to worry about the cost of healthcare.
You're more likely (but still very unlikely) to get extremely rich in the US though, although probably not in Mississippi.
Spot on. I would extend your analysis to include the median middle-class person is probably better off in Spain vs most/all US states. This, even though the Spaniard personally earns less income. Largely as a result of the economically precarious nature of living in the US.
Healthcare, childcare, education, retirement are all big expensive things the US does incredibly poorly.
This is spot on. To add, it won’t even matter the outcome of upending our entire society and economy this way (tariffs) if the wealth distribution remains unequal. Nor will these types of jobs equalize wealth distribution (which is never mentioned because that probably sounds like communism) Look at the poor factory workers in china! You want to bring that here? Insanity.
Instead the products might just cease to exist. Or cease to exist in a particular market. Tariff-free trade brings into being products or markets that previously didn't exist.
> If paying domestic workers more raises the price of domestic goods, and if people are willing to pay that price for whatever reason, you will start to see growth in manufacturing.
Why would you need to pay them more? Remove their legal ability to organize, cripple their social safety net, and they will either work or die.
I'm not advocating for that, but it does seem to be the path we're deliberately taking.
This lines up with the experience of the people I know who have worked in factories, there seems to be a disconnect with all these pundits and economists (and many people on the internet in general) talking about basic manufacturing work and the people I have met with actual factory jobs. The pay could've been worse and it wasn't the worst job I've heard of but it also wasn't great (they said they would've preferred a boring office job). There's a reason the pundits talking about the virtues of manufacturing jobs are pundits.
Now that is an elegant solution! They are starting to punish people with the wrong opinion and strip them of their citizen rights already; instead of flying them to El Salvador, might as well keep them as slaves in a federal prison! Pesky dissidents and manufacturing problems solved at the same time!
If that 20% never had a factory job before, it is not a reliable indicator. It just means their current job is already shitty. They may get a factory job and realize that they were better off flipping burgers, even with less pay.
From TFA:
> When I first went to China as a naive 24 year old, I told my supplier I was going to “work a day in his factory!” I lasted 4 hours.
This poll is being propped up as evidence that people don't actually want to work in a factory, yet more people voiced interest in doing so than are currently, by an order of magnitude. If you believe there's a disconnect between perception and reality, that's fair, but it would have to be off by an order of magnitude on the positive side to support the premise, and an anecdote about a Chinese factory is very weak evidence of that. I would posit that many people would be happier and more fulfilled working in a factory than being stuck doing gig work or packing foreign products for Amazon or even bullshit desk work, but I'm not elitist enough to pretend to know what blue-collar workers in stagnant towns actually feel, let alone argue that they actually want the opposite of what they say. Personally, I wish I had the chance to work in a factory at 16 years old instead of a call center.
Would interesting to know what percentage themselves or their own children wanted to work at a factory. Can tell with a huge degree of confidence for all practical purposes thats 0.
Its always easy to expect other people to make sacrifices working these jobs, while imagining you and your kids working office desk jobs.
Every tradesman I know makes north of 80k, granted it's backbreaking work. I assume working in a factory such as semiconductors pays 6 figs, as an engineer or foreman of some kind.
If they are literally stamping parts together on an assembly line then I guess yeah it's not going to pay 100k.
Bringing back factory jobs isn’t bringing back the American dream. It’s just replacing the shitty gig work you have to do to barely get by with a shitty factory job that you have to do to barely get by. If they pay well, it’ll drive up the cost of goods a ton and still be unhelpful for people.
You would be able to afford a lot less if everything you bought was made in factories where every worker was paid north of $100k. That includes your home, by the way.
I started out asking myself, what would it take for American's to be okay with factory work. For example, my grandfather worked in a GM plant in Kansas City for most of his life. I mean he had started out wearing suits and doing books for a bank when he was young and fresh out of high school.
And then I remembered, oh yeah, the Great Depression happened when he was young and he was let go from his bank job — the bank folded. When the decent paying factory job at an auto assembly plant eventually came along he probably jumped at it.
Everyone wants more manufacturing in the US, but nobody wants to be a factory worker. People would rather starve or go homeless than work in a factory. Until Americans overcome their pride, this is going to make building manufacturing in the US very difficult.
Everybody wants to be a factory worker if the compensation is good. Why do you think Chinese people work in factories? Because it pays better than other jobs they can find.
"But if factory wages are good then products will be expensive"
No, because the wages for the factory worker is less than 1% of a products shelf price.
If 20% of people really think they'd be better off as factory workers, that's actually kind of a lot. Can you imagine if 20% of the working population really did work in factories? That's an enormous number.
> In other words, people like the idea of this, but no one actually wants this.
Misinterpretation of data.
> The other day I saw the results of a poll [1] where 80% of Americans thought the country would be better off if more Americans worked in factories. However, only 20% of Americans thought that they would be better off if more Americans worked in factories. It was surprisingly bipartisan.
Compared to the current percentage of people employed in manufacturing (9.9% - 12,759,129 / 128,718,060), there are **more** Americans that would like to move into manufacturing, not less.
Let's me real... 80% of the hard shit in US factories will be ran by mexican migrant labourers like in agriculture. And maybe that's enough of a "win" for US interests.
It says "only 20% of Americans thought that they would be better off if more Americans worked in factories." Which isn't the same as believing they would be better off if they worked in a factory.
I agree with that sentiment. I would be better off if more of you, just not me, worked in factories instead of trying to compete with me for my non-factory work.
Jonathan Blow's "Preventing the collapse of civilization" [1] makes a similar point. It is easy to assume that, if we can build EUV machines and space telescopes, then processing stainless steel and manufacturing PCBs is baby stuff, and is just waiting for the proper incentives to spring up again. Unfortunately that is not the case -- reality has a surprising amount of detail [2] and even medium-level technology takes know-how and skilled workers to execute properly. Both can be recovered and scaled back up if the will is there. And time -- ten or twenty years of persistent and intelligent effort should be plenty to MAGA :)
> But the important question is - is it worth it? Should we be doing something more valuable instead?
It's hard to quantify. E.g. the CHIPS act is a strategic thing in case TSMC is disrupted for some reason. How valuable is insurance? How much useful work (and skill) do you ship overseas in exchange for promissory notes[0]?
People seem to want jobs with the macho kudos of manual labour, but with the physical comfort and salaries of email jobs, and I have some very bad news about that combination.
Those people need to watch a few episodes of Mike Rowe's "Dirty Jobs".
Also people need to stop saying "unskilled labor".
There is no such thing as labor without skills,
outside a category in an archaic way of justifying low wages.
This is a pet peeve of mine: yes there are unskilled jobs. Lots of them. The term is maybe slightly misleading, but there absolutely is a class of jobs that any able-bodied person could perform given at most a few hours or a few days of training, and they are qualitatively distinct from jobs that require education, specialized training, and/or months or years of experience to be considered proficient and productive in them.
That doesn’t mean people who work jobs in the former category deserve ridicule or disrespect. But the distinction is important because finding workers to fill an unskilled role is just a matter of finding said able-bodied person, while for the latter you need some kind of system of education, training and/or apprenticeship (either explicitly or effectively) to be set up and functioning to even have an industry that depends on those jobs.
Not everything is some silly game of political fighting through language. Some things we actually need terms distinguishing “this” from “that” so we can have real world conversations about them.
Mike Rowe is a shitty human being who delights and is gleeful about the idea of those folks in these same “dirty jobs” being paid less, forced to work more and harder with less safety equipment, and with less respect.
He hates the idea of people getting ahead in life with anything but the most extreme back breaking labor. That’s why he’s hardcore MAGA and makes such a big deal about trying to shit on folks who do desk jobs.
Fuck him, fuck his show, fuck the “good parts” where he tries to show you that being a garbage man is hard. If it’s really that skilled, the market will pay it as such.
I think it is pretty useful to be able to distinguish between jobs that don't require much education/training, and jobs that do. "Unskilled" and "skilled" are how we do that. Do you have alternative words you'd use?
IMHO, with the Big Tech boom winding down, what is more valuable for us to do? Manufacturing could prepare us for the next wave, whatever that might be.
> IMHO, with the Big Tech boom winding down, what is more valuable for us to do?
Tech isn't winding down; tech, as the sector that draws the most investment based on long-term development, had the biggest response to tight monetary policy designed to slow the entire economy down, but that response demonstrates that tech is where most of the marginal dollar goes.
> Manufacturing could prepare us for the next wave, whatever that might be.
Trying to work our way down the raw materials -> manufacturing -> finance/services ladder that countries usually try to work their way up for maximum prosperity in globalized trade isn't going to prepare us for anything other than lasting economic decline. And why would “manufacturing”—which you can't build generically, but only by specific, usually impossible to reallocate to a different use that isn't closely similar without sacrificing most of the value, major capital investments in particular subareas of manufacturing, prepare us for anything else even ignoring that we’d have to regress to do it?
Just because we ended the era of cheap money to try and stop runaway inflation doesn't mean the tech boom is winding down.
Look at everything that's happening with gene editing, in physics, with the jwst, with LLMs and robotics and computer vision, with alt energy sources, batteries, in material sciences, etc.
I mean this is such a myopic take. We are in just now in an era where people are now capable of finding needles in needlestacks.
You are confusing easily manipulated economic vibes that feel bad right now with the rapid approach of a complete overhaul of the human experience.
The U.S. has basically supported the strip mining of our economy by value sucking predatory investment firms. There is a reason why China have more robotics per capita in their factories than we do and it has to do with a complete failure in strategic thinking, long term planning and ultimately a hatred for our youth.
> gene editing, in physics, with the jwst, with LLMs and robotics and computer vision, with alt energy sources, batteries, in material sciences, etc.
These are tidal waves compared to the tech boom tsunami we experienced in the last 25+ years: enabling rapid communication of every human on the planet and democratizing access (anyone can create a app/website/etc to enable other people to communicate/make money/etc).
> where people are now capable of finding needles in needlestacks
Yes, exactly. all that is left is going after hard problems that impact the long tail.
I've seen this brought up with board games that are now primarily made in China, because injection molding is cheaper there especially for small quantities. The US could make the board game minis, but everyone who is capable of it in the US is producing high value high quality aerospace, industrial, medical parts. It's a waste of their time to produce small runs of toy parts.
mold making is also pretty complicated -- anything in the 1,000-1M parts produced will _probably_ be an aluminum mold (cheaper than steel) but they're still heavy and large to keep around.
I haven't met any injection molding shops in the US that do a huge amount of specialty parts like toys. The industry tries to get as many medical device jobs as possible.
I've thought about this and love board games. I don't want cheap plastic anymore. I want a reusable modular gaming system that let's me use more imagination.
Finishes are getting much better, especially with the high resolution resin based printers. But they are still slow and labor intensive compared to a "real" factory.
That's a crazy statement. It is clearly not true that every single person in the US capable of making board games now or in the future is instead already making high-grade aerospace and medical components.
Depends -- do you want the US to become a vassal state of China? That's the trajectory we were on. China is going to catch up rapidly on technology, AI, and services, and before a few months ago the US was going to continue falling behind in every other conceivable area.
That’s a hilarious thing to say considering our behavior towards trade lately. We’ve burned bridges with our closest trading partners and made everyone else uncomfortable to trade with us because they don’t know what the eventual tariff rate will be, or if it will change tomorrow. We’re retreating from the world stage, and guess who’s sitting there ready to take the reins. It’s genuinely the opposite of what you seem to want.
Depends on how evaluate what is valuable. E.g. here in europe a lot of people think subsidising local agriculture is not valuable and we should just import cheaper food. On the other hand, a lot of people agree that food security is kinda valuable by itself. And want similar security in more fields. In that sense yes, doing „low tech“ is valuable in the long run.
I've been thinking lately that we don't properly account for things like security. I've also been thinking lately that a lot of people have terrible ethics and are more than happy to engage in nepotism and or fraud. Don't know what to do about it personally, I just try to keep my needs small and be happy with what I've got while trying to prepare my own children to have some level of a good life.
More like common man does not think long term (and I'd say rightfully so). While democratic regime embraces populist hedonistic solutions.
Who cares about defense capabilities 10 or 50 years down the line? Lots of people in West had a good run outsourcing everything. But once there's nothing else to outsource and IP to sell... It's not gonna be pretty.
Next generations in West will have to work very hard to recover from this mess.
Have you ever heard any concrete strategies and plans regarding food security?
Wouldn't there be policies about how many calories should be produced in what form, how long can it be stored, what would a local ramp up look like if there was a global catastrophe?
What percentage of agriculture is really relevant to food security?
Those are just empty words so farmers can get their subsidies and go on to produce more industrial rapeseed oil.
As long as you have whole supply chain locally, you don't need to store too much.
The problem with agriculture is you can't really „ramp up“ it on a whim. That's why you need to keep it going and you can't just kick start your food production when outside suppliers start to blackmail you.
> In that sense yes, doing „low tech“ is valuable in the long run.
Sure. But how much tax money do you want to throw at entire industries to hide the basic fact that wages are lower elsewhere? Where do you want to take the labor away from? And where do you draw the essential/wasted subsidies boundary line?
Because in my view, Trump tariffs just ignore those very basic questions and don't even attempt to answer them.
It's perfectly reasonable IMO to throw 20 billion a year to agriculture, because that is a very essential sector. But doing the same for the textile industry? Ore/Oil refining? Steelworks? Chemical plants?
I don't wanna subsidies 20 non-essential industries just so that some former fast-food worker can assemble overpriced shoes inside the US (and labor demand from all those industries would drive up wages/costs in the fast-food sector, too, thanks to the Baumol effect).
I'm not against nurturing some important local industries, but Trump tariffs are a complete failure at achieving that IMO.
Don't want to make hypothetical shoes? Fine. One day soldiers may end up marching barefooted and loosing a battle though.
IMO the global economy eventually self-levels. Either you go up the chain so far that you eventually go off the rails by being unable to make basic stuff. And eventually being eaten by more hungry people with the basic skills. Or you keep yourself down by forcing yourself to not loose basic skills. Former gives you a short moment of glory with a high price for future generations. Later forces people to be more ascetic if that's the right word.
You misunderstand me. The US is making shoes-- just not as many as it imports from Vietnam or China. In fact enough shoes get made locally to export about 1$ billion worth of them (while ~$20 billion are spent on imports).
But I don't see the point in throwing billions of dollars from taxes at this industry just to make all those shoes here-- that is stupid (because the jobs that would create are not gonna be very desirable, they are gonna drive up costs all over by competing for labor, and that kind of protectionism is gonna invite retaliation).
The situation is very similar for a lot of industries.
I also think it is extremely unhealthy to baby an industry long-term by isolating it from competition like this.
I'd be totally on board if there was like 20% unemployment in the US, and this was a short term plan to give those people work/income.
But that's not it. This is in my view really bad policy driven by emotional arguments, and actual numbers, expected outcomes and historical precedent (for "I know better than market economies what ought to be produced") all heavily weight against this.
I'm very confident right now that the whole "20%ish tariffs for everyone to balance trade deficit with everyone" approach is gonna be walked back or lead to abysmal outcomes, and people should have realized that from the start.
> In fact enough shoes get made locally to export about 1$ billion worth of them
We have far more shoes than we need.
> the jobs that would create are not gonna be very desirable, they are gonna drive up costs all over
Only because our government is run by billionaires. Elect politicians that care about the median American and this problem can be resolved quickly.
> I also think it is extremely unhealthy to baby an industry long-term by isolating it from competition like this.
This “babying” you mention results in decent working conditions and guaranteed jobs for Americans. It’s a trade off I think is worth it, as your proposal disproportionately benefits the 1%.
> I know better than market economies what ought to be produced
Have you looked at the astronomical surplus of useless goods we have here? Those come at the cost of labor that could be put towards jobs that benefit all Americans (building more homes, cheaper childcare, cheaper food, etc). Again you’re arguing for a status quo that is designed to grow the wealth gap and make billionaires richer. Essentially trickle down economics.
I think large scale modeling and allocation for "more valuable" has been overly narrow - insufficiently diversified for uncertainty/unknowns, and subtly incorrect for western nations for decades now
It is if war is in the future. And I’m not saying this as hyperbole but based on statements made by NATO secretary general (both Rutte, previously Stoltenberg and former General Bauer) about Russia’s military production outproducing NATO, or Finish President Stubb speaking on the powers of the world shifting and the need to ramp production which were echo’d recently by Macron, or the Arctic region soon to become a contested region with China and Russia attempting to stake their influence in the area which is obviously at conflict with the personal interests of the other countries in the region.
It seems obvious to me that the world is a bit hotter than before 2022, with the likelihood of some conflict between powers of the world coming to pass being greater.
If production of raw materials to usable materials is all contained within countries that are deemed to be unfriendly by the one lacking this production capability, it’s a clearly in their vested interested to not be in that situation.
Only problem is there is a seemingly idiotic US administration attempting to address these deficiencies, unless there’s some weird 4D chess play going on, but I’m not convinced it’s that.
The EUV light sources are all made in San Diego. Currently, there is no single country that can make an 3600D or equivalent machine. Which shouldn't be surprising given the complexity.
I think the collapse of the American Empire is no more preventible than the collapse of the British, Spanish, or Roman empires. The issues with the US being the reserve currency has been known for a while now (and was even predicted by Keynes before the Bretton-Woods summit):
Any discussion of "bringing back manufacturing" that doesn't mention government spending or social programs to educate and upskill the population is not genuine. The current leadership are fools and ideologs who will only hasten the decline, which might actually be better globally if it lowers emissions. Time will tell I guess.
Empires come and go, that's just a fact of life. The question was whether they'd fall back relatively gracefully like (Western) Europe, now with multiple countries ranking at the top of "World's Happiest Countries", or whether they'll become Russia 2.0 with the biggest guns, richest oligarchs, and the worst quality of life.
It's still far from played out, but right now they're solidly on the road to Russia 2.0, with decades-long trends pointing that way.
The fall of the Soviet Union was arguably more graceful than the two world wars and myriad of colonial worlds it took Europe butt out. Even if you exclude the world wars it probably holds.
The fall of the Soviet Union was anything but graceful. Within months of the dissolution of the USSR Russia had children becoming prostitutes in order to get money for food.
In 1986/87 top USSR newspapers were covering high class prostitution for foreign businessmen in Moscow hotels. A few years later, foreign currency prostitute was ranked among most desirable occupations for women in an anonymous poll.
The sum total of the fatalities column on that page is joke compared to even the most optimistic assessment of how the British middle east or French Indochina went, and that's before you add in all the crap in Africa.
Edit: You could probably even include the current Ukraine shindig and my statement would still hold.
In absolute terms it's one of the harshest death tolls in the last decades. It's far from a joke. Though for completeness, AIDS was also going on there and it's hard to tell from the stats the proportion of impact
I think the current Russia-Ukraine war is the delayed end of Soviet Union collapse.
Boris Yeltsin in Aug 1991 called for "Russian Federation to reserve the right to review its borders with any adjacent republic" [0]. Yeltsin did that for a couple of weeks - until Leonid Kravchuk (Ukraine's last Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR and Republic of Ukraine's first president) said he will not support Yeltsin in dissolving USSR. By then the Baltics were already independent countries, but Yeltsin still needed Ukraine's Belarus' and Kazakhstan's support to get rid of Gorbachev.
So Yeltsin acquiesced the borders at that time, four months followed up with the Belovezha Accords and USSR dissolved without a fight a couple of weeks later.
I think what we see today is are some repressed conflicts being fought out in the open.
This is explicitly referenced in “A User’s Guide to Restructuring
the Global Trading System”, written November 2024 by Stephen Miran—current Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers of United States—which outlines the general ideology and strategies behind the current tariff situation.
I'd believe that article more if Trump hadn't called on congress to eliminate the CHIPS act, or if tariffs+Musk hadn't undermined it, or if republicans were for the Green New Deal, etc. If you're interested in onshoring, the smart thing would be to work on a targeted approach in high-value areas.
It's a really complicated manoeuvre even if you're not actively trying to shoot yourself in the foot. Eg Domestic factors (automation, corporate offshoring decisions, etc) also contributed to manufacturing job loss. A weaker dollar would probably help, but isn't a silver bullet.
The main article for this post goes into this in a lot of detail.
My pet theory is that he was in his 30s when the Plaza Accords happened and they really imprinted on him. If the rising Japanese economy could be brought to heel then so could the Chinese (ignore the fact that Japan was under the US security umbrella). It's no more rational than the fondness you might have for the first car you drove.
The American Empire never existed, because it never could. The US made the explicit decision not to occupy the defeated forces after WWII, save for strategic forces in place to protect the interests of the host countries. The US opened its market (the only market of size left and still the largest consumer bases in the world, by far) with no tariffs.
What the US got in return was cheap goods and a whole lot of debt. What the world got was stability. The US is no longer interested in subsidizing the global order.
The current discussion re: “bringing back manufacturing” is making the mistake that everyone always makes when Trump is involved: taking him at his word. The point isn’t to bring back all manufacturing. The point is to profit off of imports. Some manufacturing will return — whatever is high value added and benefits primary from cheap shipping internally - but nobody thinks that Americans are going to sew t-shirts.
Also, those who are looking for an American decline as comeuppance for being unkind to allies are going to be sorely disappointed. The US has everything it needs to be self sufficient, and no matter how batshit crazy the leadership is, it’s still — still — the safest place to park capital, still the largest consumer market by far (more than twice China), has a stable demographic and a middle class country to its south that brings in lower cost workers as needed. Not to mention being totally energy independent, bordered on two sides by oceans and with more potential port coastline than the rest of the world combined… and also holding the virtually all of the world's supply of high-purity quartz, which is a requirement for semiconductor production.
It explains it precisely. The United States is a maritime power. It has never had the capability to maintain longterm occupation the way the Soviets or Ottomans did.
You realize that an Empire does not need to be configured the exact same way as the Roman Empire, right? A combination of soft power, clandestine operations, and targeted military intervention is more resource-effective than a constant occupation, and should still be considered an empire.
You don’t have to physically occupy a country to exert influence over it, and we weren’t “subsidizing the global order.” We profited from the order, so continued to bring it about. How do you think we became the economy we are today?
> the collapse of the American Empire is no more preventible than the collapse of the British, Spanish, or Roman empires
They each had longer runs than we’ve had.
My pet theory is lead. From 1950 to 1980 we birthed a leaded generation [1]. Today, up to 60% of American voters were born before 1975 [2]. (Voters born between 1950 and 1980 came into the majority in the 1990s and should fall into the minority by 2028, but only barely. So in summary: Iraq War, Financial Crisis, Covid and Trump 47. It won’t be until the 2040s when truly unleaded voters, those born after 2000, command a majority.)
America's empire isn't really built on blantant colonialism (although we do that, too). It's built on "planting" US favorable governments all around the world.
I mean, we have half of Africa shooting themselves in the foot over and over for our own benefit. And every time it looks like an African nation is going to do something about it, some counter-military force appears out of nowhere (with US arms?) and some important political heads are assassinated.
This isn't a conspiracy theory, either. The destabilization of world governments done by our government to our benefit is well recorded.
Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa, are locations that are directly under US control. The entire western hemisphere is within our sphere of control, and a huge chunk of the planet was either directly aligned with us (EU, AUS/UK) or was compliant for fear of regime change.
The country itself was founded on the destruction of dozens of civilizations, a victory so total you don't even consider it as part of US imperial conquest. I can't believe I even have to explain this to people on here my God.
7. Uncertainty seems overlooked these days. The job of politicians is to make people and businesses dare. Making people dare getting an expensive education or starting a business or hiring your first employee or whatever it might be. What that requires will vary (if it's a social security system or a tax break for new companies or whatever). But something it always requires is trust in the stability. That the calculus for an investment is valid over N years. That laws or taxes don't swing wildly with political cycles.
That has been the bane of brazil for decades, every politician, at every level, undoes or stops whatever the previous politician was doing so there's absolutely no guarantee what you're doing today will still work tomorrow.
Its a terrible state and situation to invest in a business doesn't benefit anyone. My hometown had a large cultural center built by the mayor, he couldn't run for reelection again, new mayor is elected, completely ignores the whole thing was built and lets it rot. Everything is only done for an election cycle, the next cycle could bring something else entirely.
Its terrible to live in a place like this, Americans have no idea how bad this is going to be for the country.
Missing reason #15: commercial lenders with a brain realize that these tariffs and this self-imposed domestic crisis will dissipate in the next ~6 years. Nobody's going to lend in this market to try to spin up a new greenfield project in the US that will take years to get operational when they can sit and ride it out - ESPECIALLY at these interest rates.
The government could make loans directly and guarantee purchase prices, but it's also stopped making payments congress committed it to, so you'd be crazy to trust any promises from the administration.
This is a big one. Once upon a time, the Democrats and Republicans listened to the same think tanks, so there was continuity in planning. Now, they seem to be opposed to plans simply because the "other side" came up with them. The whiplash we've been experiencing has torn the economy apart and scared businesses away.
You’re almost right. This is not a both sides issue. One side has made a concerted effort to get us to this point, and it started in the 80s or before.
Not only will it take years to get operational, there is no way it would ever reach the scale and reach of Chinese manufacturing, not in six years, not in sixty. Even if they throw trillions of investor money at it.
China and others are clearly demonstrating the power of capitalism with state support. The US is too busy infighting and keeping capitalism and politics separate (small government, let the market decide etc). You wouldn't find enough employees that want to work in manufacturing; you'd need millions to even try and get close to what China is doing.
Now I'm not actually OK with what China is doing, the paragraphs about worker conditions were quite telling. But I will recognize that it gives them the upper hand in manufacturing that the US hasn't had since the 50's.
(meta: I'm gonna have to specify "the 1950's soon" don't I?)
> demonstrating the power of capitalism with state support
This is actually an excellent reason for tariffs. If we can't beat them at their game because it goes against our principles, then just don't buy their stuff.
So rather than competing when a more efficient innovation seems to have come about, just put our hands over our eyes and pretend it doesn't exist to our markets?
The tariffs most certainly will dissipate but we can't discount the chance that they may be replaced with actual written in law voted on by congress and signed by the president taxes that have similar but much more durable effects.
Manufacturing and heavy industry really hates off-shoring. They only do it because the sum total of other policy makes it the only viable option. I can see them taking a decent haircut in pursuit of some longer term goal.
If it looked like congress was eager to vote these tariffs into law, things would be different, as that sentiment might outlast the current administration, but that doesn't appear to be the case.
I have a suspicion that the coming tax cuts will be extreme, and the gaps in critical funding will be covered with tariff income. This will essentially make tariffs a cornerstone for government finances.
Political suicide to roll back tax breaks if they are primarily for the <$150k earners, like trump wants.
> Political suicide to roll back tax breaks if they are primarily for the <$150k earners, like trump wants.
What tax breaks has he aimed at these people beyond some of the overtime and tipping (which is expected to only equate to about $2K)?
Instead:
>The largest tax cuts would accrue to the highest-income families, the Treasury said.
> Household in the top 5% — who earn more than $450,000 a year, roughly — are the “biggest winners,” according to a July 2024 analysis by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. They’d get over 45% of the benefits of extending the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, it said.
> A Penn Wharton Budget Model analysis on the impacts of the broad Republican tax plan had a similar finding.
> The bottom 80% of income earners would get 29% of the total value of proposed tax cuts in 2026, according to the Wharton analysis, issued Thursday. The top 10% would get 56% of the value, it said.
It's already stated in the source quote. Extending the TCJA.
What he says is almost irrelevant to what he actually does most of the time. He 'says' he wants to lower taxes on the lower income folks, but the tax bill he actually passed was essentially a handout to wealthy and businesses. He 'says' he wants to bring back manufacturing, but the reality is his tariff actions do nothing of the sort.
I admit I had not heard this one. But the first thing I saw on it said:
> According to Lutnick’s interview with CBS News, Trump’s tax policy goal is to remove federal income taxes for individuals earning under $150,000 annually.
(omitted some of the other bullet points around tariff funding and tip exemption)
> While Lutnick later walked back the certainty of these plans, he clarified that the proposal is aspirational and depends on the ability to balance the federal budget.
I have serious doubts about the likelihood of a Trump proposal that even his Commerce Secretary says are "aspirational". Then again, the other part of Trump is that sometimes he does whatever he wants, regardless of what his Secretaries have said or known (witness the tariffs being paused mid hearing, leading to a Republican politician frantically swiping at his iPad in the middle of his testimony about the value of keeping the tariffs despite widespread market uncertainty).
Trump is a populist president. He is the right wing Bernie Sanders. Eliminating income tax for those making under $150k is right wing version of a "Billionaire Stipend" for everyone under $150k. Of course the republican guard is going to downplay the insanity he spews, but here we are with blanket tariffs and China virtually cut off.
Trump and Sanders aren't opposites, they're next door neighbors with a common goal and mostly superficial disagreements like whether tax cuts or stimulus checks are better hand out approaches. They both want to trash trade deals and both want tariffs. If you are perplexed as many where why so many Bernie bros voted Trump over Hillary in 2016, this is the answer.
They are both blue-collar presidents, and both want to inflict damage onto the elite. The problem is that the elite are the system, their health is a function of the economies health, so it's a "buckle-in" moment when someone comes in who wants to rough up the elite.
Its the integration and overall combined effect of the entire industrial pipeline that makes China so incredible. It processes all the raw materials and the recycling/reuse of off cuts through every possible way to turn those raw materials into components and then into goods with very little need for import from other countries. Its the complete system for a huge variety of goods.
To compete with that the entire pipeline from raw materials through components and final product needs to be reproduced and its taken China 40+ years to build up to this capacity and capability.
I think its something more countries should consider and do for certain pipelines but we are in a world with vast international trade and the winner(cheapest) takes most of the trade so whatever it is needs to be worth while within country.
Canada and the US are long time allies and should be able to benefit from eachother without much hesitation. China is an adversary, big difference in posture.
It’s either allies or you get invaded by us. You have no nukes. This isn’t the Micheal Moore fantasy of “Canadian bacon” where it’s all some funny post 90s joke: Trump hates Canadians and will use military force to annex them if he perceives that it will go well.
I fully, 100% expect this to happen, at least to Greenland and a real chance of this happening to Canada.
Unfortunately it's impossible to tell if they are de facto allies, because on the one hand they very much still are de jure still allies, and on the other all the stuff Trump is saying and doing.
3. Refined products can be exported to countries that don't have refinement capabilities. Not just the US and China. This gives Canada better trade leverage.
4. Security. A big one that's emerged in the last few weeks.
I don't see either Poilievre or Carney talking about this which is disappointing but not unexpected.
What is the competitive advantage here? That refinement exists in the United States and not Canada? That was a political choice made by Canadian politicians.
Even getting workers to the factory is a concerted effort of trains and public transport, Americans would quickly clog the highways with millions of single occupant large vehicles without first investing in more efficient ways to move people
Scenario: someone builds a factory complex employing thousands of workers.
Government builds and improves infrastructure and roads leading to and from that factory to get the workers in and out,
as well as getting raw materials in and finished goods out.
Someone properly points to the roads and says "you didn't build that",
pundits freak out.
They saw extra profit $ and didn't consider the consequences. I suspect there was a bit of racism involved where they thought the Chinese would never learn to go from manufacturer to designing products nor master the entire pipeline and end up competing with them in the domestic market. China obviously did because they funded engineering education heavily and learnt all they needed to and surpassed the companies they built for some time ago.
This is true, and at the same time, this article is absolutely rife with unsourced, unserious points. However insane Trumps plans, the fundamental "facts" presented here are largely a joke.
> Chinese workers work longer hours more happily and they’re physically faster with their hands; they can do things that American labor can’t. It’s years of accumulated skill, but it’s also a culture that is oriented around hard work and education that the United States no longer has. In China, there are no people who are too fat to work. The workers don’t storm off midshift, never to return to their job. You don’t have people who insist on being paid in cash so that they can keep their disability payments, while they do acrobatics on the factory floor that the non-disabled workers cannot do.
It's an actual joke to present something with such a derogatory view of the median American worker with no data to back it up. Most of America's "labor class" is in fact Mexican, the country with the highest annual hours worked per year. Secondly hours worked does not relate directly to productivity. American workers are the most productive in the world. [1]
More importantly, _we don't manufacture like this anymore, even in China_. Doing "acrobatics" on the factory floor is now obsolete. Much of what's said here fails to acknowledge that we would _not_ build our supply chains the same way as China does. China had a surplus of human labor (one that's facing an impending demographic crisis) and so used human labor in ways modern western countries would not and do not.[2]
Trump just blamed Zelensky for the war in Ukraine again. The entire administration keeps saying they will make Canada the 51st state and "destroy canada economically". They want to take Greenland by force. I don't think America cares much about democracy anymore, only dollars. China will take Taiwan and US will will keep buying chips like they always did.
Anymore? Arguably, the US never did. Ask, for example, the people living in Caribbean or Latin American countries what happened when they elected leaders that the US disliked.
Or Iran. Or Italy. Or Congo. And so on.
Or ask the Indonesians about the mass killings in their country in 1965-1966, supported by the US. Around 500,000 people died, though some estimates put the number of deaths at 1,000,000. Ask the Filipinos about how the US propped up their military dictatorship back in the 1970s-1980s.
I could keep going, but I think you get the point. The US has never been sincerely interested in democracy -- only strategically. The illusion that the US cared about democracy was a primarily Western luxury.
And when a Democrat is back in power in 2029, and China invades in 2030, what will she do? Protect Taiwan and destroy the US economy as we endure the equivalent of an infinite tariff; or appear weak by saying “that’s a shame”, even if China is doing a Great Leap Forward on the population?
I don't know and I wouldn't even hazard a guess. My entire observation right now as a non American is that America doesn't care about democracy anymore.
> I don't think America cares much about democracy anymore, only dollars.
I don't think it's a good idea to assign Trump's beliefs, or those of his administration, to America as a whole. Any more, frankly, than it's a good idea to assign those of his opposition to the country as a whole.
The relations between Taiwan and the US have nothing to do with "democracy". First it was about anti-communism, when the Chinese government fled there and the mainland was taken over by the communists. Now it is about anti-communism and "China containment". The fact that Taiwan transitioned to democracy in the 1980s is just convenient to feed the public that this is indeed about "democracy", "freedom", the usual.
As a historical point, the US never had a problem with Taiwan being handed back to China at the end of WWII, since it is what happened. Again, this is all just a tool against the communists and then against China's increasing power as a whole.
Even if you are correct, we are in a situation where we risk having built our economy on the cheap labor of a Russia equivalent.
If that Russia equivalent invades an Ukraine equivalent, despite both instances being considered unthinkably crazy, what are we going to do? Or, what will China do, to us?
> Chinese workers work longer hours more happily and they’re physically faster with their hands; they can do things that American labor can’t. It’s years of accumulated skill, but it’s also a culture that is oriented around hard work and education that the United States no longer has. In China, there are no people who are too fat to work. The workers don’t storm off midshift, never to return to their job. You don’t have people who insist on being paid in cash so that they can keep their disability payments, while they do acrobatics on the factory floor that the non-disabled workers cannot do.
he knows a lot about manufacturing but weirdly not much about labor. very unsubstantiated, derogatory comment.
it gets worse!
> In China, there are no people who are too fat to work. The workers don’t storm off midshift, never to return to their job. You don’t have people who insist on being paid in cash so that they can keep their disability payments, while they do acrobatics on the factory floor that the non-disabled workers cannot do.
> Chinese workers are much less likely to physically attack each other and their manager. They don’t take 30 minute bathroom breaks on company time. They don’t often quit because their out-of-state mother of their children discovered their new job and now receives 60% of their wages as child support. They don’t disappear because they’ve gone on meth benders. And they don’t fall asleep on a box midshift because their pay from yesterday got converted into pills.
> And they can do their times tables. To manufacture, you need to be able to consistently and accurately multiply 7 times 9 and read in English, and a disturbingly large portion of the American workforce cannot do that.
like the fuck? where are your sources? this sounds like some ignorant shit to say
I'd guess the source is stuff he has personally witnessed, which means even if it's true (would somebody just go on the Internet and tell lies?) it says nothing about prevalence.
Ignoring this is like ignoring the prophecitc Vivek tweet that triggered conservatives for him pointing out DEI for white people.
This post is basically correct. The Chinese will accept being exploited way harder than we will! Good going communism!
This shit is why I will resist Marxist bullshit with all of my fiber forever. Fucking barracks communist no matter how hard they try to claim “nah we don’t support that”.
"incentivize, subsidize" - yes. There should be less incentives and tax breaks for "holding an asset" and more incentives for making things that improve human lives. Most of the laws are set by the incumbents who stand to lose what they have built and who have the money to pay the lawyers to set the tax code. Real estate should not get incentives unless its getting someone in a home. Private equity, same. Venture capital, after a certain point, same. If you are worth a bazillian dollars, same. A lawyer with balls needs to take on the tax code. I'm kind of hoping the whole Harvard escapade awakens a few legal idealists out there.
America does need to bring back manufacturing. Not because a manufacturing job that pays $25/hr is somehow better than a service job that pays $25/hr.
The US needs to bring back manufacturing for strategic reasons and in strategic areas.
And it needs to have the capability to scale up manufacturing in response to emergencies.
But also, importantly, the US doesn't need to do this by onshoring all manufacturing. Near shoring and friend shoring will have to be extremely important components of adding these capabilities, and unfortunately, teh actions the US is taking will likely hurt nearshoring and friendshoring and will end up making the US less strategically capable in manufacturing even if it's able to reshore a significant amount of manufacturing.
A skilled assembly worker makes closer to $30 or $40 an hour than $25. And that doesn't account for overtime. A skilled tradesman can make $40+.
Manufacturing is skilled, well-paid labor that requires commitment, attention, and care. That is why there's a shortage of labor--not because of wages.
>>A skilled assembly worker makes closer to $30 or $40 an hour than $25. And that doesn't account for overtime. A skilled tradesman can make $40+.
In theory. In practice the numbers are way lower.
As some one who has done quite a big time in India IT services firms, have lots of war stories, our Delivery manager would often tell us if US managers only knew adjusted for regular all nighters, whole week on-call hell weeks. Development phases where teams would be working days at stretch in office. The actual per hour rate of an engineer in India is at best $1 - $5 an hour. You just can't bill the customer that way.
Only reason why this even works is India is still poor and people work for anything.
Im sure, adjust for everything(in real practice) manufacturing hourly wages in China aren't all that different and wouldn't be surprised if they are at something like $1 per hour, or something such.
Americans have little idea how much affluence and luxury their ordinary citizen has. Most of the world would do anything even to be poor in the US.
Fair enough to say nobody in the US is signing up to work a hellish factory job for $1/hr anytime soon.
The policy should be collaboration with China. 50/50 state subsidized joint ventures with Chinese corporations on EVs, raw materials refining, solar panels and batteries, etc. At the same time, a gradual and predictable tariff in those targeted areas. All of this, with the explicit consent and collaboration with the Chinese government. You could kill 2 birds with one stone and focus these policies on green energy and energy independence -- lessening the effects of climate change.
That is what you would do, if you really cared about bringing manufacturing back.
As of today, there is absolutely no off-ramp. The Dem policy is basically trump lite with respect to China. We are moving in lockstep towards making them a geopolitical adversary, and for what?
None of those places have manufacturing prowess in EVs, batteries, electronics, and solar, which is largely where China has comparative advantage over the US.
But yes in general, if we want to re-industrialize, we need to move the collaboration into the physical world and out of the financial world.
If we're going to defy the invisible hand, we should at least do it to benefit people in a concrete way - health care, education, UBI. Doing it for "strategy" is equivalent to simply burning the money people would have otherwise saved by doing nothing.
The components of a strategic manufactured product can be as simple as an injection molded switch, a LiION battery, capacitors, copper wire, etc., so the notion of bringing only "strategic items" back is as much a myth as the idea its mostly coming back to the USA. The goal here is to diversify the supply chain globally so its not concentrated in China. Internally this is sold as bringing MFG back to the USA (will happen to a noticeable degree), but that's not the actual plan.
I think of environmental conflicts that disappears in the US thanks to manufacturing moving to China.
In the 1990s there were numerous manufacturing plants in the US (two on the South Hill of Ithaca alone) that were found to be contaminated with solvents like
People thought it was great stuff, you wouldn't believe how hard it is to get cutting grease off things after you turn them on a lathe and vapor de-greasing makes it go away just like that.
China has some of the most advanced agriculture on the planet including a "vertical farm" that can sell straw mushrooms for about $2 a pack where they are super-proud that humans only touch them with a forklift. (Contrast that to the labor-intensive mushroom farms of Pennsylvania where somebody cuts each one with a knife.)
We are pretty omnivorous (I think mealworms start with "meal") and my obsession with anime and Japan has turned into serious sinophilia but my wife and I are hesitant to eat "Chinese Food" grown in China because of widespread environment contamination, I mean they've been building up heavy metal stocks ever since Emperor Qin Shi Huang poisoned himself with mercury.
Yeah, it's underrated how the Chinese boom just did not care for environmental impact, and because political organizing is banned the public are limited in how much they can complain about it.
It used to be a thing that people were importing massive quantities of baby formula to China because they didn't trust locally manufactured stuff.
Yes, but they're culturally related. Anywhere where people write with Chinese characters or used to write with Chinese characters has legends about nine-tailed foxes, for instance. The intelligentsia had access to Chinese literature and this diffused into the public imagination. [1]
For me it started out with being willing to enjoy media in an unfamiliar language (first Japanese) that gradually became familiar. Then playing the Japanese game Dynasty Warriors that got me thinking about the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and about the characters and the place names and other old Chinese stories like Journey to the West and pretty soon I am enjoying Chinese pop culture about old stories and new stories of the fantastic and even learning some Chinese, getting curious about Chinese mobile games that aren't known at all in the west because Chinese people cosplay as characters from them, etc. (At the university where I work I overhear conversations in Chinese almost every day)
Yes, Japan is a different culture which I still enjoy and appreciate, but for me it was also a gateway to China. [2] I was an anime fan for 30 years but in the last 3 years I've had the same kind of giddy feelings for Chinese pop culture that I had about anime at the beginning and of course that means I'm going to buy a whole fish and eat it with my family because my son's Chinese friend suggests it.
Lately I've been playing the Japanese game Dynasty Warriors Origins which has both Chinese and English voices and find it strange on one hand to hear legendary Chinese heroes speaking Japanese which I mostly understand and then listen intently to the Chinese which to me is still a wall of unfamiliar syllables where I struggle to pick out proper names and an occasional word or phrase -- but I have a great time trying!
[2] ... and it goes the other way, China's pop culture is inspired by Japan (I think it's funny that many Chinese games like Azur Lane use Japanese voices in the west because they know the kind of person likely to play that kind of game knows phrases like suki da! and has an emotional feel for Japanese even if they aren't fluent in it)
This pretty much mirrors what a friend of mine said (he is a recently-retired Co-CEO of a medium-sized manufacturing business).
He's been telling me this, for years. It's not a secret. The information has been out there, for ages. I'm surprised that the administration didn't understand this.
> I'm surprised that the administration didn't understand this.
Why would you assume they don't understand? Every time they're questioned about the tariffs the narrative shifts. We have a trade deficit, we're getting ripped off, we want to bring back domestic manufacturing jobs, we'll automate them with robotics and AI, we're playing hardball to negotiate a better trade deal and get rid of fentanyl, it's a matter of national security, an economic emergency, the dollar is overvalued.
You cannot trust a word from them. If you want to understand why they're doing something you must look only at incentives and outcomes. My current analysis is that there's some internal conflict, but the overall push for tariffs comes from a desire to crash the economy and use the downturn to consolidate wealth and power.
I genuinely don't believe there's five-dimensional chess happening here.
The problem is simply that the US president is a repugnant, stupid, erratic egotist who's surrounded himself with nasty people of varying levels of intelligence, with stupid ideas about how to run the country, and this is the policy result.
To be clear, I don't think it's chess either. I think Trump likes tariffs and wants to appear strong by slapping them around. I think some, but not all of his hangers-on are using this to push for a recession. There are multiple hands on the levers of power here, but there's a common interest in transforming the US into a Russia-style oligarchy.
A genuine question, presuming no correct answer: what is to be done about it? China is reportedly on track to run more than 50% of global manufacturing by 2030, if the World Bank is correct. What would you do to act against this? Is doing nothing acceptable?
Start by realising this is going to take decades to reverse.
Given the timescale any solution will require cooperation across political parties. You can’t start something that will get undone in four years.
Then accept it won’t make much difference to the inhabitants of bumfuck USA. Automation is what took their jobs.
Start at the top of the food chain and gradually work down. If America can make cars but not car tyres then implement gradually increasing tariffs on imported tyres. 1% this year, 2% next and so on. Pretty soon you have a car tyre industry again.
Know when to stop, just like it doesn’t make sense for a banker to clean their own house it doesn’t make sense for a rich country to be making tee shirts.
Of course this won’t happen because of the American political system.
Tyres were just an example I plucked out of my arse, I wasn't suggesting they were important.
>They’re an environmental nightmare and very, very thin margins.
Which is an argument for consuming less tyres. It doesn't really have much to do with where you make them other than perhaps it is better to make them in a country with stronger environmental regulations.
I would act against China - because China is making political moves that I do not like. (they are supporting Russia in Ukraine, they are building up to invade Taiwan, they are supporting terror in the middle east...)
By acting against China that means I applaud moving manufacturing to Vietnam. I want to help Botswana grow - and I wish there were more countries in Africa I could name that seem to be on a good path (I cannot name the majority of countries in Africa, the ones I can are because they are in the news for bad things happening. I'm not even sure Botswana - I mostly know about them because last time I brought up Africa someone from there said their country was an exception).
Overall the world is better off with a lot of trade. Comparative advantage is real. There are things I can do that I don't want to become good at. However we also need to be aware that not everyone in the world is the friend of freedom and some must be cut off lest they grow. Nobody is perfect though, so you can't cut off everyone.
There are plenty of countries in East Africa ripe for this, unfortunately China is beating us there, too. Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania ... all are pretty well positioned right now for development, but rn China is mostly the one doing it.
(Source - worked in int'l remittances w/ African receiving countries)
africa has constantly been exploited by those who offer money with a catch. China is investing a lot but those investments tend to come with a catch they are better off without long term.
By acting against China that means I applaud moving manufacturing to Vietnam
and
last time I brought up Africa someone from there said their country was an exception
Making what are essentially strategic decisions in this "shoot from the hip" fashion is what lands us repeatedly in these situations. By way of illustration, let me try one from the 1980's out on you:
"By acting against Iran that means I applaud men like Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden"
(In fairness to the americans who made that colossal blunder, I'll assume that, to them, it seemed a good idea at the time. They were simply not long term thinkers. So no one ever asked, "Hmm, what comes next though?")
We, as a people, need to start thinking a bit further ahead than the ends of our noses.
What would prevent Vietnam or Botswana do make political moves 20 years down the line? Surely it is not their economic reliance on you, as China clearly demonstrates.
I see exactly zero point in repeating the example of China again. Why would the outcome be different? Vietnam is another Communist pseudo-dictatorship. Why is this one so different that it won't support Russia?
Vietnam is making moves in directions I want to encourage. Only God knows the future and he isn't talking. (there are some who will disagree with various parts of that statement, but they have offered no evidence that they get useful information on the future.
Vietnam has been at war with China in the recent past. Today China is claiming seas that the US and internal law both call Vietnam's territorial waters - though currently they are not at war. Thus even if Vietnam doesn't move in a good direction, just keeping them where they are (as opposed to supporting China) is useful if only because all indications today are China will start a war in the future. (again nobody knows if they will, but they are preparing as if they will)
Nothing prevents anyone from making moves 20 years from now that are bad. All we can do today is encourage those who seem to be moving for the better. We have no clue how things will turn out. Even when we make what in hindsight now looks like a bad decision, we have no idea how it would have been if we had done something different.
>Vietnam is making moves in directions I want to encourage.
Just like China did? They had a whole phase of economic liberalization and opening trade.
>Nothing prevents anyone from making moves 20 years from now that are bad.
Vietnam is literally another communist pseudo-dictatorship. Their place in the world is obviously far more ambiguous than that of e.g. England. The idea of shifting manufacturing to Vietnam because you do not like the positions of China is just absurd.
>All we can do today is encourage those who seem to be moving for the better.
Why should the US not focus on supporting long term allies who aren't communist single party states?
20 years ago China looked to be going in the right direction. However things change. If they get rid of their dictator I might again support them - depending of course on how they change.
we should of course support most of europe which usualy has better government. Likewise the other countries in America - both north and south. And so on for anywhere else we can find friends. I an not a Trump fan even if once in a while he does something I support
>So their ecconomy grows and with it edutated people who can afford to see the world and in turn how thep have been lied to.
As has happened with China? When they opened up trade and became part of a global economy their nationalistic ambitions stopped and they ceased to support dictatorships like Russia. Also their political system opened up and they morphed from a uniparty communist country to a liberal democracy. Oh wait, the exact opposite happened on all accounts.
You didn't answer my question. Why would Vietnam be any different? Why should the US help build their economy so that they can do the exact same thing as China did. Your theory of how this works is disproven by reality. You can not make a country a liberal democracy by opening up trade with them. It failed with China, it failed with Russia.
The irony is that China was actually against Russia into the 90s (Sino Soviet split was still on), and nationalism was taboo also because too many people were burned by the cultural revolution. Changes were made after 1989 to encourage more nationalism, and that all culminates with Xi (China and Russia are still frenemies, but mutual antagonism with the USA has brought them closer).
> You can not make a country a liberal democracy by opening up trade with them. It failed with China, it failed with Russia.
It worked with South Korea, and Taiwan. (Japan and Germany, but they were on the losing side of a war with us which is a confounding factor). It is by no means perfect, but I've yet to see anyone suggest something else that has any chance of working.
Yeah, there's no painless answer. China is not a democracy. They can force millions of people to endure terrible working conditions, pollution, corruption, and abuse, and take a very long view. The US can't do this.
Bloc building. Europe has countries which do lots of manufacturing. Use those to gradually reduce reliance on China by slowly restricting Chinese access to the Bloc market and build up supply chains inside the Bloc.
Making everything in the US can not be done without a very severe decline in living standards.
Under normal circumstances, when a country is running a massive surplus, their currency should appreciate, weakening their exports and thus recalibrating trade balance back to zero. That isn't happening right now, because China (and other surplus nations like Germany and Japan) relies on buying massive amounts of US treasuries to weaken the Yuan. That's one of the reasons why the US dollar is the reserve currency. It has to be, because only the US has an economy large enough to provide high-yield, low-risk treasuries and is willing to do so.
Trump's tariffs would theoretically rebalance trade on the long term, albeit in a highly destructive manner. But the more diplomatic solutions as proposed by other commentators like Catherine Tai, Yanis Varoufakis or Michael Pettis would be the introduction of capital controls to stem the demand for US treasuries, or better, the reintroduction of Keynes' proposal of the International Clearing Union back in 1945. The ICU's role would be to actively balance global trade surpluses via the international currency bancor, of which would have fixed control of FX rates rather than relying on FX markets to punish surplus nations and help deficit nations respectively. As for nations outside the Union, they would just get treated similar to the USSR.
I think they should want to do something - it's just that torpedoing your ties with your closest allies and trade partners then lighting the stock market on fire is maybe not that thing. China spent decades building up their supply chains, infrastructure and manufacturing capacity and had support for this at state level.
If the US sees it as a threat and wants to do something it should maybe look to what China has done. Because tbh what Trump did re Tariffs is pretty close to "nothing" all things considered.
They won't though because as soon as you have someone saying "look, let's just put together a staged plan so that in, say, five years we'll produce X% more electronics domestically..." you'll have a Republican shrieking about "five year plans" and how the USA is becoming communist
A great analyst once taught me the response question: "yes, and so what?" What's so magic about manufacturing as opposed to all the higher value work of the US economy? Have people not noticed that the average American is still richer than the average Chinese person by a long way, and (yes, painfully) more so than the average European?
If you're going to talk wars, then .. US military manufacturing is still the world leader yet again. Plus the nukes.
Here is a what: there are a lot of Americans (and similar for Europe) who did not go to college, and their kids are not going to college. Of they went to college but got a degree that doesn't have good job prospects. These people would be better off with manufacturing jobs than what they can find. This is probably a minority, but it is a large enough minority to swing elections and thus important.
A lot of the war stuff gets framed in very odd terms. If you want a local defence industry then pay for it. Enforce component sovereignty requirements... Which everyone already does. Then actually react to reports which call out the gaps and pay to close them.
This bizzare "we'll bring back manufacturing and be ready all the time" thing seems to imagine you'll just turn the local widget maker over to knocking out high temperature stealth composites for hypersonic missiles real quick.
Which is of course the story of a lot of American manufacturing: it's hard to get a hobby run of PCBs because all the PCB makers are optimized for large orders for defence procurement (and the clearance, supply line and stuff requirements that brings).
The thing is the US already experienced Trump 1.0, so it was presumably easy for many to assume that Trump 2.0 would follow broadly the same pattern and that there'd be an "adult in the room" somewhere to say "this will crash the world economy and do three consecutive 9/11s worth of damage to the stock market". So even though there are some very silly people in very high places saying some very wild things, the assumption for many is that there's someone there to manage the chaos and minimise the stupidity.
This has been a pretty sobering reminder to anyone that, in fact, there is no such thing.
The amazing things to me is people still are not asking why people are so mad about the state of things they voted for Trump in the first place. Trump is the only one promising to make some changes to make life better for those who don't want to go to college. "Maybe he will, maybe he won't, but everyone else is ignoring us" is what I keep hearing when I listen to those people.
Fix health care - socialism isn't the only answer despite what many hear will say.
Fix school - it shouldn't be all sit at your desk but that is what we get. Bring back gym class. Make kids get practical experience building the things they designed (that is shop class). Math could be fun - but most teachers don't believe it themselves, and so they haven't a hope of passing that on to students.
Do you think Trump has some ideas on fixing healthcare or school? Is there even a consensus on what needs fixed?
You've said re healthcare that "socialism isn't the answer" - assuming you mean "I don't want a single-payer or free-at-the-point-of-use system" then I'm not sure what is the answer then. They've currently got some of the worst health outcomes on the planet despite spending amongst the most per-capita. They can either try more privatisation or maybe give something like Medicare For All a shot...
And re "fix school" you seem to suggest that shop class needs to be more widespread and maths teachers just need to be more enthusiastic? If the idea is to give kids more options then things like making sure that there are widely available apprenticeship programs and technical colleges to develop these skills, as well as strong (dare I say, union) jobs waiting for them when they complete their training.
And re maths teachers, if it's anything like the UK I suspect that teachers are being expected to do more with less at every stage of schooling. They handle more kids per class with fewer teaching assistants available. They need to handle more diverse lessons than before because there are insufficient PE teachers, Music teachers, Drama teachers etc). They're having a tougher time with kids behaviourally due to the rise of social media and a broader economic decline that causes a whole host of social issues that end up being schools' problem. Having poor school system is a symptom of greater societal problems, you don't fix schools without solving those (sidenote: you also don't solve those by pointing the finger at vulnerable communities like immigrants and LGBTQ+). Telling maths teachers to be a bit more enthusiastic doesn't fix any of that, it just makes the maths teachers hate their job a bit more.
The US has great health care. It is marginaly worse than some other examples but nowhere close to amoung the worst. As for what I'd do: I would eliminate the employer contribuition - I hate my insurance but if I go elsewhere I leave behind more than $1000/month and nobody can compete with that - thus I'm stuck with health care that my HR department has choosen for me.
i'm not suggesting enthusiastic math teachers is all we need: lack of enthusism is a sympton of a problem but fixing symptoms isn't enough. Likewise I'm not sure shop class is the answer - but schools are leaving a lot of people out by not having them.
the us has a great school system overall but it needs to be better.
I mean if you want to compare the US to Angola, Yemen etc then hell yeah it's "great" and you can sorta kid yourself you're up there with the best of the bunch. But as a wealthy nation that is a pretty low bar and really shouldn't be what you're aiming for. Perhaps I didn't word that very well - you're having some of the worst healthcare outcomes among all of the planets developed nations despite spending the most on it. Like it is shocking how much of an outlier the USA is, there are multiple things you can measure but a really nice simple one people can wrap their head around is life expectancy: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health.... When you plot it against average annual expenditure it is clear that you're getting a truly terrible deal.
I dunno what to tell you man, it sounds like you're a true believer on this. I reckon everyone who has undergone a healthcare bankruptcy (a uniquely American thing, btw) or could not get treated be cause they couldn't afford it was a true believer before they were let down.
Those plots are meaningless because countries measure things differently. Many countries for example don't count anyone before they are a year old while the US does. The US shows up very well for life expectancy, yes it costs a lot more to get there the outcomes of the US healthcare system are very good according to your own data (which as I said isn't good data, but it is data)
Honestly this has been extensively studied and the "the US gets shocking value for money and poor health outcomes" is the consensus. You can either take that as a personal insult, dig your heels in and say "the data is wrong" or "they're lying", blame immigrants or other things I've seen some Americans do when their "we're #1" belief is challenged ... or you can take notice and demand better from your country.
It is really of no consequence to me which you choose, I don't live there and it's looking likely I'll probably skip even visiting let alone consider moving there in future.
Relative to its peer nations it has terrible outcomes. If you think that I'm moving the goalposts and that you should instead be focussed on the fact that you are streets ahead of the developing world, rather than lagging behind your peers in the developed world then go right ahead. As I said, I'm just bringing you the facts - what you choose to do with them is on you.
My friend is watching his business get ready to die. His wife is still the CEO, and she's losing her shit. They're not alone. There's thousands and thousands of similar operations, all over the US, that will have to shut down, if something doesn't give.
I guess the mega-rich oligarchs think this is great, but they don't employ the majority of Americans.
Some did understand it I think (maybe not Trump), but were tired of hearing it couldn't be done and decided to try. A large % of Americans are happy at least someone is trying, and at the very least perhaps some lessons will be learned, and the parties will recalibrate their policy platforms to actually accomplish reshoring.
I work for a US startup manufacturing (as much as is feasible) in the US.
Because of the embarrassment that is meant to be our government, DoE hasn't paid for a contract completed in December (including physical goods), and DoD has silently stopped all of the R&D contracts we've been applying for.
We're about a week or three away from bankruptcy.
Our only foreign vendors are for PCBs and a particular type of motor. US PCB fabs are and have always been vastly more expensive and really don't do small scale runs at any sort of reasonable price. The motors? No one makes them domestically.
I'd gripe more, but this administration simply doesn't care about little guys like us. US small business are going to start dropping like flies soon.
A lot of Americans realize that it's going to be hard, which is why we should have made an example out of the first guy to profit off of sending manufacturing off to the shores of a geopolitical rival.
America suffers from a flattened income curve. There are many many more people earning $100k+ today than in 1960 (inflation adjusted). America has an envy problem first, equality problem second, spoiled child problem third.
I would not necessarily say that the envy is unjustified. If you live in a rich country you ideally want all citizens to become wealthy. Else, irrespective of income, you will be lorded over by those who are magnitudes richer than you.
I'm not talking about billionairs or the ultra wealthy. I am talking about the 60-90% top earners category.
You can cut out the top 10% of earners in the country and it still wouldn't do much to change the situation for those in the <60% earning percentiles.
To put it short; the reason you cannot afford a home isn't because of Bezos, Musk, and Blakrock. It's because the other bidders have STEM masters degrees and dual income high paying jobs, and probably a few hints of financial literacy thrown in too.
> To put it short; the reason you cannot afford a home isn't because of Bezos, Musk, and Blakrock.
When one person holds the wealth equivalent to the total yearly economic output of a mid-sized American metropolitan area, yes, it's going to introduce distortions, even if only because the people who actually do the labor under those people are being paid less in order to better fund the equities that make up the wealth of that person.
And that's before getting into the other problems with the housing supply.
>who actually do the labor under those people are being paid less
No, that's where you have it backwards they are being paid more. That's the exact reason why they are buying that house when you say "who the fuck can afford that".
Ironically, they are also the ones being exploited the most by the top 1%.
An amazon warehouse sorter will never create or do anything that makes amazon much more money than what they are paid. They get $18/hr for producing $21/hr of value, doing the same static task all day everyday. Amazons "profit margin" on these workers is almost nothing.
The lead cloud architect though gets paid $350k/yr, but can design a single change that will make amazon $30-40 million/yr. The profit margin on them is insane. And they are the ones outbidding everyday people on things, driving up costs.
Back 60 years ago, everyone was much more clumped around the same (lower) income, so the houses where smaller and the prices more amenable to more people.
"Caught us" implies that the capitalists, the people who own the manufacturing plants, did something immoral, or illegal or under handed, but in the economic system that everyone championed in America, especially at that time, this was simply allowed.
Seems like the fundamental anger is about the injustice of the economic system that leads to such consequences.
The people in the areas where things used to be made certainly have more free time, but they don't have disposable income.
Unless we're just here to repeat canards from the 1990s given by financiers which explained why it was good to shut down the main employers for entire towns.
US unemployment rate floats along at about 4%, and is kept from going any lower to prevent inflation.
There are localized problems - and it's all very similar to the post-Thatcher UK - but you cannot be serious in imagining that employment would magically return to the exact spots it left. In fact that's one of the sub-problems OP talks about: so you want a US Shenzen. Where are you going to put it?
(UK equivalent: we're discussing keeping Scunthorpe blast furnaces open, so that we can have a "secure" supply of "domestic" steel .. made entirely from imported ingredients. Because the mines the plant was built to refine are empty)
You don't hear people complaining about that because the states that are the net losers of those jobs are full of people who think factories are dirty and unsightly and pay garbage wages, etc, etc, hence why they're fine with their politicians implementing the policies that are driving them out in the first place. Sure, the blue collar people know what's up but they're outnumbered by the white collar economy handily enough that it never becomes a leading political gripe you hear about from these states.
Whereas when states that aren't behaving that way lose jobs, factories and industries to Mexico or China they're all "hey WTF" over it because they actually cared and didn't want that economic activity driven off.
While the main articles seemed to have a good riddance tone, the HN comment section seemed to be more restricted in that view.
>It's hard to believe that the current Boeing leadership will turn things around with even less focus on quality and talented workers. Feels like they should be moving back towards engineering driven approaches.
Still, this kind of outsourcing of manufacturing (or even more food production) puts the US in an incredibly uncomfortable position, especially that China is its main geopolitical enemy.
What if a war erupts? Suddenly the US cannot produce a lot of essential stuff - I think Covid was a good example of that happening.
Of course the question is can this be done and what will be the price if so.
I believe we should scale up manufacturing in the US for different reasons.
But I'm also a realist. If war erupts between China and the US, then anyone in the US or China still alive 4 weeks after the start of hostilities will have more pressing concerns than worrying about where things are manufactured. Again, just the reality.
We shouldn't plan on the basis of end of the world scenarios. Rather we should plan on the assumption that we want to confer maximum benefit on the US in likely non-apocalyptic future timelines.
The author is not anti-US-manufacturing. He explained how the current tariff policy undermines US manufacturers. He is pointing out the obstacles and what we must do to overcome them. The obstacle is the way.
I wouldn't say he is anti-manufacturing but more that he takes a defeatist view.
Two of his points: "Industrial supply chain is weak" and "We don't know how to make it" are exactly the same.
>all the factories which make the needed components are in Asia,
>because they know how to make the best semiconductors in the world.
But this is looking at the problem and then missing the point: If I decide to start mfg. IPhone in the US, I can't because there are no suppliers.
As long as nothing changes, there will continue to be no suppliers.
If I HAVE to mfg the IPhone in the US, at first I will import due to no supplier but someone will make a local supplier because they can undercut my importer.
Subsidize the essentials let the free market sort the rest. I think we still want competitive markets within our borders for the stuff we subsidize so we don't get stagnation of the industry. Maybe there are clues how it could be structured like we subsidize farming.
I think the main point stands, though, which is that you can't undo to the previous state. E.g., rolling back all tariffs/deportations/firings/budget cuts would not undo the damage done.
The state of the art is literally a half century beyond where american manufacturing was when it died. Anecdotally according to older family members who had those old manufacturing jobs, they were working at companies doing stuff like bending a steel rod at the end and then shipping it off to a sub contractor. This was not glamorous work. Most of them got into it because you don’t need to speak english to bend a pipe in a factory. And they did everything in their power to ensure the next generation would not have to work those sorts of jobs.
I think most people have a very confused understanding of money(currency) and value. Workers produce value, not money. Workers get a cut of that value, which is converted to money. To get by comfortably in the US, a first world developed economy, you need to be producing a lot of value. Everything is made to accommodate high value workers.
Producing t-shirts, window fans, or toilet brushes is not high value work. The slice of value available to convert to currency for the worker is very tiny. So you end up having to play games with the economy which inevitably will blow up in someone's face. $60 t-shirts so we can pretend that the value in a t-shirt is much more than it is, so we artificially make t-shirt manufacturing competitive with, say, automobile manufacturing.
I somewhat agree with your point, but it’s also important to include the other side of that pricing.
If it actually costs $60 (really more like $25 for made-in-America t-shirts I’ve bought) to make a t-shirt, with environmental regulations and human costs accounted for, then isn’t that the actual cost of a t-shirt? And they were artificially cheap at $10 for imported ones due to ignoring externalities? In that case, producing these simple products is actually a bit more valuable than you suggest.
You are missing something: quantity. A toilet brush itself is low value, but the US needs 30 million per year (this is a guess, but it seems reasonable enough - every person buys one every 10 years, which seems right based on how long they last. I am likely off, but probably not by an order of magnitude so let us use that number for discussion unless/until someone really wants to find a better number). If you can make/sell a million brushes per year with a gross profit of $1 on each that is a million dollars, if labor and the machines are amortize to $.50 each you net profit is then $500k/year - many small company CEOs would be happy with that.
You can run the numbers many different ways, but the important point is low value production is always about volume.
I disagree with this. Everybody wears clothes. Everybody eats food.
You can't put a monetary value on a t-shirt, because people will buy them anyways. Who is to say that t-shirts aren't $60? People only think that t-shirts are "low value" because we have offshored the labor and are used to very low prices. Meanwhile I bet most Americans can't even sew.
America does not have to bring manufacturing back. It has to devote resources to robotics and AI to replace workers to make products for itself and it's people.
The transition period is currently already underway due to the tariffs. An unintented consequences is that the big players in commerce(Nike, All Big brand names...) no longer have a monopoly due to China relaxing the regulation on it's factories to disclose for which brands they manufacture products.
Now that the everyday person knows that they can also buy products from the same factories at a fraction of what they used to pay. They will do that. So the middleman will slowly fade out unless they can compete with... Robotics and AI.
The other consequences of the shift in this consumption dynamic is that it behaves in a downward fashion on inflation. People's incomes did not increase but they can now purchase more with their incomes. Jackets that used to be advertised as 200/300/400 dollars now can be bought for $20/$30 directly from the middlemen in China and get shipped to the US since they are under the $800 dollar limit.
This is actually a win win for all US residents. Enjoy it while it lasts.
I am by no means an export on manufacturing, nor international trade, economics, or virtually anything relevant to manufacturing. Just a layman here.
Observationally I fear there is a lack of nuance in discussing "bringing back manufacturing" (really re-expanding) to the U.S.
I fear the lack of nuance is due to bias based on not liking the guy in the red tie or the other guy that's in a blue tie so there's just blinders about whether or not a particular policy will achieve a particular stated goal.
The next thing I see is it just lumping manufacturing all into one bucket.
Take manufacturing smartphones. Because the U.S. doesn't assemble iPhones the U.S. appears to be bad at manufacturing? No, I think it's just not good at assembling iPhones.
Just looking at numbers, sure the U.S. steel production is dwarfed by China but globally it's still a major producer. And there's no discussion of quality.
Look at oil & gas. I'm pretty sure the U.S. both produces the raw material and refined product at a significant amount globally.
Plastic manufacturing. I toured a bottle manufacturing plant last summer. It's primary a customer was Limited Brands (Victoria Secret)
It built molds. It upgraded factory equipment roughly every 8 years (increasing production & reducing labor costs). Why was it able to manufacturer bottles in the U.S. even it's selling at a higher price? Because it's primary customer was essentially down the street. That is, apparently the cost to not import across the globe more than offset the cost to manufacture here.
I understand that's just an example and I'm trusting the information from that company was reliable.
But first I think we need to be honest about how much manufacturing is here and what type. Then discuss which policies are likely to achieve goals we may have in mind.
I think there's merit to manufacturing semiconductors and batteries here. But we need to also be aware that while manufacturing may bring jobs, an increasing amount of labor will be automated.
Yes, there's little nuance. I see so many people saying it will be hard to bring back manufacturing jobs, or "we can't go back to the 50s," and then they just stop as if that settles the argument. The implication, which they never say out loud, is that we shouldn't even try, just accept things as they are. Just be the Big Consumer until someday the rest of the world doesn't want our dollars anymore, and then what?
Seems much better to look seriously at the manufacturing we still have (as you say, it's considerable), where we can expand on that, and where we're lacking and need to rebuild.
We also need to look at what manufacturing we want. That is why the military needs keep coming up - in case of war we are unlikely to be able to get things from China so we better have a different source (though the source need not be in the US - Canada should be just as good so long as we can keep Canada our friends - same with the EU).
Once the military needs are met, I don't care what we make, just that we need good jobs for people who are not able to handle more complex jobs.
> just that we need good jobs for people who are not able to handle more complex jobs
If manufacturing becomes more efficient at using labor from automation that seems like that would lower the number of available jobs wouldn't it?
Unless consumption grows with the increase in output so that more factories are needed to meet the demand?
If you need 1000 cars and automation takes it down to 10 people from 100 people before, where are those 90 other people to get jobs?
Unless you grow the need for cars to 10000.
Simplification I know, but I am confused at how manufacturing is supposed to endlessly support a large "less-complex task" labor supply while simultaneously providing a good standard of living?
for starters we need to make lots of different things.
we also need education reform so that those people get the education needed to do more complex tasks insteade of droping out. What this looks like I don't really know.
>There are over a billion people in China making stuff.
There surely can't over a billion factory workers in a population of 1.4 billion. I looked up a population pyramid, and let's say 100% of the population aged 15-64 is employed at a factory job, that's ~70% of the population which is only 985 million people.
The litigiousness point should have been at the top of the list. You can build roadways, but if you constantly have stories in the news of people striking it rich by suing someone, and half the billboards you see in your town is of people telling you they'll help you do it, then it's going to be extremely expensive to employ folks.
It'll be easier to teach folks hard work, it's very difficult to change a culture when 1. A huge sector of our legal system geared towards it 2. People can easily get rich off of it.
Isn't manufacturing mostly a red herring? Sure some select people who are currently in Washington might care about it from a geopolitical angle, but the electorate is not lamenting the lack of manufacturing jobs, but rather their decreased share of the proceeds of the no.1 national economy in the world. Even if you bring all manufacturing back, I doubt those same people will be happy working in those factories.
Beyond the obvious skilled labor there’s supply chain network, maintenance, townships and supporting system around them.
And all of this needs human labor which is taken from somewhere else. How do you incentivize them? Just throwing money at the problem won’t solve it either. Because more often than not it’ll attract charlatans who will promise the sky, take the money and move away.
We can go too far into deregulation, but we are currently too far in regulation. Push for the correct middle ground.
I'm not sure exactly what the correct middle ground looks like. I do know that there are signs of a good system.
There can be no bribes in the system. All permits must have a clearly defined fee that is small and clearly covers the inspectors salary and no more. The vast majority of cases when you want to build it should be 30 minutes from applying for the permit to it being granted. The rules are clearly written up and so it isn't hard to look up the law and write up a permit that cannot be refused.
There are only rarely hearings. You have the right to do what you want on your property. If your neighbor doesn't like it for the most part they should have bought your property so you couldn't. You don't however have the right to let pollution escape your property - pollution isn't just things like chemicals, but also noise. In rural areas, or around airports we also give you rights to sun, wind, and airspace - in cities though you don't get to demand your garden isn't shaded. You don't get to tell someone what color to paint to use. You don't get to force any amount of parking (either minimum of maximum). You can't enforce building space (square foot, height). You don't get to tell someone not to run a business. You do get to require fire code such that any fire will not spread to your building, and if you want fire protection (which if you don't have you need to ensure smoke from an accidental fire won't affect the neighbors) the fire department can demand some additional features.
There is probably a lot more, and the above isn't quite correct either, but it at least gives a place to state the debate from.
Americans have a very 1980s idea of manufacturing (and China in general) in that there aren't actually that many humans being used in Chinese factories let alone the American ones some of them want to build here. There's even a concept of, "Dark Factories" in China which are 100% automated factories that operate in the dark. The only jobs that will come from bringing manufacturing back to the states will be in automation, robotics, AI, and roles to support those things.
Given the all the minimum wage staffing at most distribution centers these days despite all this off the shelf robotics technology seemingly available on order and already proven, makes me thing the american worker is cheaper than we might suspect compared to building out these dark amazon warehouses.
A business I work with has a factory in China that produces their devices. They absolutely do most of the assembly manually, as many of their sister factories do.
Robotics automation is a tradeoff to gain efficiency at the expense of flexibility, with a large upfront cost.
Well, even a better argument to bring those factories to the US. Why not develop the know-how on manufacturing and improve automation in the US rather have China lead there.
Because automation is expensive. It pays off in volume. A skilled human can often build a single widget faster than an engineer can write the automation for the robots (because a skilled human will see parts that don't fit and "file to fit" while the robot demands more effort to double check all that). When you only need 10, the program is faster to write, but you still need to pay for the robots and they are expensive (often $million each, while the human is only a few thousand for his time)
Of course there are a lot variables in the above. As time goes one automation gets better. You can buy cheap robots for some common operations, and a good engineer with good CAD can run various automated analysis to ensure fit and then export to the robot and build even a single part cheaper than the human - amortizing the cost of the robot over thousands of different single parts made this way. However as the widget gets more complex you reach the point where humans are needed. In some cases you just have humans to take the parts off of one machine and put them into the next, but it is still humans. We can automate even that, but often the robot to do that would cost more than a human for 10 years.
> It’s years of accumulated skill, but it’s also a culture that is oriented around hard work and education that the United States no longer has.
Sounds more like China has an exploited educated class/lack of oppurtunity than America has bad education.
Plenty of American workers can multiply in their heads and diligently perform there work. These people work in white collar jobs though, not in factories snapping together phone cases for 12 hours a day.
The author isn't totally wrong here, Americas bottom tier labor pool sucks, but they miss the bigger picture when comparing Chinese and American workers. China has skilled workers doing unskilled work. That's why they are so good. That's also why bringing manufacturing to the US will be so hard. Ain't nobody wanna get a degree so they can work a hot factory floor all day.
Westerners have had too good of a life and you cannot compete with an asian who is told every day if he doesn't perform he will be homeless. You just cannot compete.
For better or worse the man is exposing the mindboggling scale of deindustrialization that was hidden underneath America's transition to a "knowledge economy". Decades of failed economic policy has led America to this point.
Unfortunately, that ship sailed a long time ago. Why is no one in the administration paying any attention to the outsourcing of high skill knowledge work to India and elsewhere? Obviously I have a bias working in technology, but it seems to me to be a much more CURRENT issue and one that can actually be addressed in the present.
That job retraining is going to happen ANY DAY NOW I tell you, and then those textile workers are going to be so glad that they can be call center workers.
Those two are not in conflict. The claim is 20-25% of the population would be better off if they moved to a manufacturing job. The other 75-80% are better off where they are, but making the bottom better makes everyone better.
They're going to end up with some sort of corvee forced labour scheme enforced by ICE, the logical conclusion of "other people should go work in the factories".
We already have that,
it's called prison labor.
The current regime will certainly ramp that up and throw even more people into forced labor camps.[1]
BTW we don't talk enough about the gigantic loophole in the thirteenth amendment: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. [emphasis added]
That is not a loophole. Also prison labor tends to be "unskilled", so useless and even counterproductive in manufacturing roles the US would need if they were to compete with China.
"Unskilled" is what I meant. People with zero economic value who only can do tasks where machines are already superior to them. That definitely is the case for much of the prison population. It is better that they are kept far away from manufacturing because they are unskilled.
I prefer the alternative explain: this is just trump bringing in a national sales tax without having to go through the senate or eat the unpopularity.
There seems to be no actual plan to actually bring back manufacturing (this would require different tariffs, loans, tax accounting rules, etc). And there seems to be no targeting of china (everywhere is being tariffed, allies and enemies, strategic suppliers and places with no trade with the USA etc)
I don't think anyone underestimates that, as much as some people with the author's viewpoints would like it to be true.
To paraphrase Kennedy: "We choose to [bring back manufacturing]. We choose to [bring back manufacturing] in this [or the next] decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."
We will do it, and we will win, whatever that means.
What in the modern situation suggests the comparable level of diligence in approach to the goal? The fact that both goals are far-reaching does not suggest comparability of approaches to the solution.
Changing the way society/economy operates is nowhere near "building X," whatever X is, whether it's something hard like a bomb or a collider.
> We will do it, and we will win, whatever that means.
How do you know that you haven't won already? Shouldn't the end goal be clear? In the case of Kennedy you're referring to, criteria and motivation were clear.
--
To a non-US bystander, your comment sounds like a no-thinking patriotic slogan. The details of the article are such that you can take any argument and bring it into discussion in order to show its irrelevance. But we're discussing slogans irrelevant to the situation and belief in the win, even though the win is not defined.
High paying manufacturing jobs seems entirely delusional. If you want to compete with China your workers must be as efficient as Chinese workers, so US manufacturing workers can't be better paid and doing less hours. That can not possibly work.
Putting aside the rah-rah patriotism, you perhaps don't understand the problem any better than Trump does. The moon mission to which you allude was difficult but, critically, that difficulty was not felt by most Americans: it was a challenge for NASA engineers. Trump's current economic plan will increase inflation, cripple America's role in world trade, and result in negligible increase in manufacturing in the short term. Wildly unpopular policies do not last in a democracy.
It's easy to bring manufacturing back, just give it a decade or two, but impossible to make it internationally competitive without large-scale market regulation such as tariffs or handing out government subsidies.
This view is too trivial. You could also stimulate manufacturing by promising tariffs increasing over the next X years, while not taxing the imported building materials and machines for longer. Or you could use tariffs to both break trade and make the environment too expensive and uncertain to invest in large construction - and delay the process by a few extra years.
I don't see how this is a reply to my point. Building up manufacturing takes a decade or longer (putting the problem aside that there aren't going to be enough workers). Tariffs are heavy market regulation. Even if manufacturing was brought back successfully, the production costs would be too high without such heavy market regulation.
You seem to assume that once manufacturing has been brought back it would somehow be internationally competitive. I don't see how that's possible.
My problem with large-scale market regulation is that it also increases the price of inputs for companies who would otherwise be interested in building a factory in the US. Do you have a solution for that?
Inputs are cheaper (and thus have lower tariffs in an absolute sense) than outputs. I think the author underestimates the ability of the market to adapt to incentives.
They're still correct though that there are plenty of good reasons why we don't do manufacturing in the US right now, and tariffs do absolutely nothing to change that reality, they just artificially make the alternative worse at significant expense to consumers.
I feel misunderstood. I'm definitely not advocating for tariffs. The point is that even if this strategy worked for bringing manufacturing back (it won't in general and widespread because of labor shortage), it would result in products that are not going to be internationally competitive.
To build assembly lines, one has to first make custom tools, jigs, and parts and apply processes to them that cannot just be 3D printed in plastic or metal or FDM'ed.
The main show-stopper to them is the lack of working knowledge about precision tooling manufacturing.
For example, some of the best power machine tools in the world came from Germany and from Bridgeport, CT between 1910 and 1965. There are/were moderately large, 1 micron runout milling machines such as Moore No. 2 and No. 3. These things generally aren't made anymore and not many people know the tricks and processes to make similar or equivalent machines that make other tools and machines. Like that the unshielded body heat of an operator can swing the runout of a precision machine in an otherwise climate-controlled environment.
Could anyone clarify what the author means regarding duty drawback? He writes:
"There is no duty drawback for exporting. In the past, even in the United States, if you imported something and then exported it, the tariff you paid on the import would be refunded to you. They got rid of that..."
My understanding was that duty drawback—where import duties are refunded if the imported items or their components are later exported—is still broadly available in the U.S., though with certain exceptions (like steel/aluminum tariffs under Section 232 or trade within USMCA countries).
Is he referring specifically to recent tariff changes or targeted exceptions rather than a general elimination? Or has there been a broader policy shift I'm missing?
> And if we want to apply tariffs, do it slowly. Instead of saying that products will be tariffed at 100% tomorrow, say they’ll be 25% next year, 50% after that, 75% after that, and 100% in year four. And then make it a law instead of a presidential decree
This is the big difference between a tariff regime that is credible in such a way that the business community can plan investment around it, and the current one that has mostly just caused chaos and confusion.
Building up manufacturing has always been a period of pain for the population. There is so much to learn and so much hard work to do with, at least initially, so little gain.
Competition is extremely high initially, products will be ridiculed for being expensive and low quality. Companies will fail and go bankrupt, workers will suffer from that.
"Bringing manufacturing back" is a path of pain, not a way to fast economic success. There is no way to change that, tariffs will certainly not change it. Are Americans ready to leave their office job and work overtime in factories and engineering departments? No, automation will not do this for you, you are competing with a country which knows far more about automation than you do. To compete with them you need to be better and cheaper.
Lastly look how Germany struggles, right now. Their industry is in large parts starting to loose any competitive edge and will continue to do, unless very significant cuts are made somewhere. You can not keep the same living standards while someone is doing twice your work for half your costs.
It is really that hard. Look what happened in Arizona. TSCM brought the most complex semiconductor chip making supply chains to the US on a vacant piece of land in NW Phoenix in about 4 years. And it wasn't just TSMC that invested in the Arizona site, but also companies like Linde ($600M), APS ($100M), Sunlit Chemical ($100M), Air Liquide ($60M), and Chang Chun ($300M).
Maybe others can comment, but are semiconductor chips the most complex thing to manufacture in the world? Not sure but the Arizona TSMC supply chain proves it can be done.
Like OP, I work in manufacturing (after 15 years in startup land). I'm not as experienced as him, but I work in manufacturing that makes similar products on both sides of the US/Mexico border.
Let me add some thoughts:
1) Capacity, not cost, is the main driver for nearshoring. All things being equal, a manufacturer would rather produce a product in the US than overseas. The cost of modern products is mostly parts & material, not labor. When you add logistcs expenses, the theoretical cost advantage of overseas vs local is not that great. Remember:the people on the other side of the border are capitalists too! They want to keep most of the surplus of nearshoring to themselves! The problem is that there simply is no capacity, both in facilities and especially in people.
2) What matters even more than capacity is the first derivative of capacity. In other words: how quickly can I spin up a new factory if I win a big deal? How quickly can I spin one down if the client goes away? How long will it take me to get a permit to connect my new factory to the highway? In the US, these costs and timelines are massive. Real estate, permitting, hiring. There is an order of magnitude difference here, in cost and time.
3) The labor problems are real. I don't want to disparage the american workers I work with, because they are amazing. Truly fantastic craftsmen. But they are hard to find. You'd be surprised how many people show up who can't read or can't read a tape measure. How hard it is to find people that want to work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. By contrast, in our overseas facility we have qualified workers literally showing up at our gate every day asking for work.
In other words, the root cause problems with american manufacturing are—-surprise surprise!--the same problems as with other parts of the US that are in decay:
- Disfunctional local government, especially around permitting, construction, housing and transit
- Disfunctional education & healthcare systems.
- A lack of strategic investment in infrastructure (rail, highways)
- A social safety net that is totally out of whack, with a high cost burden for employers & employees, with little to no immediate quality-of-life benefits for the working population
The cost of manufacturing your stuff is not labor dependent only because you are probably putting together low cost components made with cheap labor. What if you had to make the spring or the resistor or the little painted metal box? Could you do that without labor being the big cost?
What? How much labor do you think goes into making a spring or a resistor? These are parts which cost fractions of a cent and are cranked out by the tens of millions.
The only sane way to bring back manufacturing is investments like the chips act.
Think about it this way, you are a widget manufacturer trying to place a new factory. You could put it in say Canada and enjoy cheap imports and exports of your product globally. It's cheap to produce and easy to sell.
Or you could place it in the US, but now you are looking at a minimum 10% tax on importing the resources you need. On top of that, a significant portion of the world (especially the richest nations) are tacking on an addition 10% or more tax on your product because it came from the US.
Would you build a factory in the US? Maybe if you can source everything in the US and you are fine with your primary market being only the US. Otherwise, it's a bad business move.
When talking about something like semiconductors, global access is really important to be profitable. Low or no tariffs and the proximity to China and other raw resources powerhouses is a major reason why so much of the semiconductor industry is in Asia.
These are all good points, but I’ll add a different take here.
The points are correct but rather than bring “all manufacturing back”, the goal should be to aim for an 80:20 or 70:30. And it will still take decades, but at least with a far better chance of success.
For companies that rely on a global supply chain, manufacturing and even raw materials should aim for mostly global but a guaranteed 20 to 30% local.
It’s one way to offset a real market problem, where
unchecked market forces drives all production offshore or “nearshore; leaving the nation vulnerable to supply chain disruptions.
For essentials like grains, I’d even argue that the nation should opt for an 70:30. It’d be insane for us to offshore the majority of production.
It really is starting to bother me when people attribute a deceptive narrative crafted by one individual to "American thinking" as if there was even a lone individual in this country who was earnestly believing a global trade war would solve a non existent trade problem before the narrative became convenient to our dictator
> It may seem trivial to make that glass that separates your finger from the electronic engineering that powers your ability to access the internet, but it’s difficult.
Out of all examples one could pick, this is the worst, as Corning Gorilla glass is actually made in the USA (Kentucky), and used by all other manufacturers.
There are plenty of people saying these tariffs will not work.
But a person used to be able to graduate high school and get a job that could support a house with a yard, a car, a non-working spouse and children.
How we get that level of prosperity back? That's the people really want. Tariffs are simply a means to that end.
I wish people would stop writing articles about 100% criticizing tariffs and instead write articles 50% about criticizing tariffs and 50% brainstorming alternative solutions to achieve the same objective.
> There are plenty of people saying these tariffs will not work.
Work to do what?
> But a person used to be able to graduate high school and get a job that could support a house with a yard, a car, a non-working spouse and children.
Why do you think this has anything to do with tariffs or manufacturing?
> How do we get that level of prosperity back?
Better pay for the jobs people actually work. Reducing inequality by preventing the richest 0.1% from capturing all the massive gains in wealth the US has seen over the past few decades. Removing regulations that prevent the country from building housing and therefore driving up housing costs. Switching to a healthcare model in nearly any of the comparable developed countries almost all of which deliver better healthcare at half the cost. Not expecting everyone to be able to live a completely unsustainable suburban life. Having the government support children's upbringing by paying for high quality education, instituting rules and regulations that require mandatory paid maternity/paternity leave, etc.
Lost of poorer countries manage to do this and more just fine. The US is far richer than most of those countries.
Very little of this has to do with manufacturing jobs falling from 18mm to 13mm.
Bring back manufacturing, and make the US economy work better for workers.
> Why do you think this has anything to do with tariffs or manufacturing?
Because usually the best-paying jobs were in factories, especially if you didn't have a college degree. A lot of towns in the Rust Belt were economically dependent on a local factory -- think cars or steelmaking. Often, part of the reason these factories were so high paying is because the jobs were unionized.
Companies moved overseas to save money on that expensive labor.
Now, companies have all the negotiation leverage. "If you unionize / demand higher pay, we'll move operations overseas" is a real and credible threat, as countless companies have already done it.
Tariffs are supposed to make operating overseas more expensive. Undo the economic justification for moving the jobs overseas and they will come back.
This takes away the companies' negotiation leverage. The "If you unionize / demand higher pay, we'll move operations overseas" threat isn't credible if everyone knows overseas manufacturing is super expensive due to tariffs.
I grew up in the Rust Belt and I'm old enough to properly remember when some of those factories were still operating. I saw with my own eyes what used to be a respectable blue-collar community decay into an economic wasteland. The drugs are getting bad. A lot of people have lost hope. Young ambitious folks see no reason to stay here.
The problem and its underlying factors are so obvious to me that I'm constantly amazed to see well-informed, intelligent people who don't seem to understand it.
> The problem and its underlying factors are so obvious to me that I'm constantly amazed to see well-informed, intelligent people who don't seem to understand it.
Do you understand that labor is priced into the cost of the product? Who is going to buy all of these American products made by highly paid unionized workers?
I understand the Rust Belt situation sucks, but people can’t afford to buy everyday consumer goods made with American labor. I’m wearing an American made pair of shoes right now that is 20-30x more expensive
than a pair of shoes from Walmart, and even ‘less expensive’ US made shoes like Red Wing are 10-15x as expensive. Now imagine paying 10-30x more for everything, it’s not sustainable.
Hey, guess what would help the average American with being able to afford something that is expensive?
A job that pays a living wage!
I am reminded of when the great offshoring started and everyone was looking down on poorer folks for shopping at Walmart because it was filled with cheap junk and they should know better than to buy that stuff(when in reality it's all they could afford since their good job was gone...).
>Bring back manufacturing, and make the US economy work better for workers.
Seemingly, this is going to magically happen? Where are the programs to make sure this does happen? Erecting tariffs is one thing, but having an actual plan and executing on said plan is another. So far, all I see is rising prices and looming threats of job cuts due to slow downs which stem from increased costs, and there is nothing coming to buffer that.
Let alone, the investment capital isn't moving in this direction. As of this writing, the general posture of the Republican donor class is 'wait and see how long the tariffs last' not 'lets invest in American industry again'
>Because usually the best-paying jobs were in factories, especially if you didn't have a college degree. A lot of towns in the Rust Belt were economically dependent on a local factory -- think cars or steelmaking. Often, part of the reason these factories were so high paying is because the jobs were unionized.
Emphasis mine. Do you believe that the modern Republican party is pro union? Do you really think they won't undermine organized labor even if jobs come back in some form? Even though the modern Democratic party have a spotty history on labor issues, the Republicans have shown for 40 years to be the anti labor party. They rarely - if ever - pass legislation that is pro labor. This administration isn't proving to be different in that regard either, and it wasn't different the first time around.
>I grew up in the Rust Belt and I'm old enough to properly remember when some of those factories were still operating. I saw with my own eyes what used to be a respectable blue-collar community decay into an economic wasteland.
So did I. Hallowed home town and all. One of the poorest in the state I grew up. You know what else never happened? Sustained public policy to help these areas. There were largely no programs to help transition workers from one industry to another. We don't have comprehensive safety nets and retraining / re-education programs for workers. We lack all of that. Why aren't we starting by implementing those programs? Its rather wishful thinking that bringing manufacturing back to the US, that it will end up in these same areas to begin with, because manufacturing is very different than it used to be. I doubt most of these areas would be good places to re-build manufacturing capacity in the US. What manufacturing is done here is already concentrated in the South which precludes huge chunks of the traditional rust belt.
We don't. We need only take a look at Detroit, holdout of American manufacturing. They have been automating and robotizing everything they can. ["... However, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis notes that motor vehicle manufacturing employment declined 17% from 1994 to 2018, while motor vehicle productivity increased by about 13% over the same period..."] If manufacturing does come back to the US, it won't create very many jobs. Mostly just the people to maintain and fix the machinery.
Given the improvements in cameras and computer vision and AI and robotics, there is no reason to think this won't accelerate. A long long time ago, labor was cheap and resources were expensive. Today, the opposite is true. Keynes predicted in the 50s that we would be working 15 hour work weeks. The reason he was "wrong" was that he underestimated our insatiable human greed. We all want more. Average house size in the 50s was < 1200 sq ft. Today it is 2400+. Each kid must have their own room that is 12x12!! (I grew up with 4 boys in a 10x10, lol). Each kid must get a new $200 bat each year for little league, etc. We want a higher standard of living for ourselves and our kids. This is understandable but we forget our role in the never ending chase.
It’s so simple it hurts.
Stop the ruling class hoarding all the wealth.
Top tax bracket used to be 94%.
Have a VERY steep wealth tax, an inheritance tax and whatever else is needed. The fact individuals exist with many hundreds of millions of dollars while so many in the same society are struggling so bad is a disgrace.
1. win a world war that destroys the economy of every other country in the world for a decade.
2. destroy about the past 50 years of technology and all knowledge of how manufacture it.
3. Kill 90% of people over retirement age to lower demand for housing, healthcare costs, and retirement benefits.
In the modern world with modern technology there's a lot less productive work out there for people without specialized education. We could do a better job of training more people for trades jobs (e.g. plumbers, electricians etc), and removing college requirements from some professions (e.g. med school and law school could probably be college level education rather than post college) but anyone saying that we're going back is just lying.
> But a person used to be able to graduate high school and get a job that could support a house with a yard, a car, a non-working spouse and children.
> How do we get that level of prosperity back?
The issue is that this is a false premise. The house sucked. Only 1/3rd of American families had a single car at the time, and the cars sucked. We can go on and on about everything else. Not to mention the social environment at the time sucked.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to do something about the issues Americans face. But tariffs with a shifting set of sanewashed justifications are just Not It.
Why will a factory job will pay enough for one person to raise a family and buy a house on a single income?
Like what is unique about factory work that allows for this? I’ve heard stuff like this so much and I just do not believe it. Is anyone working in a factory in the USA today able to buy a home and have a stay at home spouse on a single income?
When I was studying economics, my macro professor used to belabor the point that post-WW2 US socioeconomics was a highly unique (and special) time-and-place; and, it is a mistake to generalize economic theory from that time-and-place.
So... here goes: rather than proclaiming a "housing crisis", maybe we're seeing the end of an exceptional period of "housing affordability". (A similar analysis of Europe and Asia applies, piecemeal.)
As such, if we want to re-enter into a new period of housing affordability, we need to ask ourselves what we plan to give up and/or trade for that?
For WW2, it was millions of lives and worldwide devastation. It seems like we'd need a complete re-evaluation of the way wealth, family structures, and social safety nets work in order to vastly expand housing. (In the US.)
Maybe if we stopped viewing housing as an investment vehicle, with the expectation that house prices are going to rise forever then you would see affordable housing.
This is my gut reaction; but, then I've been looking at Barcelona — which has analogs in New Jersey and Chicago. In these three cities there used to be significant housing stock that could be affordably purchased by low income families. (These are row-houses and 2x3s, etc.) In Barcelona, for instance, a unit could be purchased by a single family earner in about 5–8 years. What happened, over time, was that a neighbor would move out, and so a tenant would buy the neighboring unit to "expand" (remember: the units are cheap). Over a period of 25–30 years a relatively modest income could be used to gradually buy up an entire unit. Then, at the end of that period the whole unit would be sold as a single family dwelling. The problem is that what was once 6 modest (affordable) units, is now a single fantastically expensive unit. The economic model that covers this is a deflationary zero-sum market. (Pretty much all real estate is going to fall into this trap without very careful consideration.)
I think this problem is much, much, much harder than most people think. Almost every single society — except for Japan, AFAICT — is getting hit by this issue, but each in their own, novel way, that covers every possible "obvious" solution.
I think it's a complicated equation and there may be room for some strategic tariffs, de-regulation, anti-dumping, competing more on manufacturing etc. But the time you're talking about? Almost the entire world's industrial capacity was decimated other than the US.
You are competing with your fellow citizens for those things. This was true even back then.
Right now, today, it has never been easier to make a lot of money working. So you need to compete with people in that environment. You need to be able to outbid those people for that beautiful home you want. In an environment of lots of educated and skilled workers getting skilled salaries for doing vary valuable work. That's where the bar is.
We can lower the bar back to blue-collar-high-school-diploma, but then we need to also sacrifice all those high earning college degree jobs.
> How we get that level of prosperity back? That's the people really want.
And something they're not going to get. Manufacturing is going to be heavily automated. The money is going to continue to funnel into a small portion of the population.
People literally do just that today in the midwest. The coastal housing imbalance is just that a housing imbalance and not reflective of a lack of buying power today. Also consider that americans back then outside of the car and home had no other large purchases. No computer, no $1k phone on a $1k/yr plan, no big tv. People weren’t even eating out or flying back then when they could afford a family vacation.
> americans back then outside of the car and home had no other large purchases. No computer, no $1k phone on a $1k/yr plan, no big tv. People weren’t even eating out or flying back then when they could afford a family vacation.
Back then cars and homes and essentials were relatively cheap and TVs and flying were expensive.
Today it's flipped.
TVs are cheap,
phones are cheap.
Essentials,
like housing,
are expensive.
What if I told you that you can buy a 3br turnkey house for maybe $100k all over the midwest. Now consider living at your parents for four years after highschool rent free while working literally any job full time. You’d probably be able to throw down 50% on that house at least.
America is not a country, it's a continent. I know, Canada will be a province, and soon Panama of course, but in the meanwhile, it's a continent, not a country.
I agree with just about everything in the blog post, except, the underlying Michael Jordan baseball analogy example. Does the analogy hold if we swap Michael Jordan for let's say... Bo Jackson? He really was very good at a number of sports before his hip injury.
This is a case of taking away existing artificial barriers and let what people do their thing in the market. 5 and 10 year plans are only for economies run into the ground by an elite intelligentsia.
He wasn't that bad at baseball compared to a random person or a minor league player.
He was that bad at baseball compared how good he was a basketball.
The article seemed correct IMHO,
> What happened when he switched from basketball to baseball? He went from being an MVP champion to being a middling player in the minor leagues. 2 years later, he was back to playing basketball.
This is an interesting read though I’m not an economist but even pick up that the author is wrong about some of these points. Still, I don’t think the author is an economist either. And a little harsh on US workers - but I know there are people really struggling in the US who need work and bring their problems with them.
Even if you guys did rebuild e.g. textile factories down there in crazy land you're not going to pay workers $300/month to be able to compete globally. Nobody wants to pay $1,000 for a pair of underwear.
Tariffs don't help you compete globally -- they're about disadvantaging the global in favor of the local.
Someone may be able to pay workers $300/month and make them work the "996 working hour system"[1], but if they then have to mark up the end product by 100%, the disparity between local and global price to consumers narrows.
"America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufacturing Back"
"America" doesn't underestimate or overestimate things. People do. So which American people underestimate the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back? Name names, or it didn't happen.
It is just a point of pragmatism.
Countries that wish to bring manufacturing back to their country just have to use people to do that just like they used people to put the production outside.
Which by the way will produce lot of business :)
There is no technological path to AGI, much less intelligent robots, in the next 10 years. Everyone underestimates the massive amount of parallel processing going on in a single human brain. That doesn't even consider how massive the sensor array is. The doublings required for our artificial technology to catch up is about 25-35 years, maybe more depending on how much Moore's Law slows down.
America is the wealthiest nation in the world. You just need more equality! Not MORE wealth! Where is that supposed wealth going to go to? Look where it has gone!
And for those who want a video, watch Scott Galloway on Anderson Cooper https://youtu.be/qg3JOR44r6M?si=Ggwfuuy-_lXjFUxq. Galloway notes that the US is only second to China in manufacturing and the Cato survey that found 80% of Americans want more manufacturing but 1-in-4 or 1-in-5 have any interest in going to work in manufacturing. And he quotes Dave Chappelle, "we want to wear Nikes, not make Nikes." (https://youtu.be/LAg1bDvuarc?si=-aLApcSdAk75d7Vr)
Back to the article, I'm no expert on tariffs, but explaining things to people and trying to understand where they "are" (I'm a social worker, so this is SW-speak) are two things I've spent my policy career doing. If I hear one more quilter (I make and sell one-of-a-kind quilts) say that the solution to the high price of quilting fabric (because of tariffs) is returning manufacturing to the US and Trump is our savior for recognizing this, well, I don't know what I'm going to do other than share the link to this blog.
meta observation; It is amusing to me that the comments on this site are majority "No, we are not smart enough to run a drill press. That takes years of training!" but back in 2020, every commenter was pretending they were doctors.
Our economy was designed to NOT have citizens work at factories. We pay thousands of dollars a year in our public schools to teach each of our citizens calculus, literature, world history, and physics, so that they DON'T have to work at a factory, or perform manual labor like picking strawberries or driving trucks or cleaning toilets.
Why would anyone want to go back to an economy that can be run by a third worlders? What is our competitive advantage then?
Economics works when the people do the things they are most efficient at. If a person in China can make iPhones for cheaper than an American, LET THEM. Our citizens should be designing them instead, because that's what we train our citizens to do.
Trump and the Republicans really do think of our citizens as third worlders performing manual labor like we were oxen.
Americans fantasize about factory work because, at that time in America, you could afford a home without a two-income family. Life was "easier" for many people.
Personally, I think we need to focus on making things like homes more affordable. This would go a long way toward alleviating people's feeling of being trapped.
It's definitely less of a factor compared to money, but I can't help wonder if in addition to being able to afford stuff, it's the idea that there used to be a "default" path that carried some sort of dignity. Dirty jobs have never been outright glamorous, but there's still a kind of respect that American society confers upon "traditional" industrial work - think the classic image of the humble American coal miner, factory worker, or farmer. "It ain't much, but it's honest work." I think the thought is that however you did in school and in the upper-class-employment rat race, anyone could find a stable, respectable, long-term job - probably even get trained on the job - in an industry that really matters, that does useful stuff for the country.
Now? If you fail to jump through all the office-job hoops of picking a fancy field, getting a degree, finding internships, dressing up nice, keeping a clean record, acing job interviews, etc. Or if those fancy jobs just aren't hiring near you. What are the "default" job options most people are left with? Working retail at Walmart? Putting fries in the bag at McDonalds? Janitorial? Driving a truck? Doordashing burritos?
Obviously the main thing the lack of stability and decent pay in these jobs, but when it comes to public perception and fantasizing, like you said, I wonder if a part of it is just that these service sector jobs feel... shittier. Less important for society.
Because you cannot hide the imbalance of disconnecting yourself from the material reality that's involved with making your lifestyle possible by outsourcing to other human beings, over multiple decades, without it coming back to bite you in one form or another.
See the hundreds of thousands of people in US that have died from opioid overdoses. 50% of the US population, specifically those living outside major metro areas, experienced a slow collapse (over decades) that was not unlike the fall of the Soviet Union.
A country should have _some_ semblance of what it is to truly source, manufacture, and produce the lifestyle that's made possible in the country. When the top 15-20% become completely disconnected from the other 80% working menial service jobs because the core manufacturing has been outsourced to outside the country, it will come back to bite you.
"Man must feel the sweat on his own brow" or at least have an appreciation for what makes this possible. Your comment essentially implies that you feel that you are above or should be disconnected from this reality, which is dangerous.
You didn't explain exactly why we need that physical connection. You just broadly complained. Every one of your statements could be refuted by globalists saying its perfectly fine for foreigners to perform our manual labor for us instead.
Because in the absence of that physical connection you begin to accumulate a social and economic debt that will eventually come due, because sooner or later that 80% working in the service economy will come for the remaining 15-20%. Domestic manufacturing made possible by some degree of anti-dumping/tariffs
would at least create a more balanced distribution of this wealth.
Globalist trade promoters are just short-term wishful / magical thinkers. It's magical thinking that you can create this social and economic imbalance via outsourcing it to the other side of the globe, without consequences over the long run. It's wishful thinking that there are enough upper middle class jobs / lifestyle for everyone that took Calculus.
I think its more complicated than this. People don't want to work in factories per se, but what a world where labor has actual power. The big thing that offshoring did was strip the power of local labor to enforce certain reasonable conditions on employers and this allowed normal people to live stable, even comfortable lives.
Offshoring has produced a world where we can buy cheap trinkets but where many, many, americans live precariously, have little to no stability, and work more than one job to make ends meet. What Americans really want is more control over their lives and "bringing back manufacturing" is a sort of short-hand for that ideal.
I think bringing back some manufacturing may help, but in the end Americans need to learn that what they really want is more power to shape their lives and that they will need to wrest that power back from a system which has leaned ever more towards market control of the allocation of time, energy, and labor.
But how many citizens know calculus, literature and physics? Certainly not enough know history - or US democracy wouldn't be facing the threat it does now.
The poorly educated need a livelihood too. If the economy is healthier for global trade (I think it is), then some way must be found of destributing its benefits to the demographics who got hit. Otherwise you get revolution or populism.
Telling an unemployed factory worker to send their kids to college doesn't help. Doesn't help the factory worker, and doesn't help kids who see education and middle class jobs as about as unreal as the idea of becoming a famous influencer or kingpin drug dealer.
There's a lot more to our education than that. Additionally, our REAL competitive advantage are our universities. We have the best universities in the world, by far, and that's what drives our economy over all others as we create the most valuable intellectual property.
At its root I think this is driven by anxiety over how America would perform in a hot war, rose colored glasses culturally regarding the post WW2 era, and acknowledging that there's no real economic growth opportunity in America for unskilled labor, it's merely a way to tread water now.
going to have to give you kudos and steal that last part of "unskilled factory labour being a way to just tread water"
i didn't understand it myself until I developed a hardware system and computed the margins, hassle, etc - manual labor/assembly/mfg is not what a developed economy relies on and its asinine to pretend it is.
I don't know how the current American dynamism movement has picked up the steam it has
The problem with an exclusively intellectual economy is that it easily loses touch with reality entirely. You end up with generations of people who have no idea how anything works or how to actually make anything or do things in the real world.
Why does it cost us 10X more to build half as much? It's not all wage differences. It's that we don't have a large talent pool of builders. When you make things -- physical things in the real world -- you learn things about the nature of reality that cannot be learned from books or computers.
this is what i've been saying - critical manufacturing should of course be brought on shore but I don't understand the idea of bringing back "the assembly of hyper niche part that country Y can produce extremely cheaply but America can't even reasonably produce in quality" to American shores.
It literally harms industry because anyone relying on that hyper niche part now has to pay more (because American mfg, let's face it - is not efficient) and deal with subpar quality as opposed to higher quality foreign parts.
I hate it say it, but come on man - people aren't buying American cars globally because the Japanese and even Germans can do it better. That's free market economics, either get better at making cars or focus on making things that we can do better like iPhones and Macbooks - not try to artificially defend an industry we suck at by forcing people to deal with shittier subpar products.
Everyone wants to think they're the most valuable thing in the world, but economics doesn't care about how much people value themselves. It only cares about when both buyer and seller agrees to the value of their work.
You may think a farm worker deserves $500,000,000 a year, but that won't matter until someone else decides to pay them that.
Ultimately, it's OK to say some things are more valuable than others, including the value of your labor.
What we have instead is a nation straddled with debt and useless degrees. While the counties like China do “theirs world” work produce smarter and more capable workforce all while doing the mundane work too.
I think your view also vastly underestimates the number of not so smart people that exist in America. This is no knock on them, but people in tech bubbles get to walk around in a society where the average person they interact with has a far above average IQ. So for those who don’t balance red/black trees and find shortest paths with dijkstra's algorithm need jobs too.
On top of that you forgot something I am sure you have yelled many times, diversity. Remember when it was a strength? It’s not good for any nation to be completely void of entire industries. Having factories next to the tech will germinate the thinking minds with new problems to solve.
But even more to the point. China is doing amazing things, and they were we let do the manufacturing. So we always have a strong evidence that letting others might not be the best idea.
I don't think it's realistic to bring manufacturing back, so to speak. Are the words being taken literally here? Does this truly mean Orange Man wants to bring all manufacturing back to the United States, or do we want to weaken our largest competitor and buy those cheap products in other countries who are less of a threat, speaking in terms of their technological advancement and economical trajectory?
China has been moving cheap product production to SEA for awhile now, what the USA wants is countries like Vietnam to make cheap products without Chinese involvement in the manufacturing tech and supply chains…which is pretty much impossible.
> China has been moving cheap product production to SEA for awhile now, what the USA wants is countries like Vietnam to make cheap products without Chinese involvement in the manufacturing tech and supply chains…which is pretty much impossible.
Not too long ago it was "common knowledge" that the Chinese couldn't do advanced stuff, now it's "common knowledge" you can't do advanced stuff without the Chinese.
Nothing is impossible (at least in this area). If someone says it's impossible, they're really saying "I don't wanna do it."
That’s complete BS. China has been building out this advantage for a couple of decades now, and anyone paying attention knows this. The common knowledge presented by Trump isn’t very useful.
Yes, America too could build out this capability by aggressively investing in it for a couple of decades.
False dichotomy. An alternate position is to do it in a measured, planned way, not under duress as the economy tanks and international relations are soured.
Building a new factory needs a few years from idea to start of planning to production. 2 years if you are really really quick maybe, 4 to 6 years might be more realistic. The term for the current administration ends in 3.5 years and the next one probably won't be lead by Trump, so things will change.
This means that nobody will even start moving production back yet, they will pay lip-service, do the minimum to get along for this term, and hope for the best for the next one.
Politicians have been running on platforms of about undoing the damage of offshoring since Obama's first term at least, now here we are in 2025 and someone just won an election and it played a key role so clearly it's a big important thing and it's reasonable to expect it to stick around as an issue on the official party platforms. There is a non-negligible chance that in 2029 there will be someone in the white house who continues to push in that direction, even if the specific policy is very different from the current tariff policy.
The wise thing to do is to at least make steps in the direction of on-shoring or at least make your plans and investments compatible with it.
The tldr of that post is:
- To be really good at making robots, you need to iterate fast
- To iterate fast, you need all component manufacturers nearby (or you’ll be wasting weeks shipping parts from somewhere else)
- To be really competitive at manufacturing, you need to be good at robotics.
- If you’re missing all of these pieces, it will be hard to catch up with (say) China, which has been exponentially growing in every possible aspect of manufacturing for decades. Not only do we not have strong manufacturing, but we don’t have strong robotics companies, don’t have many of our own robotics components companies, and don’t even have much in terms of raw materials. Whereas China has been investing heavily in every single one of these areas.
Bringing manufacturing back means investing in all aspects of the supply chains which lead to technical innovation in manufacturing, which is really hard to do when the supply chain is set up to pull from our current competitor.
The most fundamental problem in the U.S. is this: Infinite Growth Capitalism
The VAST majority of what is wrong with our society (political and obviously economic) can be traced to this. It's the expectation that every economic endeavor must show a return on investment - forever. That every entity must strive to optimize the bottom line every day of its existence. Optimizing for growth above all else crushes and consumes everything.
Increasing local manufacturing will only create more opportunities for people to be indentured to a company that literally hates their existence.
A company is forced to build here in the U.S. and people are supposed to rejoice they now have another option for their lives to simply be tolerated and disposable?
Nonsense. Bringing manufacturing back to the US will be easy. Economists will probably call it "Miracle on the hudson river".
Economists are full of bs. They keep framing everything as impossible and when something good happens later, going against all their predictions, they call it a miracle... Maybe these economists are just projecting by assuming everyone else is just as incompetent as they are.
Of course if society was made up only of economists, we'd still be living in caves, worrying about the difficulty of bringing firewood back to the cave.
if manufacturing were brought back, the skies would be filled with coal soot. better that the u.s innovates in other ways, but the u.s seems to largely reject renewable energy to power those plants.
Regardless of what is believed about how well implemented or necessary these reforms are I believe there is an ironclad law of reality that real wealth can only be expressed in terms of material things - houses, phones, computers.
The era of making up tall tales about the supposed value of money via all sorts of futures and stocks and financial instruments the feeble mind can scarely understand cannot be over soon enough.
The value of money manifests when its exchange for physical goods.
If the Communist fairy waved her magic wand about and distributedall the wealth of the rich to every american equally, half of the people would decide to buy a new car with their newfound wealth next day, only to find out the supply of cars hasn't increased.
There'd be like 10% more cars sold, with people bidding over each other to actually get access to that supply, which would trigger massive inflation in practical terms, revealing the emperor had no clothes all along.
This article seems to be full of propaganda and downright lies. For instance, there are plenty of tool and die makers left in the USA, plenty of injection molding machines. I have personally seen them and met the tool and die makers as well as the machines making the molds.
It's difficult to address the giant article full of misrepresentations point by point. It's tough to see it up at the top of HN. Wish that I could do something to correct the misinformation that is being disseminated.
This person has a vested interest. They manufacture cheap crap in China (or Vietnam, I don't care) for American kids to suck on. What more do you need to know?
If you feel there are misrepresentations, then just pick one point and discuss that. I've worked in manufacturing-dependent companies and industries, and lived in China for years. His observations don't feel entirely off-base to me and fit much of what I've observed. So if there is something wrong here, help us clarify one part of it.
"To make Brain Flakes, you melt plastic and force it into shaped metal molds. Were we to import the machines and molds needed to do this, it would work for a little while, but as soon as one of those molds broke, we’d be in trouble, because there are almost no moldmakers left in the United States. The people who knew how to build and repair molds have either passed away or are long retired. In the event of a problem, we’d have to order a new mold from China or send ours back, shutting down production for months."
This is what I have the most problem with. As I said above:
"For instance, there are plenty of tool and die makers left in the USA, plenty of injection molding machines. I have personally seen them and met the tool and die makers as well as the machines making the molds.".
The reality is that there are many injection molding machines in the USA making weapons, medical devices, electronics enclosures and connectors, car and airplane parts, and other high margin products, not kids toys. And it's a lie to say that tooling, molds, and tool and die makers and shops aren't widely available in the States. They just don't want to pay more for them, and are therefore disseminating propaganda to the contrary.
And, I have also spent time in China, I have toured the factories there, I know what I am talking about as well.
A personal anecdote from someone close to me.
A food plant in Canada (so not heavy/high tech manufacturing), was importing raw materials from US, processing it and exporting it to US.
After Trump tariffs, they bought some small plant in the middle of nowhere USA. Moving most of the equipment to that US plant, increased the salaries of Americans that worked there before (very low salaries compared to Canada).
So yes, it's unskilled labour but an example of production moving quickly back to US.
or change the consumer habit to consume less, and/or change how things are produce in order to them last longer (reduce planned obsolescence) or even better we rebuild the system to serve human needs instead of feeding capitalism's endless growth.
There are some interesting things in this but there are also some deeply cynical anti-working class stereotypes:
>You don’t have people who insist on being paid in cash so that they can keep their disability payments, while they do acrobatics on the factory floor that the non-disabled workers cannot do.
>Chinese workers much less likely to physically attack each other and their manager. They don’t take 30 minute bathroom breaks on company time. They don’t often quit because their out-of-state mother of their children discovered their new job and now receives 60% of their wages as child support. They don’t disappear because they’ve gone on meth benders. And they don’t fall asleep on a box midshift because their pay from yesterday got converted into pills.
>Sadly, what I describe above are not theoretical situations. These are things that I have experienced or seen with my own eyes.
Really? How does he know if someone is on disability? How he know many of these are not seen in China? If they aren't then why aren't they? I don't think it is as simple as work ethic.
The mainstream assessment is deindustrialization is inevitable in the western world because all kinds of legitimate reasons: the cost is too high. The talent pool is too small. We are left behind and lack critical IPs and infrastructures. People are too lazy/stupid/uneducated/self righteous/<your favorite derogatory phrases>. We can hang on to our high-value service industry.
What I don't understand is, why would people even want the US dollar and its service industry if we can't produce sufficiently any more? And what about future conflicts in the world? The US can't even produce enough saline solution or disinfectant wipes, let along active pharmaceutical ingredients? Did people see what China goods we tariff on? We tariff China for advanced materials, electronics, machineries, and etc, yet China tariffs on our raw materials and agricultural goods. And we think the US can maintain its wealth by behaving like a colony of China? When there's a conflict between us and China, what do we do? Beg them for the life essentials? And we keep yelling to punish Russia and help Ukraine to win the war and we should, but with what? We can't even out produce artillery shells faster and cheaper than Russia, or drones faster and cheaper than China. Admiral Yamamoto used to say that he saw so many factories and chimneys in Philadelphia that he knew that those industries could turn into efficient war machines if Japan ever declared war on the US. Would he be able to say the same today?
As for what we can, wasn't the US a manufacturing powerhouse until early 2000s? BTW, the US is still a manufacturing powerhouse in some sectors, but we just can't make things cheap enough with good quality because we pretty much destroyed our light industry. Didn't China have nothing and it was heavy investment from the western world that helped China grow so fast and so rapidly? Then, why can't we shift investment back to the US and bring our key industries back? We kept talking about technical difficulties, yet we ignore the necessity of the matter.
Yeah sorry but the Apple math is so weird that it cmake me doubt the rest of the article. An increase of 54$ in taxes doesn't explain the 216$ increase in price. Of course to keep the same profit, the price would increase more than 54$ to handle some externalities and the decrease of sales, but it would be paid only once and do not need to increase at each step
All of these points are overstated or just flat out wrong. For example the price of cheap manufacturing labor in America isn't higher than it looks, it's much lower, because there are an extremely large number of NEET men.
The iphone, while impressive, is not the end all be all of American manufacturing. The major goal is to bring back tool makers and increase industrial density.
>Chinese manufacturing labor isn’t just cheaper. It’s better.
>In China, there are no people who are too fat to work.
This is obviously just dumb anti-american propaganda. Since this article isn't written in good faith it's not worth my time to debunk point by point.
The world is an interdependent eco- system these days. The idea that a country can isolate itself an reproduce expertise that has flourished elsewhere is a bit silly and tilting at windmills.
Globalization is a fact of the world today and the best path to better lives for everyone is through mutual cooperation and policies that lift all boats.
Trump's goals and attempts to change this are foolhardy.
> Let’s focus on America’s strengths in high end manufacturing, agriculture, and innovation instead of applying tariffs to all countries and products blindly. We should be taxing automated drones for agriculture at 300% to encourage their manufacture here, instead of applying the same blanket tariff of 54% to that that we apply to t-shirts.
Everything wrong and right with the author's thesis. Our present day high-end manufacturing, agriculture, and innovation are already facing the steepest tariffs from a broad range of countries. The uneven playing field extends to IP theft, heavily subsidised and protected industries abroad and other forms of unfair competition like port traffic manipulation or burdensome legislation.
The author think that "targeted tariffs" would have a different effect from what we see now with trade war and retaliatory threats, market instability and uncertainty. This is false, but also ultimately harmful to our "agricultural drone industry". It's hard to have a niche industry without the larger picture, and it's hard to have "drones" without knowing how to manufacture constituent parts and having a reliable domestic supply chain for such. A domestically sourced supply chain encourages innovation and adaptation to immediate customer demands and goods can arrive in days or hours instead of weeks or months. Innovative requests to parts makers aren't immediately harvested by Chinese industrial spies and knowledge and technological advantage can remain local for longer, allowing for time to progress again before others can catch up.
Encouraging lazy and unoriginal drone manufacture in moated "made in USA" assembly lines is precisely the low-end type of job that "no one wants to do" and will inevitably produce the least capable drones the least efficiently or profitably. Our manufacturing and industrial capacity needs to be the world's best and most cost competitive because nothing else will do.
Only automation can save American industry. There will be "fewer" jobs but they will require skill and training. Robot management and supervision and repair and update and retooling will all require a large labor force. Creating robots and the software they run on will continue to be an important and large sector of the software industry. But manufacturing is only about jobs in the way that having a healthy agriculture industry is "about jobs", hardly at all.
Manufacturing real goods is the difference between servility and freedom given that modern war in the nuclear age also entails producing billions of tonnes of metal and blowing it up in distant countries, and could require replacing percentages of the global shipping tonnage that would be destroyed in a major conflict. It requires manufacturing thousands of substation transformers and the aa systems to defend them.
If we had invested strategically into a variety of heavy and light industries over the past 30 years, we almost certainly would have invented better processes and formulae for making things than we currently possess. We could have more globally competitive steel, even more advanced finished products and the knowledge and experience to "make anything better and more profitably than anyone". Industrial production and manufacturing make up roughly 15% of US GDP today. "Bringing back manufacturing" might increase that number significantly but it's hard to see how or why it would need to be more than 30% outside of wartime. That wouldn't even require a doubling of the jobs involved because much of this would have to be automated.
I agree with the author's emphasis on education and "fixing" things being critical in the execution of any kind of industrial renaissance. If the tariff fight lowers tariffs globally, that is a small move in the right direction of leveling the playing field and rewarding domestic producers who are globally competitive.
Robot drones probably are something the US should do. Access to US farms is useful for anyone making agriculture products. Remembers these drones are part of the supply chain for food, and so doing them in the US makes the supply chain closer. You want the ag drones made in small city, not Silicone valley. However your might write the software in Silicone valley - that is where you will find a supply of people who can do that - some of those people will then be making regular trips to the factory though to learn how it works.
The US should look into other countries efforts to replicate Silicon Valley, you just can't. You will get some niche good, you will waste some money there, but you won't get the same level. '
This, without even considering for a moment that China is 4+ times the US.
This article is very goofy. America manufactures very complicated things. Building an iPhone at scale is not complicated in the grand scheme. Building it as low cost per unit is a complicated socioeconomic question- ive seen and read enough about working conditions at Foxconn to know that the complexity rests with the government control of the laborers' lives, and the laborers' lack of relief from what Americans would decidedly call slavery.
1- Tariffs will bring some manufacturing back to the US. The before/after tariff pricing presented in the article is fiction- price points cannot simply be doubled, consumers will reject it, pricing is extremely complicated and sensitive, Apple would have already had the iPhone set at $616 if they believed that was an attainable price for the volume. Apple is among the most profitable companies in the world, in part thanks to their mastery of labor exploitation.
2- Weak industrial supply chain- we have an incredible supply chain and industry can hop right on. Trains, planes, and automobiles galore. Extremely adaptive and we have plenty of room to expand. Auto manufacturers dont seem to mind building in the US, slightly more complicated than the toys that Molson sells.
3- We dont know how to make it: some things sure, most things: yes we do. We do have some additional capacity building required but this is not some crazy challenge. The beautiful thing about it is that, for the stuff we cant make easily, we can just pay the tax and keep in motion. It becomes a simple optimization calculation.
4- effective cost of labor- this is a challenge for sure but it has significant upside implications for American labor and the American lower and middle class. Again, this is a simple optimization. He points to all the fraud in the American system and the slave-like conditions of the Chinese system as if those are things things that shouldn't be addressed / barriers to entry for US? US needs lots of improvements that should be addressed not matter what.
5- Infrastructure- I seriously doubt the electricity stats but accepting it at face value, we have endless gas and sunlight in the west, US can adapt here as well. China notably does NOT have endless gas supplies.
6- Made in America will take time- OK? I am here for it!
7- Uncertainty- I would love to see them permanent. But locking in some wins from 4 years of America-first, modernized manufacturing base will go a long way.
8- Most Americans are going to hate manufacturing- why is that something you get to declare and presume? I think Americans will love job opportunities.
9- The labor does exist, we are just paying them to not work. it's an epidemic and circular problem. A bigger current issue is that we also dont have enough jobs to put low skilled workers to work. We need more low-ish complexity but reliable jobs.
The true and sad truth is that manufacturing can be moved anywhere but the people that keep parroting about it's importance are in complete denial about the primary issue: costs. These costs have very little to do with infrastructure and building factories or logistics. Those are a contributor, sure, but that only scratches the surface. While China has seen insane growth in the last 20 years, that growth is at the expense of workers. No doubt they have a lot of value in terms of skills(which take a long time to acquire) but you also need to remember that there is a difference between the significance of working in Asia and Europe/north America. To us Europeans (and North Americans) work brings stability and security. In Asia, work is the difference between life and death, regardless of how skilled you are-you are legally expandable. Does anyone seriously believe that iPhones will be made in the US? The basic salary at foxconn is just under 320$/month or $1.81/hour. That is around 10x less than the US. This is ignoring the atrocious working conditions and far above the 40 hour work week. If we do factor in that as well, the difference is likely in the 25-30x range. I come from a country with a minimum hourly wage of around $3.6, let me tell you, as soon as the clock hits 18:00, people will drop everything where they stand and go home. The only way to compete with China is to automate everything and let machines do all the work, which is not a terrible idea but also nearly impossible to achieve. And even if you spend two decades doing all that, there are costs to all the R&D to get there. No one is going to buy a $15k iPhone, nor will they buy a $20K laptop. A logo that says "Made in X" won't justify the price. This comes from someone that uses a dual-xeon workstation as a personal computer.
Here's another example: a market that has been completely dominated by China: consumer drones. Believe me when I say this, I hate DJI and while I have one, I refuse to use it because of all the security implications. How many European and US companies are competing with them? Quite a few actually but the big names off the top of my head are Parrot and Skydio. I own both a Parrot and a Skydio and the quality of both is amazing. Yet they are still barely keeping up with DJI and at 5x the cost despite the demand - DJI still holds 90% of the market share. I can justify the price because of my privacy concerns but that's 1/1000 people. For most people it's always going to be a trade-off between price and quality+privacy.
If you want to enforce all that through tariffs, just put 5000% tariffs so that the local manufacturing cost will be the same as the cheap import and you solved the problem. How many people will be willing to spend 100 bucks for a pair of socks? That's a different story. The soviet union attempted something similar for several decades while trying to copy western technology. Anyone that knows a bit of history can tell you how that ended. Spoilers: not a success story.
Fine, we underestimate the difficulty. But we can make a detailed plan like other countries do. The US has massive advantages. Just no longer so massive that we can expect to win on sheer awesomeness.
I feel like we in the US have a horrible split evaluation of ourselves: either we're supreme or we're doomed. Both sides of that split are emotional states, not useful facts.
> But we can make a detailed plan like other countries do
The problem isn’t that we don’t know this: it’s that the person making the decisions rejects the idea of needing to make a detailed plan, or even understand the situation well enough to recognize the problems a plan would need to address.
There's an argument that America is fundamentally broken at this point.
By fundamentally, I mean value wise the country is splitting apart. Trump is the saviour for half the country and the devil for the other half.
It's basically taken less than a hundred years, even after riding on the back of world war 2 and hegemony, to bring the country back to the great depression.
The trade wars for me are just another desperate attempt by the country to point blame elsewhere.
House prices are at an all time high.
Cost of living is becoming unbearable.
So, $25 dollar menial jobs are scoffed at, because of inflation.
Inflation is due to out of control printing/spending and government debt. Debt is due to big government, capitalist greed and oligarchy.
Capitalist greed is due to economies of scale when offshoring. Oligarchy and big government is due to an entrenched lobby system.
Lobby system is due to the cost of electioneering and bad decisions by successive governments.
It goes on and on.
Root cause: Systemic rot.
Diagnosis: Failing empire
Prognosis: UK (if the fall is managed)
You're right: it's a bit racist. It's also faulty reasoning: you went to a high school in Cupertino with a markedly higher population of second-generation Asian-Americans, and went to a high school in an extraordinarily wealthy area; in fact, I think you might be attempting to generalize from the zip code with the highest density of immigrant professionals in the United States. If you want to generalize from China, that by itself is 1.4 billion people; they're as varied as any large population.
But I’m also Asian myself and all my relatives and everyone I know from China is the is way.
It’s a stereotype. Asian tiger moms. Asians are good at math. Math competitions, test scores. Quantitative metrics everywhere point to a worth ethic that is viciously high.
My conclusion of course is derived from quantitative evidence from general populations and iq scores by country. When I mentioned Cupertino I did it only to say that all the quantitative evidence happens to align with my anecdotal experience.
There are no such things as "IQ scores by country". If you're thinking about the data behind "IQ and the Wealth of Nations", the Richard Lynn stuff, it's basically fraudulent.
I didn't say anything about the validity of IQ. I said that Richard Lynn's numbers, which this site cites, are fraudulent. "IIT 2024" appears to be results from a website survey.
Respectfully, I think it's you that needs to do a bit more reading. I might be wrong about any of this stuff; I'm not an expert. But I'm pretty sure the first Google search result you find for "IQ by country" isn't going to rebut me effectively.
>I didn't say anything about the validity of IQ. I said that Richard Lynn's numbers, which this site cites, are fraudulent. "IIT 2024" appears to be results from a website survey.
You said IQ by country doesn't exist. And i said, IQ is so pervasive it fucking does. You also referenced something completely off topic. Some random book claiming that because that random book is invalid the whole concept of IQ by country doesn't exist which is absolutely wrong.
>Respectfully, I think it's you that needs to do a bit more reading. I might be wrong about any of this stuff; I'm not an expert. But I'm pretty sure the first Google search result you find for "IQ by country" isn't going to rebut me effectively.
I'm well versed enough in IQ to know that even the first link on google is good enough to refute you. You don't have to believe me, but you can always do your own research to find out I'm right.
You cited a ranking of countries that was based on Lynn and his colleagues collecting data from childrens hospitals, because IQ is a diagnostic and not a ranking mechanism, and outside of wealthy western countries nobody has done latitudinal studies. If that was the worst thing Lynn had done to generate his data, it would already be fraudulent, but it isn't. Unfortunately, I don't think you actually understand the statistics you're citing.
I don't know what you're talking about. You cited a source upthread that included the Richard Lynn data --- very prominently! --- alongside an online survey site where people sign up, claim a country of origin, and fill out an online survey.
And no, your logic about how any diagnostic can be "ranked" obviously does not hold; it doesn't even make sense. But we've reached the point on the thread where you're trying to axiomatically derive your own psychometrics, so we can probably wrap it up here.
The amount of pooh-poohing of this idea is even more than I would have expected from HN, despite tech’s love of belittling others ideas.
The reason we need manufacturing is because the middle class is decimated. None of us tech workers feel it because we don’t live in neighborhoods that have been decimated by it. We have all benefitted from globalization immensely but we don’t have neighbors, families or friends that have been destroyed by it.
Too many people say it will take “years” to get factories operational. That’s why Elon is there. He knows and has done this, to point out which regulations need to be axed in order to improve the time to market for new factories. Trump will listen to him and get rid of any regulation that doesn’t make sense, or even regulations that do make sense but take too much time. For better or worse factory building will be faster over the next 3 years.
Now that we have these greenfields for new manufacturing opportunities, instead of standing there with your arms crossed, shaking your head why the idea won’t work, how can you take advantage of this new opportunity to get rich?
> We have all benefitted from globalization immensely but we don’t have neighbors, families or friends that have been destroyed by it.
Blue collar workers were the first to push for globalization, because they suddenly could afford a lifestyle that used to require the salary corresponding to a couple of steps upper in the corporate ladder. A blue collar salary suddenly could provide for many more amenities... til the salary was no more!
Everyone wants manufacturing back, but only for the products they can produce, because everyone still wants to buy at Chinese prices.
Furthermore, the regulations that most stand in the way of cheap manufacturing are environmental regulations, and good luck with that! We have got used to breathe clean air, and I feel most people still love clean air more than they hate globalization.
Blue collar workers never pushed for globalization because they knew exactly what would happen, they would lose their jobs and they did.
The irony now about Chinese goods is that those of us that can afford it avoid them as much as possible. I check every product that I buy on Amazon to make sure they aren’t made in China because they could be sending me poisoned goods.
Yep! Those stupid blue collar workers buying cheap shit from Walmart because they couldn't afford to shop anywhere else, it's their fault their jobs were outsourced.
The jobs left first, then the blue collar workers bought stuff from Walmart.
Now you have the middle class who used to deride that cheap shit hooked on it, talking about how they can get next day from Amazon, Temu and Ali.
They've sussed out that if you suck up to him he'll give you an exemption. Of course if you are a medium sized business you are screwed and have to wait in line, but you'll get your chance as long as you can hold on through the summer.
It's a principle of capitalism, but taken to the extreme, it's just a strawman. At this point, I think we are pretty sure that some interventions make capitalism better.
The free market (which I think people also include in capitalism) would correctly predict labour intensive jobs would be outsourced. This is very much a feature (comparative advantage), not a bug. I realized a lot of supposedly free market people don't even know the basics of it. Politically the free market has become an identity associated with national greatness and a sense of control of ones destiny. The dominant feeling seems to be if you have a free market, you will win everything (which is actually opposite from the truth).
The point of Capitalism is Marx needed a straw man to tear down. The world has never seen what he envisioned.
What you might call capitalists very much plan. They don't believe in central planning where one "guy" makes a plans and everyone else implements them, but they do plan.
Marx never said that capitalists didn't plan. In fact, the possibility of the transition from late stage capitalism/imperialism to socialism is based on that very fact, capital got concentrated in very big companies with internal planification. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_People%27s_Republic_of_Wal...
Which is why things that bring back manufacturing to the US is something we were doing. It's just unfortunate that instead of continuing that, the current administration is trying undermine the effective efforts of the previous administration's actions that helped bring manufacturing back into the US.
No, it doesn't. There is a presumption that manufacturing is Better, a more ideal way of organizing the economy, based on a false nostalgia of America past.
sure, but it will take longer than 4 or 8 years and everyone in power wants their own thing, not continuity. it cannot happen without a long term plan and long term plans cannot happen if have, maybe, a year to do things and the rest is election time.
Molson has a Chinese spouse, directly benefitted from Chinese manufacturing for a long time, and often spouts direct propaganda from his X account so while he's likely to be right about a lot of things he had/has a strong incentive to not imagine alternatives to the status quo.
What attacks? Fwiw: "he's likely to be right about a lot of things". Perhaps I should have been more specific: I think his analyses are mostly correct, his predictions are not.
Subscribe to ground news so that you know what historically a news sources biases are.
For example: "you can't imagine the cheap Chinese robots coming online"... Then what's stopping an American manufacturer from buying a Chinese robot, taking the tariff hit once, then manufacturing domestically with no tariff?
We never stopped manufacturing, we just stopped employing people.
> We don’t have the infrastructure to manufacture
That's trivially false given we're the second-largest manufacturer in the world. We just don't want to employ people, hence why we can't make an iphone or refine raw materials.
The actual issue is that our business culture is antithetical to a healthy society. The idea of employing Americans is anti-business—there's no willingness to invest, or to train, or to support an employee seen as waste. Until business can find some sort of reason to care about the state of the country, this will continue.
Of course, the government could weigh in, could incentivize, could subsidize, could propagandize, etc, to encourage us to actually build domestic industries. But that would be a titantic course reversal that would take decades of cultural change.
Concur, employee training and retention are at an all-time low. There are no positions available for junior employees, minimal onboarding and mentoring of new employees. Organizations have stopped planning people's careers. Used to be that the employee's career growth was their manager's problem, while the employee could focus on the work. Now the employee must market themselves as often, if not more often, than actually doing the work. Meanwhile organizations see employees as cost centres and a net drain on their revenue sources.
Corporate culture in America is definitely broken. I'm not sure how we can fix it.
> minimal onboarding and mentoring of new employees. Organizations have stopped planning people's careers.
I hear from all the much more senior devs about how they learned OOP in company training after years of C, or how their employers would give bonuses for finished projects, and that sort of thing. I always seem to join the ship when the money train and training train leaves the boat.
I think R&D for tax reasons needs to be changed, we had so many tech advancements used to this day from Bell Labs. Now only Microsoft, Google, Apple etc can afford to do R&D and so all the innovation is essentially only worth while to them if they can profit from it.
Granted I do think if you build something innovative you should be able to monetize it, but it takes investing a lot of blood, sweat, tears and money.
> I always seem to join the ship when the money train and training train leaves the boat.
From a statistical point of view, that's probably to be expected. Kind of like how open umbrellas get rained on more.
When a hard-to-hire minority gives way to a big growth in the workforce, by definition the majority arrive after the change.
One reason Bell Labs is remembered so fondly for the innovations is that they really only benefited the broader world once Bell was broken up.
I’ll also challenge the assumption that these companies only do R&D if it’s immediately profitable. For example, Microsoft and Google both are investing heavily in quantum computers despite the fact that it’s unclear that that is a profitable endeavor (or profitable to be the ones putting the upfront capital so early). Google also has the X moonshot lab that is trying to do similar things to Bell Labs. I think there’s just a lot of romanticism of the golden age when developments were relatively easier because we hadn’t exhausted the low hanging fruit of applied quantum and material sciences.
There is also the negative effect of over-expensive ip blocking product development as no new product with unclear potential can take on prohibitive license costs.
But then the ip-poachers wait for you at the gates. Investing into the new thing, in a world order where copying the new thing is the best game approach, makes R&D a looser strategy. You need temporary punishment tariffs on products that steal IPs to recuperate the investments and make it a bad strategy - or else..
Patents do not work - because the rule of law does not exists without the international order and goverments have a tendency to trade away such cases for protection of big players.
Literally patents.
But you have to take out a copy of the patent in EVERY country you want protection. Most companies don't do this and then whine about copies.
And lest someone whose never done it says they don't work: note how diligently generic drug companies wait for patents to expire.
What you’re describing is monstrously expensive, and doesn’t actually prevent IP violations, it just allows you to recover some of your losses, which is also expensive, and is unrealistic if the violators are fly-by-night operations.
1) The alternative is for millions of local-currency patents in Lesotho to automatically be valid for two decades in USA, EU, and Japan.
2) An of course it doesn't prevent IP violations - Eurocopter (now Airbus helicopters) had to spend millions to enforce their patents against the thieves* at Bell helicopter.
https://www.bananaip.com/intellepedia/bell-helicopter-v-euro...
* not my preferred choice of words, but its the tone on this forum.
I'm confused by the ending of this article. It seems like two mutually exclusive outcomes happened.
> The court held that the landing gear certified and sold by Bell Helicopter on its Model 429 helicopter, namely the Production Gear, does not infringe the Eurocopter patent. The court invalidated all but one claim of Eurocopter’s patent. Bell Helicopter is, therefore, free to continue all use and sales of its Model 429 helicopter with its existing landing gear.
So it doesn't infringe and they can continue to use the landing gear. But then
> In addition to awarding to Eurocopter damages and punitive damages, the judge also issued an injunction enjoining Bell from manufacturing, using, or selling the infringing landing gear, and also ordered Bell to destroy all infringing landing gears in its possession.
What? I'm clearly missing something here.
> What you’re describing is monstrously expensive
I would actually consider this to be an desirable side effect: if you want governments to enforce your monopoly using their state authority, you better pay for this really well. :-)
So you'd prefer there be no protection for inventors who aren't already wealthy?
I prefer for inventors not having to deal with the minefield of loads of existing patents.
I wonder if we could reproduce the magic of Bell Labs by basically re-creating some Ma Bell style businesses: grant a profitable, but regulated monopoly that had the financial security to think long-term and be willing to fund out-of-the-box research to service internal needs or hypotheticals.
I mean, wasn't this ZIRP Google? Chrome, Android, Project Zero, etc.
It's deep hubris in our leaders that assumes existing capital/values/structures/motivations are sufficient to allow newcomers ( & new generations) to contribute..
Tangentially, I have not personally tried, but it seems possible:("Unintentionally moderate"[1-2] business thinkers like PG/YC partners do it all the time)
[1] https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html>Have to be an asshole or something
[2] https://archive.today/latest/coralcap.co/2022/02/why-japanes...
It's also fundamental tech and a research pipeline supporting new ones.
There are numerous examples of whole competencies were transferred to a foreign partner, leaving only sales and marketing in the US. TV's for example, gone by 2000, leaving only a swirl of patent walls to further prevent them from coming back. https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2014/10/22/america...
And research? DEC WRL, Bell Labs, Xerox Parc ... Which corp has the gumption to fund any of that again? They'd rather pad the current quarter than invest in the next.
Corporate research spending is nearly $1T/yr. Yes, corporations have a lower risk tolerance than the government, but that's not always a bad thing.
Not just risk tolerance - they also have different (generally much more short-sighted) incentives.
To get employers to invest in employees, they'd need more of a stake in it. Right now if you invest $200,000 to train someone, they can immediately quit and go work somewhere else and you're out $200k, so they don't do that.
A way to fix that would be to e.g. issue student loans for the training and then forgive them over time if the employee continues working there. But that's rather disfavored by the tax code when forgiving the loans is considered taxable income, and you would have people screaming about "abusive" companies sticking you with $200k in debt if you quit right after they give you $200k worth of training.
> you would have people screaming about "abusive" companies sticking you with $200k in debt if you quit right after they give you $200k worth of training.
Because it would be very easy to abuse. It would be oh-so-easy to give an employee training worth $200k - in the company's estimate - and then force them to stick around for years.
"But nobody made them agree to that!"
Sure, and nobody makes anyone take on a bad loan from a shady car dealership, or a bad mortgage sold by the same people who tanked the economy, etc., etc.
> "But nobody made them agree to that!"
And to amplify your point just a bit, if the alternative is losing your healthcare and possibly going homeless, what does "agreeing" even mean anymore?
What you’re describing already exists and are aptly named TRAPs (Training Repayment Agreement Provisions). Companies already abuse these and in fact are illegal in California. Here’s an article covering it from a few years ago: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/more-us-companies-charging-...
> Right now if you invest $200,000 to train someone, they can immediately quit and go work somewhere else and you're out $200k, so they don't do that.
And...why are people immediately quitting to work somewhere else? Your idea of addressing the problem is by saddling employees with debt and forcing them into literal wage slavery rather than fixing the problem of companies not paying people enough to stay.
Nobody is talking about handing out 200k of training upfront. Individual 1-8 week training courses don’t actually cost that much to operate internally and generally allow someone to do something very specific and useful. There’s plenty of ways to boost short term retention like a bonus after 1 year of service.
50+k of training over a 40 year career requires salary bumps for retention, but the first set of training should have paid for itself before you’re offering the next.
> Nobody is talking about handing out 200k of training upfront.
Why not?
> 50k of training over a 40 year career requires salary bumps for retention, but is hardly a major risk.
"Pay 50k for training and then pay a salary bump" is more expensive than "just pay a salary bump to the person the competitor was a sucker enough to pay 50k to train", so how does that work?
> is more expensive than
Nope. Keeping the same person for 40 years saves far more than 50k of onboarding costs over that timeframe. Employee churn is really expensive but if it’s not coming out of your budget middle management doesn’t care.
Companies do all kinds of objectively dumb things due to poor incentives.
> Keeping the same person for 40 years saves far more than 50k of onboarding costs over that timeframe. Employee churn is really expensive but if it’s not coming out of your budget middle management doesn’t care.
How does that change the number from the perspective of the employee?
The problem is not how to get an employee to stay for 40 years. The problem is, the employee who has just received $50k in training will take whichever job pays more, so the employer who paid the $50k has to offer the same salary as the one who didn't. And then who is going to pay the $50k when they could get the employee that someone else paid the money to train, for the same salary?
> The problem is not how to get an employee to stay for 40 years.
No, you generally need more than 1 set of training over 40 years.
Bob’s been with you for 6 years but you’re about to make him redundant and pay unemployment insurance. Meanwhile you’re looking at 10k of onboarding costs for a new role. Suddenly 10k or possibly significantly more worth of training is saving you money and getting you an employee who is dependable and already knows the business. Yet you almost never see this happening because it’s just got to be cheaper to get someone else to pay for training.
As to stealing employees from companies that just did 5-15k or whatever worth of training, they have onboarding costs and on top of that need to offer more money to get someone to swap jobs. Convincing people to swap jobs is really expensive unless the other company is paying significantly under market rates so don’t do that after you just trained someone.
It's almost like maybe there was a point to unions and guilds and what not...
Isn’t that simply the inherent risk associated with business ventures? Not every investment will yield a profit. I recall reading about Ward Parkinson, one of the founders of Micron Technology. During his tenure at Fairchild Semiconductor, the company paid for his Master’s degree at Stanford. However, upon graduating, he promptly left to work for Reticon.
If more employers gave raises such that an existing employee in a given role was paid the same or more as what they would pay a new hire to fill the same role, I don't think we'd see the level of job hopping that we currently do.
This! My company is mid size and we can’t hire junior people for fear they’ll jump to FANG right when they’re starting to become productive for us. And we can’t afford FANG compensation for senior people.
If you are willing to have a remote team then this is not a problem - lots of great (senior) developers in EU, Asia,... No need to pay FAANG level compensations either. Curiously enough not many US companies do that, or those that do, put rounds and rounds of interviews in front of each candidate. Which is OK I guess - if you pay FAANG salaries. But if not, maybe just limit to 3 interviews, one hour each? If that's not enough to judge a potential hire then I don't know what is. Once the hiring is fixed you should have lots of great candidates available.
You don't even need to go out of the US. Plenty of good US people are down to live in non-FAANG COL areas and thus can have more take-home for less upfront pay.
In networking the situation is just ridiculous. Companies just expect people to know Cisco Nexus, ASA, XE, Palo Alto, Linux, AWS VPC, and do a bit of database and backup admin all for less than $100,000 a year.
That’s sounds like a functioning free market. Either they find the quality of labor they require at that rate, or they don’t. Either you take such a job at that rate because you have the required skills and knowledge and that’s your best offer, or you don’t.
> Organizations have stopped planning people's careers. Used to be that the employee's career growth was their manager's problem, while the employee could focus on the work.
Could you please inform my managers who keep pestering me about career growth of this shift so I could just focus on the work? ktnx
If you don't upskill for free with no additional comp, how will they continue to cram down labor costs to make their quarterly numbers? You are, broadly speaking, treated as an asset to be sweat until you can be replaced.
Well, tbf, it's not like there's no carrot in this case. (I'm at a FAANG)
But I'm sure what you're describing is common in the general case.
Certainly, at FAANG outlier comp, it is likely worth your while vs the median.
> Now the employee must market themselves as often, if not more often, than actually doing the work.
Maybe only tangentially related to your post, but this has been on my mind a lot lately. After many years of doing all kinds of tech and business consulting gigs, I decided to somewhat specialize over the last 3 years and have been spending some time on LinkedIn this year.
What I can't figure out is how (arbitrary percentage) 30% of the people I follow do any work when they are on LinkedIn posting/commenting on posts _all_ day.
The layers of work arbitrage are incredibly deep. It's all about connections, I do a lot of Shopify freelancing and I'm typically the 3rd or 4th layer away from the actual business. It's typically something like the business hires a marketing agency, the agency hires a development company. The development company then hires a freelancer. Now I actually do the work myself, but it seems like a ton of those freelancers simply rehire another freelancer in a cheaper country. Then it seems in many cases that foreign freelancer isn't even a developer but just someone who speaks English well enough and then hires the actual non-english speaking coders locally.
It's not much different in other industries though, so many layers of subcontracting to finally get to a potentially illegal immigrant that does the actual work.
Employees have always been responsible for managing their own career growth and always will be. How can it be otherwise? It would be foolish for an employee to let someone else handle career growth for them as their interests aren't aligned (or even known). If you want help with career growth then find a mentor, don't rely on your manager.
Managers should facilitate training to improve employee productivity and help prepare them for a promotion. But that isn't really the same as career growth.
> Employees have always been responsible for managing their own career growth and always will be. How can it be otherwise?
On the contrary, from the 40s to the 70s (possibly well into the 80s) the corporation was heavily invested in your career. Employees were expected to dedicate their lives to the firm, and the firm, in turn, was expected to take care of them. This "free-for-all" employment model is fairly recent.
Edit - added source (1993): https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/employers-employees-no-...
Outside of government, this shift also coincides with the decline of pensions and the rise of the 401k.
Career growth has always been a shared responsibility between employees and employers. In white-collar fields--especially medicine and engineering--education has long been frontloaded, with formal schooling as the main on-ramp.
Blue-collar jobs, by contrast, have relied more on trade schools, mentorship, and hands-on training. These pathways have steadily eroded since the 1980s.
Much of this traces back to the Open Door Policy with China and the broader Free Trade Agreements that followed. These moved massive segments of industry offshore--along with the structures that once incentivized long-term employee development through education and skill-building.
Revitalizing domestic industry could reintroduce competition among employers, which in turn could restore the pre-1990s incentives for long-term investment in the workforce.
I would point to the emergence of Milton Friedman’s school of thought that the only thing a company should care for is delivering “shareholder value.”
It's the same problem in the trades. Apprentices tend to cost the company more than their output so no one wants to hire and train them.
It didn't stop in the 70s. In many countries in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere, it's still common for businesses to retain employees over the arc of their career.
Certainly true, my comments are specific to the North American workplace.
Even the creepy business terminology "human capital" implies something that a business actively wants to grow. That is in stark contrast to how most businesses manage their people today.
I find "human capital" better than "human resources", as it has connotations of something valuable to be invested carefully as opposed to something simply to be consumed and discarded.
Of course, in the end it doesn't really matter, it is all Orwellian anyway.
Not entirely. Businesses don't try to grow things like buildings and inventory, they try to manage them at levels that make sense for their present and projected sales.
(So the same sort of mercenary treatment that employees get)
Inventory is part of working capital. Companies generally understand that they want to expand working capital.
Buildings are often leased and are therefore not capital at all.
Companies who pay attention to free cash flow will typically try to manage inventory and non-cash/equivalent working capital down, not up.
How do you improve your "return on capital"?
That's right - by keeping output constant (e.g. through automation) while reducing capital!
My bestie works in sales and marketing. Events, promotions, audience engagement. Long time experience with national brands, loves helping local businesses (side hustle).
A huge part of her job is recruiting and hiring. Part of her pitch is proactive career development.
Paraphrasing: I want you to join our team. I also understand that this job is just one stop on your journey. While you're here, what can I do to help you get the skills and experience you want for your next job?
Consequently, she has a HUGE network, built over decades. Something comes up and she knows just the right person. She has her pick of new opportunities.
Wouldn't you love to have her as your boss?
I've had precisely 2 bosses in my career that had any impulse for nurturing, mentoring, career development. Whereas I've tried to be that kind of boss, given the limits of our current system.
> If you want help with career growth then find a mentor, don't rely on your manager.
Your mentors are your peers at work which can include your manager. Career growth is the accumulation of both knowledge and experience which is beneficial to both parties so I dont understand how those are misaligned unless fraud is involved.
No, that's not how it usually works (at least not for professional and managerial employees in the US). Mentors are typically more senior, not peers and not someone in the employee's direct chain of command. They may be in an entirely different organization.
I don't know how you could believe that career growth interests are aligned between employees and their managers. For the majority of employees, their optimal career path will involve changing companies at some point. This is generally not in their current manager's best interest.
As a manager, I disagree. It is entirely within my interest to have a direct do better; this provides me a path in the future to switch orgs when they switch orgs. If I level up or leave, I bring them with. If they level up or leave, they potentially bring me with. Team, self, org in descending order of priority. Companies are temporary, network is what carries you until the end of your career.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43698197 ("The best advice I ever got was from a mentor who told me: Your network is your net worth but only if you give more than you take.")
> How can it be otherwise?
It was otherwise. And is IS otherwise in many other rich countries, as well as not-so-rich ones.
In these places, the employer-employee relationship is more of a relationship and less of a transaction to be reassessed every morning.
If you don't believe it, because you've never seen it, then you are probably American, probably young. And seeing other possibilities is a good reason to study (modern!) history, and to travel.
You fix it the way every other industry has fixed it: broke/agent model.
Can you expand on this? I can't find any references online.
In a broker/agent model agents are people doing most of the client-facing work, but they defer an offset of both liabilities and earnings to a broker. This is how real estate agents, lawyers, teachers, doctors, and many others enter their professions, at least in the US. Because the broker carries civil, and possibly criminal, liable for the violations of their represented agents they have a vested interest in the quality of product/service those agents deliver. In the medical industry the agent phase is described as residency and internship. Its a matter of who actually holds the license that allows a person to perform professionally.
In criminal enterprise drug mules and prostitutes often subscribe to this business model. Drug mules will transport drugs as part of an illegal enterprise and are paid by criminal organizations that have vested interest in the successful completion of the logistical services provided by the drug mules. Likewise, in some geographies prostitutes will voluntarily pay pimps a percentage of their earnings in exchange for physical security and those pimps stake the value of their services on the success and reputation of the services they provide to their prostitute agents.
You also have to understand most of the software industry loves to bitch and cry about all these problems they see in hiring and practicing and yet don't really want any of these problems to be solved.
>We just don't want to employ people, hence why we can't make an iphone or refine raw materials.
This is it. Aside from manufacturing, most recent AI startups are almost universally aligned in the desire to use it to reduce headcount. It's plastered all over their landing pages as a selling point: "use our product and you won't have to hire people."
Business culture is eating its own young and hollowing out the future with such empty goals and sales points.
I'm skeptical of actual results. There are a lot of layoffs attributed to AI but far fewer cases of increased sales attributed to it.
> Business culture is eating its own young
it's not eating its own young. It's externalizing the costs.
And it's understandable, because the cost of employees are perhaps the largest line item in the budget.
Perhaps it's more accurate to say capitalist culture is eating its own young, due to its fixation on business culture. And I'm saying that as basically a capitalist. Not sure where we go from here.
Shareholder supremacy is the problem.
We can go back to stakeholder capitalism.
What's the difference?
Unless a stakeholder can become a stakeholder without putting in risk capital of course.
Do you have a stake in whether your water supply is full of arsenic?
Yup!
Do you have a stake in whether the people in your community work unsafe jobs for poverty wages?
Yup!
From Claude:
"Stakeholder capitalism is a model where businesses focus on serving the interests of all parties affected by the company's operations - including employees, customers, suppliers, communities, and shareholders. The core belief is that companies should create value for all stakeholders, not just investors.
Shareholder supremacy, on the other hand, is a model where a company's primary or sole purpose is to maximize returns for its shareholders. This view, popularized by economist Milton Friedman in the 1970s, holds that businesses have no social responsibility beyond making profits for their owners while following the law."
Shareholder supremacy is a recent meme and it's wildly, obviously antisocial.
Away from unfettered capitalism, clearly.
Ford Vs. Dodge Brothers
I'm American and heavily involved in manufacturing for industrial/mining/agricultural customers.
'We just don't want to employ people' is a gross simplification. We do want to employ people, and lack of skilled labor is a serious problem which has hampered business growth for years,
The first unspoken problem is that very few young people want to live where many factories are located. I can't blame them. I certainly jump through hoops to live in an area well removed from the industry I work in but not everyone has this luxury.
The second is psychological. How many kids do you know who are ready to commit to a future of 35+ years of factory work in their early twenties, even with reasonable pay. This influences manufacturer's hiring practices because of the 'skilled' labor thing. Putting time and resources into training employees when there is a high probability they will make a career change within 3 years isn't really acceptable.
This is HN, so I don't know if this resonates but as a thought experiment, would you take a welding/machine operation/technician position for 25 - 45 USD/hr (based on experience)? Overtime gets you 1.5 base rate and health insurance + dental + 401k is part of the deal. All you need is a GED, proof of eligibility to work in the United States and the ability to pass a physical + drug screen on hiring. After that, no one cares what you do on your own time if you show up, do your job and don't get in an industrial accident. Caveat, you have move away from anything remotely like a 'cultural center' but you do have racial diversity. Also, you will probably be able to afford a house, but it won't be anything grand or anywhere terribly interesting.
There is a dearth of applicants for jobs exactly like what I've posted. Why don't people take them?
> There is a dearth of applicants for jobs exactly like what I've posted. Why don't people take them?
It's pay. It's always pay.
You gave a range so I'm guessing the lower end is starting out, why take that when nearly every entry level job, with far less demand, pays about the same?
Start your pay at $45/hr and people will flood in. If they aren't, it's because the factory is too remote for population to get to. Put that factory in any mid to large midwestern city and it'll be flooded with applicants.
How do I know? About an hour south of Louisville, Amazon keeps building giant warehouses and hiring workers, and people fight over those jobs. They don't pay half of that.
Preach. How long does it take train someone to get them to $45hr level of experience? The truth is that it doesn't. Companies love using yoe as an excuse to pay newer workers less. Manufacturing is not like software engineering where you have to constantly be re-educating yourself.
Staff who’ve been around a while, understand how a company operates and can seed that understanding into new staff are more valuable to companies. For example: if every worker were replaced with an equally skilled worker tomorrow a company regardless would not be able to function. It therefore makes sense that a senior employee can demand a higher wage [than a new starter] even if their direct productivity is no different and so a gradient in wage for seniority is exactly what one would expect to see in a free market.
If you replaced every worker with someone else of equal skill of course manufacturing company would continue to operate.
Making employees replaceable cogs is what industrialization was completely about. It's what happened during globalization. Think about all those seniors who lost their jobs when the factory went overseas. That was successful in large part because the distinction between a junior and a senior is not that great.
There would be some exceptions here for management and execs, but we are not talking about them here.
> If you replaced every worker with someone else of equal skill of course manufacturing company would continue to operate.
No it wouldn't, because a senior worker wouldn't be around to say things like "oh yes we use a jig under this circumstance that we keep over here <points>". Every business has ton of institutional knowledge like that.
It turns out, that isn't worth much. Because they upended the factories and sent them to Mexico and China overnight without a person to point and say where the jig was. Seemingly, they figured it out.
To be clear, I'm not actually disagreeing with your point, I do think it's important to have those people. But companies felt otherwise.
At least in the instances I've been aware of, they usually weren't really "overnight". Usually a good bit of knowledge transfer or actually moving institutional people, sometimes having the other factory coming online in parallel so they can tweak processes, etc. Usually a years-long process. I think few truly overnight shut down one factory and opened the other with those other people having zero knowledge or training on specific processes without experiencing big issues.
In Norway skilled trades generally require a 2-year education and an apprenticeship. After education you start the apprenticeship for which pay starts at like $5-7.5 an hour but every 6 months it increases until you finish the 2 year apprenticeship.
This is for things like process workers in Petro/chemical plants, mechanics for assembly or machining, painters, construction workers, plumbers, electricians, all kinds of stuff. The government also subsidizes the apprentice program so it's very cheap to train young workers.
The people who choose this path generally end up pretty well off, being able to buy a house or apartment by like mid to late twenties and make even more later.
> It's pay. It's always pay.
Indeed.
I attended an injection molding conference and one of the panel discussions was about the poor state of hiring and retention. I stayed expecting to hear the standard complaints about the fact that injection molding was considered "obsolete" (really?), the pipeline was too weak so wages were out of hand and there was too much churn. I was interested in which companies were hiring off the people so much that it warranted a panel session.
Then I heard the complaints of what their primary competitor was: Amazon warehouses. They were losing injection molding workers to freakin' Amazon floor jobs!
I lost it and lit off on an absolute rant about how if a company couldn't keep their employees from joining one of the objectively worst employers in the country then they absolutely deserved to go bankrupt.
I, very suddenly, made both a bunch of friends and a bunch of enemies that day.
> This influences manufacturer's hiring practices because of the 'skilled' labor thing. Putting time and resources into training employees when there is a high probability they will make a career change within 3 years isn't really acceptable.
We've had decades of large companies laying people off (effectively) without warning, and the lessons of "don't trust an employer" are... fairly well understood by a lot of folks. If I had the promise of working some place for, say, 20 years, with a statistically 0% chance of being let go because someone wanted to goose the quarterly numbers to get their bonus... yeah, I'd have gone for it years ago. Even 25 years ago, that wasn't much of an option with most companies. Lean/Kaizen/JIT were all big movements by the 90s and ability to ramp down headcount was a requirement for most companies.
Where does 'skilled' labor for specific types of manufacturing processes come from? High school? With slashed budgets and worsening teacher/student ratios?
Businesses could step up and create environments that people competed to work at - pay decently, invest in their workers and community - but that requires a commitment to stick with the people and community even in the lean times. And most companies don't want to, or more likely simply can't, operate that way.
30 years ago I considered positions like that. Some of my family and friends did, and were there for years - decades in some cases. I don't think there's many of those left any more.
You make a good point about the Lean/Kaizen/JIT philosophies + headcount.
I've always been associated with mid-size (< 500 million/yr) where much of that 'wisdom' sounded good but didn't work out so well in practice. Sadly for the consulting folks, it isn't actually possible to lean out an entire supply chain and still maintain the ability to respond to market fluctuations. Being lower on that food chain, if you lay off reliable operators/maintenance during something like the COVID slump then you are screwed when business comes back because you can't rehire/train fast enough to fill orders that are needed 'next month'.
Lol, $25hr. McDonald's entry-level wage is $20hr in CA. The $5 premium is not enough of an incentive to move to the middle of nowhere for a job.
Adjusted for cost of living, this could be double the wage.
$5 plus lower cost of living might be depending on the employee and on what you mean by “middle of nowhere”
Will your pay gradually increase to $45 or more at McDonald's?
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Yeah I think I would say you're right to doubt if this resonates on HN. You're posing it to an audience which has very little GED-level representation. HN more often has people who did well in school and are at a much better disposition for higher-salary jobs.
I'm not part of the target population but my guess is that a large factor has to do with people's tendency to go down the path of life that is most similar to the path they've already tread. If you grew up in a 'cultural center' it's less of a paradigm shift to take the crappy job around the corner rather than move somewhere slightly more remote to start a new career even if in the long run it could actually lead to a more decent life.
Oddly, literally everything you just described is true about my pure remote software engineering position, except I had to get bachelors in computer science first.
I think it's worth specifying even further: wealthy business owners don't want to pay what a US employee costs.
Most jobs are wholly unsustainable. You have to job hop every couple of years to keep up with inflation because God knows you're not getting a raise that keeps you comfortable.
This has led to churn and brain drain and the slow collapse of US domestic business.
It's not that people don't want to work, it's that wages have fallen so far behind the cost of living that it's financial suicide to stay in any one job. Even with all the traps like employer sponsored healthcare, most people just can't afford to be paid the pittance most businesses are willing to pay.
This is a deep societal illness in the US. We've glorified and deified the concept of greed to the point where even talking about income inequality and the unimaginable concentration of wealth is just anathema. It's seeped into the everyday consciousness in the form of "I'm the only one that matters, fuck absolutely everyone else"
I genuinely believe that America will never, ever recover until we address this. We will always be this sick and broken country until the state entirely collapses or we get our shit together and address income inequality.
I have some real serious doubts that we'll ever get there, but it's easy to be pessimistic.
The USA is number 1 in median disposable income at purchasing price parity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...
This makes me think that it at least as much to do with high (unrealistic?) employee expectations as business stinginess.
There's always someone to quote some dry statistic that refutes the lived experience of... pretty much anyone. I wonder, what's the deal with people like this? Is the point to convince yourselves it's not that bad?
Yes, indeed, in the US even a poor person is relatively wealthier than someone in a war-torn African country. But humans are social creatures. We compare ourselves not with "the poor kids in Africa", but with the business owner in the adjacent zip code.
As for "unrealistic" expectations: why do business owners expect to take an unrealistic percentage off the top of everyone's labor? What made them worthy of such a huge amount?
You’re coping hard. The USA is (well, was before tariffs and related) so far ahead and richer than the rest of the “first world” that “europoor” is a correct term for those unfortunate souls who weren’t born there.
OK, let's all celebrate King Bezos shutting down Venice to celebrate his union with his plastic appliance. The suffering of his serfs is necessary to enable this show of excess.
The problem is that we're talking about "manufacturing" as one big homogeneous thing. The US obviously makes a bunch of stuff, but it has very limited ability to make lots of kinds of stuff, especially in a hostile trade environment.
The US manufacturing sector is about half the size of China's in terms of value-add, but it's much smaller by any other measure. The US has focussed on high-value verticals like aerospace and pharmaceuticals, where intellectual property provides a deep moat and secure profit margins. That kind of manufacturing doesn't produce mass employment for semi-skilled or unskilled workers, but it does create lots of skilled jobs that are very well paid by global standards.
That's entirely rational from an economic perspective, but it means that US manufacturing is wholly reliant on imports of lower-value materials and commodity parts.
A Chinese manufacturer of machine tools can buy pretty much all of their inputs domestically, because China has a really deep supply chain. They're really only dependent on imports of a handful of raw materials and leading-edge semiconductors. Their US counterparts - we're really just talking about Haas and Hurco - are assembling a bunch of Chinese-made components onto an American casting. To my knowledge, there are no US manufacturers of linear rails, ballscrews or servo motors.
If the US wants to start making that stuff, it's faced with two very hard problems. Firstly, that it'd have to essentially re-run the industrial revolution to build up the capacity to do it; secondly, that either a lot of Americans would have to be willing to work for very low wages, or lots of Americans would have to pay an awful lot more in tax to subsidise those jobs.
It's worth bearing in mind that China is busy moving in the opposite direction - they're investing massively in automation and moving up the value chain as quickly as possible. They're facing the threat of political unrest on a scale they haven't seen since 1989, because of the enormous number of highly-educated young people who are underemployed in unskilled and semi-skilled jobs.
Lots of Americans want to bring back mass manufacturing employment, but very few of them actually want to work in a factory. You can't resolve that contradiction through sheer political will.
I did a tour of a huge beer plant in the US. The 4-5 floors where they made the beer had maybe a dozen people total. I was told back in the day it would have been thousands of workers.
It's not even aerospace and pharmaceuticals. Any manufacturing that comes back onshore will not employ massive amounts of people.
They will automate it. Which, to be fair, will help employ some Americans. But it won't be employing them to work 9-5 in a factory. It will be used to employ Americans to build and maintain the machines building the product.
> The US has focussed on high-value verticals like aerospace
Which is about to take a huge nosedive, as both Europe and China pull back on buying critical systems from the US. And can you blame them?
There's an excellent youtube series (by a Finnish ex-military officer) on the likely impact of recent events on US arms sales to Europe. They do have choices!
Trump and Musk's threats to invade and blackmail (e.g. by cutting off Starlink) will be felt long after they're both gone.
Can you share the link? I’d like to watch that.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iAOtMaXVVjA
100% agree with you!
I have worked US manufacturing and manufacturing R&D for most of my career: pharmaceutical, microelectronics, materials, aerospace, etc. The US is awesome at manufacturing when we want to be.
One problem is that "modern MBA/business philosophy" views manufacturing and manufacturing employees as a cost center and there is so much emphasis on maximizing gross margin to increase shareholder value.
So business leaders scrutinize the hell out of anything that increases the cost of their cost centers:
- employee training & development? hell with that.
- Increasing pay to retain good employees in manufacturing? Why? isn't everything mostly automated?
- manufacturing technology development? Not unless you can show a clear and massive net present value on the investment... and, then, the answer is still no for no good reason. I have pitched internal manufacturing development investments where we conservatively estimated ~50% internal rate of return and the projects still didn't get funded.
There is also a belief that outsourcing is easy and business people are often horrible at predicting and assessing the total cost of outsourcing. I have been on teams doing "insource vs. outsource" trade studies and the amount of costs and risks that MBA decision makers don't think about in these situations really surprised me initially... but now I'm use to it.
Anyhow... the US (and Europe for that matter) can absolutely increase manufacturing. It is not "difficult"... but it would be a slow process. I think it is important to differentiate between difficulty and speed.
You could simply make taxes scale inversely with the number of employees. Make the tax scale with a lack of career path. Even more tax if you don't have a system to measure and reward performance. More tax for lack of R&D. They don't have to be huge amounts, just enough for the MBA to stfu.
> The actual issue is that our business culture is antithetical to a healthy society. The idea of employing Americans is anti-business—there's no willingness to invest, or to train, or to support an employee seen as waste. Until business can find some sort of reason to care about the state of the country, this will continue.
I think you're exactly right there.
>> We don’t have the infrastructure to manufacture
> That's trivially false given we're the second-largest manufacturer in the world.
I want to quibble with that a little bit. I don't have the numbers, but relative position matters too. The US could be "second-largest manufacturer in the world" if it only manufactures Dixie cups, other countries manufacture nothing, and China manufactures everything else.
My understanding is Chinese output is so huge, that even if the US had maintained steady or modestly growing manufacturing output from the 70s or whatever, it would be dwarfed by China.
No, we're a very close second in terms of output, almost on par. [0]
The difference is China has something like 10x the number of workers in manufacturing and can efficiently take on smaller or custom work.
---
[0] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/global-manufacturing-scor...
We produce weapons. We are an arms dealer empire.
Our biggest exporter is Boeing and sure Boeing produces commercial aircraft but their position has a lot to do with inertia as the accountant leadership of Boeing is doing their best to destroy Boeing by nickel-and-diming every aspect with a complex web of outsourcing that will fall apart the second there is any disruption in international trade.
What China has now is the infrastructure and ecosystem to manufacture. You need some tiny screws made of titanium? Well, there's a factory that produces that down the street.
The last time we got employers to care about employees it was because the unions dragged the bosses into the streets and beat the daylights out of them.
Unions are all conservative trump voters now. Labor isn’t left wing anymore. Arguably never really was (sorry coping anarchists and marxists, but usually the greedy monical wearing boss still leads to better outcomes than most “back against the wall” types we end up with when we let leftists have one iota of power.
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This is even showing up a bit in tech now. The number of places that expect some articulation Venn diagram of skill sets is too high.
There are too goddamned many stacks to expect that your best hire is going to already have used everything you’re using. There are people who have used everything, but you’re mostly going to be hiring flakes if you look for those, not Right Tool for the Job types.
> Until business can find some sort of reason to care about the state of the country, this will continue.
The best financial years Puerto Rico had ended when the tax incentives to be there went away. It's a real shame. Puerto Rico was #1 in production, above the US and Japan. You could buy something made in Puerto Rico and you knew it was a high quality product. Its much harder to gain back that level of quality once you've effectively killed such a culture, I can only imagine the detriment in Japan if they lost their work culture and how much harder it would be for them to regain it.
>That's trivially false given we're the second-largest manufacturer in the world.
Sure, but we don't manufacture the things that are typically made in 3rd world countries and the lead time to build that infrastructure is years, and generally would result in us moving down the tech tree ladder from being a consumer economy to a manufacturing economy with all of the negatives associated with that.
This attitude that manufacturing is moving down the tech tree ladder completely misunderstands manufacturing. IME the entire notion was invented by elitist economists and embraced by CEOs looking to justify sending manufacturing overseas for short term profiteering. Regular people bought in because of the promise of cheaper gizmos.
It’s the sort of attitude that infected Boeing and resulted in taking them from the peak of aviation to an embarrassment. Because they don’t know how to lubricate doors or tighten screws.
Building things is hard, and requires significant technology and skills among a lot of people. A service based economy inherently looses that technology and skill.
Tim Cook interviewed and said China isn’t the low cost labor anymore it once was. China has become the place that knows how to manufacture things, especially electronics.
And is that quoted fact in absolute terms or per capita / as percent of GDP? That makes a big difference as to how we should interpret it.
The actual issue is that our business culture is antithetical to a healthy society.
I agree with the unhealthy society and your statement got me thinking. In regards to health what happens when global trade is shut down and a country can not make it's own pharmaceuticals for example? About 64% of people in the US over age 18 are on prescription drugs. Some of those drugs have really dangerous rebound effects if one suddenly stops taking them. Some of those effects can be deadly, especially blood pressure drugs. Most of those drugs come from China, some from India. How quickly can each country start manufacturing and distributing it's own prescription drugs? Would that cause a quick adjustment to the culture or is that not enough?
According to Brookings, 80% of drugs are imported.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/pharmaceutical-tariffs-ho...
To clarify, I just Googled for: what percent of american adults are on prescription drugs?
I got back from "AI Overview": Approximately 64.8% of adults in the United States report taking prescription medication at some point in the past 12 months. This figure is based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The key phrase here is "at some point". I guess a huge amount of it is a very short 1-3 week dose of antibiotics.
I can invoke the powers of Google as well. Let's ask it how many Americans are on blood pressure drugs.
"Approximately 51.2% of Americans with hypertension (high blood pressure) are currently taking medication to lower their blood pressure."
That is not a temporary thing. Most of those people will be on drugs the rest of their unnatural lives. So when the availability of said drugs is gone, 51.2% of Americans will go into full rebound and their BP will spike for several days to weeks. Their risk of stroke and heart attack will go off the charts as any ER doctor can attest to. What should we do for those poor souls?
that's 51.2% of Americans with Hypertension, not 51.2% of Americans at large.
CDC says:
Source: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Published by: Health, United States. Table RxUse and NCHS Data Query System, Prescription Medication Use Tables One or more, Three or more, Five or more.https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/drug-use-therapeutic.htm
It is coincidentally close to 51.2%, but not the same statement.
> We never stopped manufacturing, we just stopped employing people.
I don't think it's just that. We manufacture, but we aren't great at the entire chain. China is much better are specialized tooling, etc. We have definitely lost a lot of knowledge in critical parts of the chain.
Which means policies that reverse that are immensely important. The process of offshore our jobs and much I.P. took decades. Getting them back and rebuilding manufacturing support will take a long time, too.
Just need to make steady progress each year with incentives that encourage large leaps in progress.
> We never stopped manufacturing, we just stopped employing people.
That’s a misleading oversimplification. While it’s true we haven’t stopped manufacturing, we did offshore a massive portion of it--especially after the Open Door Policy with China and subsequent free trade agreements. That shift didn’t just change where things are made; it fundamentally altered corporate incentives. Once production moved overseas, the need to invest in domestic labor--training, benefits, long-term employment--shrank accordingly.
Yes, I should have said "we just stopped employing americans".
I suppose so, since your use of “we” includes both America and China et al.
Most companies that do manufacturing in USA are oriented to making business-to-business products, where high margins can be achieved.
As an European, there have been many decades since the last time when I have seen any competitive "made in USA" product that is intended to be sold to individuals.
There are products that I buy, which have been designed in USA, e.g. computer CPUs, but none of them have also been made in USA.
When I was young, it was very different, there were many "made in USA" products that could compete with those made elsewhere.
It's shareholder capitalism. Capitalism can be a great thing, but shareholder capitalism defines profits as the only reason for a corporation to exist. Humans are simply resources to extract work or profit from, and destroying the future of the country is an unfortunate externality. CEOs are obligated to behave like sociopaths. Lying, cheating, stealing, and subverting democracy are all good business if it returns value to shareholders. We see this over and over again, and wonder why our society is so fucked up.
And since every major corporation is behaving like this, even if a CEO wanted to give a shit about the country, they can't do anything about it because someone else will be more cutthroat than them and eat their lunch.
> Humans are simply resources
I thought that the human resources department made that obvious.
The notion of shareholder primacy capitalism is one of those ideas that seems great on paper, much like communism, but its end effects are disastrous.
It seems great cause it’s simple and gives a nice simple answer to “what’s capitalism” and “how to make effective companies”. That intellectual (existential?) laziness is costly long term however.
This is the root issue
The idea that “labor is cheaper elsewhere” is simply a neutral statement of economics is wrong — “lower living standards” is not just a economic measure, it’s a political statement about the value of labor and labor conditions. The US and by extension the “western capitalist world” has been exploiting labor since day 0 with chattel then later globally slavery.
The reason Japan was the biggest manufacturer exporting to the US post war, is because the SCAP forcibly rewrote their constitution to be explicitly capitalist. Read “Understanding Defeat” for detailed proof of the 7 year occupation of Japan, explicity to destroy any semblance of Japanese imperial/keretzu culture, and replace it with explicitly capitalist structure. To be fair to MacArthur, they did suggest labor practices, like unionization, but it was a thin veneer suggestion, not forced into cooperatives and syndicates.
China moved into that position post 70s, because Japanese labor began getting “more expensive.” Nixon and Kissinger saw an opportunity to exploit “cheap” labor because there were no protections for workers or environmental protections - so “opening up china,” plus the Nixon shock and floating of interest rates allowed for global capital flight to low cost slave-like conditions. This is why labor and productivity began to separate in 1971, there was a “global south” that now could be exploited.
NAFTA made Mexico and the southern americas the agricultural slave countries etc…starting in the 90s, and on and on just moving the slave-wage ball until there’s nowhere else to exploit.
It’s not a conspiracy to demonstrate that capital will move wherever it needs to in order to exploit “arbitrage opportunities.” Its good business/MBA capitalism 101.
Just like #2 in Austin powers said:
> Dr. Evil, I've spent 30 years of my life turning this two-bit evil empire into a world-class multinational. I was going to have a cover story in "Forbes". But you, like an idiot, wanted to take over the world. And you don't realize there is no world anymore. It's only corporations.
Chip subsidies seemed to work with little to no consequence. I'm not sure why you're so pessimistic about this obvious mechanism you even mentioned
> We just don't want to employ people
I don't think it's a matter of willingness, but simple global geo economics.
There's places where producing A, whatever A is, is economically more efficient for countless reasons (energy prices, logistics, talent, bureaucracy, cost of labor, etc).
That's not gonna change with whatever investment you want or tariff you put.
But the thing I find more absurd, of all, is that I'd expect HN users to be aware that USA has thrived in the sector economy while offloading things that made more sense to be done elsewhere.
I'd expect HN users to understand that the very positive trade balances like Japan's, Italy's or Germany's run are meaningless and don't make your country richer.
Yet I'm surrounded by users ideologically rushing into some delusional autarchic dystopia of fixing american manufacturing for the sake of it.
> I don't think it's a matter of willingness, but simple global geo economics.
I don't see a difference. If we want local industry, we must address the global geo economics.
Nobody really wants a "local" industry as much as consumers want cheap prices and companies want global reach.
US manufacturing accomplishes higher prices and US only reach.
That's a narrow perspective. The "benefits" that are granted to a country have a cost and these costs need to be reconciled with on the international stage. This is achieved through tariffs otherwise the playing field isn't fair.
Cost of labor is the issue: china is enslaving people to work.
The other side of this coin is cost of living. If housing costs more in the US, so does everything else. If everything costs more, people have to be paid more in order to make a living, and that makes the US less competitive in the global labor market.
Doesn't that feel like a massive overstatement? They have worse working conditions for sure. "Enslavement" is absurd if we are speaking about the macro level.
Overstatement? China is going fully facist on the Uyghurs for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_Chin...
Those nets tho...
There's nothing unusual about suicide nets in a place with a lot of people. They're on the Golden Gate Bridge but that doesn't mean SF is a sweatshop.
(The suicide rate at Foxconn is lower than average for China.)
The US specifically outlawed slavery except among prisoners. The US also operates prison labor at very low rates.
I'm not sure this is a meaningful point of differentiation.
US corporations benefit today from slave labor by people housed in for-profit prisons where there are incentives to over-prosecute brown and poor people. These include, but aren't limited to:
- Aramark
- Avis
- IBM
- JCPenney
- Kmart
- McDonald's
- Nintendo
- Sprint
- Starbucks
- Verizon
- Walmart
- Wendy's
- Whole Foods/Amazon
Seems pretty much like gig economy works in US.
Source?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps
Literally forced labor camps. Of course, the PRC denies these allegations, but it certainly seems like there's some forced labor due to the numerous reports across many years of a variety of forced labor operations from these camps.
The US has forced prison labor. We can talk about how bad the Chinese government is, but their economy is not built on forced labor anymore than the US is built on prison labor.
I also think any form of forced work in the US prison system is pretty awful, but don’t try to equivocate Chinese “reeducation” camps with regular prison. Not anywhere close to the same thing.
Have you asked any of the inmates at the Angola "working farm" in Louisiana?
Apparently 63% are serving life terms, 27% more than 20 years.
Doesn't seem worse than China's attempt to iron out a seditious, violent sub-culture that was actually detonating bombs amongst civilians? Most seem to have closed, so the maximum term < 10 years.
Neither are good ideas IMHO - but one way worse than the other? Come now.
> Neither are good ideas IMHO - but one way worse than the other? Come now.
Inmates in any prison in the US ostensibly have gone through due process and were convicted of their crimes. You can argue about whether the US justice system is truly fair, but it's (at least in historic years) certainly more fair than rounding up large portions of a specific ethnic minority for 'reeducation'.
I would argue that in the 21st century being convicted of a crime does not make your labour essentially free to the state for the rest of your life.
Exactly, a notion of free prison labor incentivizes discrimination and as we see it that is often how it plays out in reality.
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Simple google search, first result:
https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/country-studie...
How many Americans are dying to and will do tedious labor (not many), as well robots, automation and AI can do a lot of it and or will end up doing a lot of it.
If we want to strengthen America (military & economy) immigration reform is needed! This could be unpopular but such reform could be ...those who want to come here must serve in our armed forces for x amount of years and can bring two to four family members here that are able to start working and contributing to the economy immediately (pay taxes). Rounding up and getting of rid of these eager want to be Americans when we have adversaries with larger armies and we bang the drum on beefing up defense (and our economy) doesn't make sense to me.
Importing immigrants directly into the military sounds like a bad idea. I’m guessing many would be less likely to want to lay their lives down for the new country, so drafting them seems like a great way to end up with a bunch of disloyal troops.
Both the Romans and the US had success with immigrants in the military, provided that they were thoroughly mixed. A unit with 35 ethnicities in it usually does not rebel "like one man".
The Roman way started to fail when they moved to the foederati model, where there would be units of, say, only Goths under a Gothic commander. That proved dangerous.
Did either work for Kakania/Austria-Hungary?
The Hapsburg empire, in its various incarnations, existed for almost four hundred years (1526-1918), and most of the time, their troops were loyal, so the answer is yes?
But one has to be careful: while their military was diverse, it wasn't really made of immigrants. It was simply built out of very diverse local ethnicities that were settled in the same place for centuries. Which means, for example, that when the Kaiser fought against the Turks, everyone involved regardless of language had an incentive to fight, because their own homes and freedom were at stake.
The traditional incentive that the military gives in these situations is that your spouse and children will be well taken care of if you serve, and even better taken care of if you die in service. Not endorsing that approach, just explaining.
Indeed, come here and expedite citizenship by serving America for an X number of years! In return along with expedited citizenship your partner and any kin can join you with your partner required to work/contribute some to the economy. Heck work in one of these new factories part or full time (if full time the new factories offer free day care).
Personally this concept is a more humane one then rounding/exiling want to be Americans in which the majority are not criminals! No they are hard workers coming here for a better life, why not give that to them and in return they "Make America Even Stronger!" ;-). That's what the current admin wants beef up defense, yet to me with immigration they are taking the wrong approach!
The French Foreign Legion is a famous counterexample to your argument here. They might actually have the best Esprit du Corps in the world. In particular because they have to since they are indeed comprised of random foreigners and historically at least low-level criminals.
How many wars has American been in within the past 40 to 50 years?
You say it's a bad idea, so it's a bad idea for an American citizen to join the armed forces too?
The best army/weapon are those never needed to be utilized. Enemies won't pick up fights because your weapon/army are way stronger than theirs. Therefore we cannot regard army/weapon as "not used" or just wasted.
These two to four family member who immigrate would not also be required to serve in the military? If not, what are the criteria used to select the one-out-of-five?
I think it be better if they had to work and contribute to our economy and society. They could work in one these new manufacturing plants, as no doubt if you ask farmers and other businesses that offer grunt work they will say they can not find Americans to do the work but they can find hard working and reliable immigrants to do it! How many immigrants nowadays do you see at a construction site? It's the majority for me here in York, PA.
> China generates over twice as much electricity per person today as the United States. Why?
This appears to be completely wrong? All the stats I can find say that the US has about 4x the per capita electricity generation of China.
Other than that it seems to be mostly good points, especially the overall one: you cannot do this overnight.
> If you’re building a new factory in the United States, your investment will alternate between maybe it will work, and catastrophic loss according to which way the tariffs and the wind blows. No one is building factories right now, and no one is renting them, because there is no certainty that any of these tariffs will last
Policy by amphetamine-driven tweeting is a disaster.
> 12. Enforcement of the tariffs will be uneven and manipulated
Yup. The 145% level seems designed to create smuggling, and the wild variations between countries to create re-labelling. It's chicken tax trucks all over again.
> This is probably the worst economic policy I’ve ever seen
Per Simpsons: this is the worst economic policy you've seen so far. The budget is yet to come.
> If American companies want to sell in China, they must incorporate there, register capital, and name a person to be a legal representative. To sell in Europe, we must register for their tax system and nominate a legal representative. For Europeans and Chinese to sell in the United States, none of this is needed, nor do federal taxes need to be paid.
This is .. not a bad idea, really. It would probably be annoying for small EU and UK exporters but less so than 10% tariffs and even less so than random day of the week tariffs. Maybe one day it could harmonise with the EU VAT system or something.
(also I think the author is imagining that sub-par workers, crime, and drugs don't exist in China, when they almost certainly do, but somewhere out of sight. Possibly due to the internal migration control of hukou combined with media control?)
> Other than that it seems to be mostly good points, especially the overall one: you cannot do this overnight.
It's annoying Americans were given only two choices - offshoring is great and let's keep doing it, and, as you say, the opposite, meth-fueled let's bring back manufacturing overnight. The kind of slow and steady protection and promotion of home-grown industry that China and most of Asia so successfully used to grow their economies was completely absent as even a talking point.
This is the part that is so frustrating to me, and not just with regards to tariffs. It's that I see the extremes being so laughably bad (though not necessarily equally - I'm not "both sides"-ing this), and more ludicrously bad is that I've seen positions that don't follow these extremes as being derided now as "centrism". E.g. before the administration's attack on higher education, I do believe a lot of elite universities had completely jumped the shark with their ideological purity tests like required DEI statements. And importantly, there were thoughtful, measured criticisms of these things, e.g. https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2024/02/10/jon-haidt-goes-aft....
But the administration attack is so ridiculously egregious and demands an even worse, government-imposed ideological alignment, that making logical arguments in this environment feels almost pointless.
> making logical arguments in this environment feels almost pointless.
Unfortunately this is the culmination of social media as a controversy machine, that promotes the worst arguments.
> ideological purity tests like required DEI statements
Example?
There's a controversy industry that cherry picks the worst examples of student-politics excess in these regards and then carefully conflates it with university policy.
As well as the sad truth that as soon as you take away "DEI" requirements the segregationists come back and purge the library, delete all the black Medal of Honor recipients from the website, etc.
At UC Berkeley, over 75% of faculty applicants were rejected solely based on reviewing their diversity statements: https://thehill.com/opinion/education/480603-what-is-uc-davi... Rather conspicuously, Asians had the highest rate of rejection, followed by whites. Latin applicants had the second highest pass rate, Black applicants had the highest. The diversity statements were not anonymized (as in, the reviewers could see the ethnicity of each applicant when reviewing their diversity statement).
Diversity statements were widely suspected of being a smokescreen for racial preferences. Much like the "personality score" Harvard used to curate its desired racial makeup in its student admissions.
If you’re basing your understanding of the subject based on one anti-DEI activist’s misinterpretation of policies he doesn’t actually know anything about, who didn’t talk to anyone at those schools (even critics of the policy), and who very likely misread statistics and intentionally misrepresented processes, then you are not getting a fair picture. This piece you linked to is a mess of unsubstantiated statements. Several of the links are broken but the one that is still around does not say what he says, so I wouldn’t trust any of the rest of his summarization either.
Of course one should not use an opinion piece as the source when that opinion piece is just commenting on information found elsewhere, but also, in this day and age there's no reason to give up when you encounter a broken link: https://web.archive.org/web/20200202194620/https://ofew.berk...
A total of 993 applications were received, of which 893 met basic qualifications. The LSI Committee conducted a first review and evaluated candidates based solely on contributions to diversity, equity and inclusion. Only candidates that met a high standard in this area were advanced for further review, narrowing the pool down to 214 for serious consideration.
Ok, so what exactly is the "high standard" here, and what about the standard do you find it objectionable? The fact that something exists doesn't count.
If you don't know, you're just spreading urban legends and ghost stories.
The text in italics is a verbatim quote from the archived PDF I linked, wherein UC Berkeley describes their hiring process. I encourage you to read it if you want to know further details.
I asked what you find objectionable, not what it says.
I found objectionable that some people were unable to identify the original source of a claim they were discussing, so I decided to help out.
> However, other University of California schools have published this information. In one recent search at UC Berkeley employing substantially similar evaluation techniques to those that UC Davis used, there were 893 qualified applicants who submitted complete applications that met the basic job requirements. Of those applicants, 679 were eliminated solely because their diversity statements were deemed inadequate.
Do you have any substantial criticism of the factual claims made here? Or are you just insisting that this is a misinterpretation, without any evidence?
There's no facts to refute - he just states that this conclusion is true without evidence of how he knows that or what the criteria he's using is.
That's the problem with all the DEI hysterics - it's never given any intellectual rigor. Instead, it's all profoundly mid men telling each other ghost stories.
There are two very specific facts to refute:
* UC Berkeley received 893 qualified applications
* Of those applicants, 679 were eliminated solely because their diversity statements were deemed inadequate.
If someone seeks to disprove the claim that 76% of applicants were rejected based on their diversity statements, they can find alternate figures for the numerator and denominator and offer reasons why their numbers are more authoritative.
> That's the problem with all the DEI hysterics - it's never given any intellectual rigor. Instead, it's all profoundly mid men telling each other ghost stories.
3 out of the four companies I've worked at engaged in explicit discrimination on the basis of gender. As in, alternate interview pipelines where women got multiple chances to pass coding interviews where men got one. And one company even augmented that approach with outright withholding a portion of headcount for "diverse" applicants (which was defined as women and URM men, and in practice women made up over 95% of "diverse" applicants).
If you haven't been witnessed to discriminatory DEI practices, that's fortunate for you. But that's not been the experience of many people. DEI is widely perceived as a dogwhistle for discrimination, because it often is used to refer to discriminatory hiring practices, and I don't think condescension is a way to convince people otherwise.
You don't know what the "diversity criteria" even is. Neither does the parent article. You assume you do and therefore it is bad because something something woke. That's not being condescending, that's just true.
As I said, the entire DEI thing smacks of hysteria and paranoia. Frankly, DEI programs do very little, in general.
I have seen a lot of guys overvalue their skills and undervalue others and then blame "DEI" instead of their own mediocrity.
When I was young I went to school to become a chemical process technician. This was a very attractive education for women because it allowed them to work in factories and oil rigs without getting their hands dirty. It's mostly just sitting in control rooms and such, taking walks to make sure things are running smoothly.
The companies hiring had gender quotas to meet, so this was one field where they filled a lot of their quota. Our class was exactly 50% men, 50% women. I worked my ass off, we were graded 1-6 where 6 is best and I had all 6es except one 5 in one class.
Everyone applied for apprenticeships to Statoil (now Equinor) and from our class they hired one guy with literally perfect grades, and nearly all the girls. Over 80% of the girls were accepted, girls with a grade average of 4.2 compared to my 5.9 got the job. I didn't and neither did any of the other guys in the class except one.
When I worked at a bank, the DEI initiatives were limited to documenting in my yearly review how many rainbow cakes I ate each year and counting my participation in various celebrations.
But I think I was also a beneficiary of DEI, because my boss once told me I couldn't quit because I was the only representative of my race in our department.
On top of that even the official guidelines are ridiculous. Statements along the lines of saying that people should be treated equally regardless of skin color are officially grounds for rejection.
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> Doesn't anyone think is utterly appalling?
Of course. The point of this kind of propaganda is to have you reacting so negatively and emotionally that you don't examine the claims calmly and rationally. Emotions > facts. If no-one appalled, then it isn't doing its job.
It’s an overhyped exaggeration at best, but very likely a complete misrepresentation of the policies and how they were used in reality. What you should be outraged by is that lazy hacks can make a living by stirring up fake controversies over intentionally misinterpreting this stuff.
For the schools that have them, I consider legacy admissions to be more appalling. Those are overwhelmingly white.
The other issue is that many of these schools have not been expanding enrolment numbers to population growth. Less seats per-capita mean more exclusivity over time.
Get rid of them both (DEI and legacy admissions) and the government should create a policy that those endowments need to be used to expand the size of the schools.
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> Example?
I literally linked an article in my comment that had an overview, but here is a more specific one that addresses diversity statements in particular:
https://reason.com/2022/09/30/mandated-diversity-statement-d...
> As well as the sad truth that as soon as you take away "DEI" requirements the segregationists come back and purge the library, delete all the black Medal of Honor recipients from the website, etc.
This is literally my exact point. There absolutely should be a rational place that denounces both these diversity statement ideological requirements and the egregious memory-holing that the current administration is implementing.
So… an incident not involving a university in any way is your example of universities jumping the shark?
Fair enough, my bad. Here you go:
https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/fire-statement-use-di...
https://www.wbur.org/news/2024/05/07/massachusetts-institute...
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/03/us/harvard-diversity-stat...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/us/diversity-statements-u...
https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/diversity-statements-are-g...
> Example?
Diversity Statements Required for One-Fifth of Academic Jobs - https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/2021/11/11/study-diversity-...
More examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43692945
20% isn't so bad; the way it's usually portrayed in the media it sounds more like 90% of posts require such statements
If a college allocated a minimum of 20% of their jobs to whites, would you still say it wasn't too bad?
These are statements, not quotas. Basically these are statements where you note that you support teaching all kids, will make efforts to be inclusive and ensure your class has an inclusive environment, etc…
There is no requirement on the race of the applicants.
> these are statements where you note that you support teaching all kids, will make efforts to be inclusive and ensure your class has an inclusive environment
If you look at one example of the actual assessment criteria [1], merely teaching without discrimination or exclusion earns the lowest possible score.
[1] Only mentions activities that are already the expectation of faculty as evidence of commitment and involvement (for example, "I always invite and welcome students from all backgrounds to participate in my research lab, and in fact have mentored several women." - https://web.archive.org/web/20200302212643/https://ofew.berk...
Thanks for the rubric. I found the complete listing. It’s useful to also see the instructions given: https://ap.uci.edu/faculty/guidance/ieactivities/
The instructions make it pretty clear what you need to write. This seems reasonable to me as PART of a total application, but not as the gate to get into the review process.
But again, this is not the same as a quota.
These statements are performative bullshit, and everyone who writes one knows it.
> Basically these are statements where you note that you support teaching all kids
Do you really feel today's university professors need to write an essay saying they support teaching everyone?
> will make efforts to be inclusive and ensure your class has an inclusive environment
Again, say someone is teaching calculus, what does this exactly mean?
It's absolutely makes sense to me that a university has policies in place to ensure classrooms are inclusive and that discrimination does not occur. But these statements are nonsense.
OK, so what policies do you recommend?
Any policies to "ensure classrooms are inclusive" are going to be decried by some people who say that it's "unfair" for whatever reason. Because when you have a class or classes of people who have been discriminated against for centuries, who are at the bottom of the heap, they don't just magically gain parity with other classes, in terms of being able to take advantage of equal opportunity (the promise) simply because they're no longer legally discriminated against. It takes active policies, not just passive ones, for inclusivity to take root. (Once it's taken root, in time those policies may no longer be necessary.)
> Do you really feel today's university professors need to write an essay saying they support teaching everyone?
Yes, actually. Having it be a very explicit part of the job is a good thing. Because a lot of people absolutely need to be told.
It's why we have sexual harassment training. A lot of people don't need it, a few sociopaths will do whatever they want, but a lot of people do, in fact, need to be told to keep their hands to themselves. It really does make a difference.
>> will make efforts to be inclusive and ensure your class has an inclusive environment
> Again, say someone is teaching calculus, what does this exactly mean?
I honestly got a chuckle out of this, because this is the most STEMlordy thing I've heard in a while.
I'm going to presume you're male, because you'd know why if you'd been the only female in a physics or math class and made uncomfortable and singled out because of it. Often by guys assuming you're a DEI and didn't earn your spot.
Of course you don't need this.
If we'd enslaved whites and then turned them second class citizens with minimal rights and very few economic opportunities until fairly recently, putting them in conditions that make it very difficult for them to achieve equal opportunity, then yeah, I wouldn't have a problem with it.
You don't even have to go that far.
I went to school in south Atlanta, where both student body and teaching staff tended to be overwhelmingly Black. The school had a policy of hiring a certain percentage of non-Black teachers, including white teachers, and it had programs designed specifically to attract students from white and Hispanic communities.
The goal was not to give non-Black students and teachers a leg up; it was to promote diversity and ensure students graduated ready to meet all kinds of different people in the workplace. These policies were popular and uncontroversial, at least while I was there — though I dare say they would be deemed illegal now.
Tangential comment, but I now see people adding disclaimers reiterating their political affiliation to their posts regularly and I want to say that you shouldn't have to justify bilateral criticism. It doesn't imply equal magnitude, and it's only taken that way by bullies in dogmatic bubbles.
I don't mind getting some extra clarity on where someone is coming from.
Your rationality here will surely be flagged. Over apologizing is the new norm to avoid being canceled for dissenting opinions.
The commenter is right that you shouldn't have to state those kinds of beliefs, but pragmatically this is a message board that invites all sorts of responses. Those additional notes are an attempt to head-off annoying and wrongly-based counter-responses built on assumptions that shouldn't have been made. But just because they shouldn't be doesn't mean they won't be.
Your comment evoking a victim complex on the other hand I find a far more annoying element of online discourse.
Thank you, because this is exactly why I did it, and will continue to.
So often when I write a comment I find responses either missing the point, laser focusing on something offhand/tangential I wrote, or imbuing my post with a viewpoint I didn't make. Sometimes the fault is mine, sometimes the fault of the responder.
I state where I'm coming from not as some sort of "tribal identifier", but simply to add clarity, and to stave off misdirected responses that I can find annoying.
I couldn't agree more and worry that even if the country makes it out of this period in one piece the well will have been poisoned on a lot of these topics. We should have big initiatives to make government more efficient, and reduce the national debt, and get back to merit-based processes. But after so much bloviating and fake initiatives that claim to do those things, but actually do the opposite, it's going to be a tough sell to make a real push in the foreseeable future.
You’ve been conned if you think overactive DEI was anything more than a minor annoyance in 99% of American universities. Did some people overdo it in a destructive way? Of course. But it wasn’t anything that was going to lead to major problems. The problems come from the folks who can’t just roll their eyes and move on but instead feel personally attacked and hold a permanent grudge instead of realizing that they themselves probably weren’t all that special.
Harvard and UNC lost lawsuits about their DEI programs in admissions being illegal racism.
That doesn't counteract the point being made.
Uh, I think it does. A lot of people, myself included, have major problems when "overactive DEI" leads to race being a primary, if not the primary, factor in hiring and admissions decisions. This isn't something one should just "roll their eyes over" and move on.
FWIW, that was my original approach, and I thought that the worst excesses of "wokeism" were just caricatures that the right was using to paint all on the left with a broad brush, so I was pretty dismayed when, over time, I felt that a lot of this "race first" thinking had infested many areas of elite universities. Many university professors (ones who would not have in any way identified with being "on the right") who I deeply respect have spoken out about this, sometimes at great professional cost.
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> and more ludicrously bad is that I've seen positions that don't follow these extremes as being derided now as "centrism".
You can't stake out a position without getting called some name somebody invented to denigrate that position. Welcome to modern politics on the internet.
The weird part for me is this: While the economy was evolving, Production was offshored from US for cost-reasons, but also in part to focus on higher-skill labor in US, delegating the low-skill mass-production to China.
Over time, China also developed mid/high level skills, complemented their low-skill production offering with it and now competes in new industries, new tech, etc.
So...to compete with China, the country with 4x the US-population, the solution is that low-skill labor needs to return to US....?
Shouldn't instead the focus be to again foster mid/high-skill labor, moving the part that is offshored again towards low-skill labor...?
I think the mistake here is the model of low-skill/high-skill labor is not a useful distinction. Manufacturing is high skill period, however there are low-infrastructure and high-infrastructure products and factories. The labor wages themselves are a factor, but an increasingly minor factor in product costs. By bypassing investment in US manufacturing skills and infra, the US sat itself on the sidelines for the ability to build, staff, and supply modern low, medium and high infrastructure factories.
It's not impossible to build back, but it would require long term stable policies to favor it at more levels than just tariffs.
The solution is to pay everyone a living wage, regardless of job, and disconnect healthcare from employment. Lots of inertia against those ideas though. So, instead, "good manufacturing jobs" is the parroted point. Any job is a good job if you can live off of it.
(tariffs do nothing to address labor shortages in healthcare, teaching, and other domestic service based sectors, for example)
That’s a solution of human rights and is orthogonal to becoming competitive to China. No question human rights needs to be fulfilled and we need to pay people living wages.
But the conversation here has he orthogonal goal of being competitive with China as well. I can assure you just paying everyone living wages is one of the main reasons why we are not competitive with China. It’s the main reason why China is beating us today.
So paying everyone living wages doesn’t really do anything to solve the problem because the products created by people who are paid living wages are by definition more expensive due to labor costs.
What tariffs do is they allow us to pay people living wages and sell expensive products and still be competitive because products from China are tariffed to be the same price.
> So paying everyone living wages doesn’t really do anything to solve the problem because the products created by people who are paid living wages are by definition more expensive due to labor costs.
They aren't though. In America, "Paying living wages" always means "pay way more", because America underpays labour and overcharges for literally everything (products, services, basic cost of living -- every product on American soil has a insane profit margin on it)
In China, "Paying living wages" doesn't necessarily mean "pay labor more", because they have stronger control over pricing and margins, so it often actually means "make orgs charge way less".
You end up with Chinese folks living in a major city in China, with a 2bed apartment that costs $200USD/month, and a meal out cost $2USD/each, cars that start at like $6k, and they get paid $5USD/hr, but they feel like they're living well, despite only making around $640USD/month, because they can save 10% of their income each month, and have like 40% of their income as discretionary spending, and still get to own their apartment.
But in the US, a 2bed apartment in a big city like that costs at least $2,000/month or more, a meal out there costs at least $20/each, and a basic starter car starts at like $26k, so you can pay someone in a ostensibly-"high labor cost" job of $20/hr, and they feel like their constantly underwater, and have zero chance of ever owning a home, because they only have like 20% of their income as discretionary spending, and they can't save anything at all. (and that's before we even mention differences like how you don't have to worry about being hit with a crazy bill for an ER visit or an Ambulance in China, but Americans have to worry about that 24/7/365).
(It's the same reason many American's dream of getting a job in Europe and leaving the US, because despite making less money-on-paper, you get to generate more real wealth and do so with less life risk and life stress)
The Factories and the labor pool and the infrastructure being absent in the US is hard to solve for, of course -- but it isn't even the hardest part of any of this. The American view of capitalism would have to be completely rewritten to be more diverse, more equitable, and more inclusive to Americans who do actual labor, before Americans could be anywhere close to competitive with most of these Chinese industries.
That's right now. For China to even get to the state they are in now, workers were heavily, heavily exploited.
In fact exploitation is the reason why they are the way they are now.
Isn't that the case for every country? My grandfather lived in a shack. He was a farmhand. In the winter his family almost starved.
Our nation's prosperity is a very recent phenomenon.
Yep. With one difference. The US is regressing and now we want to reignite manufacturing without relying on exploitation.
My argument is that this isn't possible. Well let me rephrase that. It is possible but you need to inflict some form of pain to get it going. Tariffs is one way to do this.
I don't think the four year presidency is enough to do this. You need to do this for at least 2 decades.
PPP is the only way to compare expenses between different economies. You can't just convert RMB into dollars and say "see how cheap they have it".
> Any job is a good job if you can live off of it.
No, just no.
There is a high variance in job qualities beyond pay.
Work hours, over time, outside vs. office jobs, repetitive Vs. varied, physical and psychological impact, etc.
Those are preferences, and unique to each individual. I work in trades, I work the overnight shift, and I do 4 10's. I wouldn't want to change any of that. Someone else will feel more at home in an office, and that's okay.
The important part is having a job, that you enjoy, and that allows you to live comfortably while saving for the future. It can be in IT, sales, management, maintenance, whatever - but some people will rather leave a more tangible, visceral, and physical difference in their work at the end of the day, and their preference does not make it a worse job.
> Those are preferences, and unique to each individual. I work in trades, I work the overnight shift, and I do 4 10's. I wouldn't want to change any of that. Someone else will feel more at home in an office, and that's okay.
No, those are not only preferences, they also have objective health impacts.
Working nights typically decreases life expectancy.
The distinction is between high- and low- skill politicians and managers, not labour.
One of the foundations of conservatism is the priority of hierarchy over effectiveness. In a conservative culture it doesn't matter how well things work as long as the right people in charge.
We're seeing the limit of this now, where it's literally more important to maintain hierarchy by denying facts and rationality than to "lose face" by admitting that power isn't absolute.
You can't run a modern country like this. You can't plan for the future, make effective decisions, govern, have a working legal system, build housing, create health care - anything at all - when all decisions are made according to the whims of a despot.
Power and resources - including wealth - have to be distributed. Or at least there has to be the illusion they're somewhat distributed. Anything else guarantees terminal contraction and decay.
Not disagreeing with you, but isn't the issue that the US stopped investing in the skills and infra which made mass-production low-skill in the first place?
Instead, the offshore-destinations kept offering more and more services in the value-chain, until the entire skillset to actually create the low-skill labor processes to offshore was replaced with "let the offshore company manage".
Yes climbing the value chain was a necessity for nations like China. But in the US popularized in the 90's, was a business strategy trend that strongly discounted the value of long term capital investments - particularly for this discussion, investment in factories. They do require extra management attention and they do tie companies to strategies in longer time frames at lower margins - but they deliver long term value and long term synergistic growth benefits (in the vein of go slow to go fast). Many US business elected to chase short term growth, and short term and higher margins and minimize long term investments.
See a list of leading US companies that are off of being king of the hill - Boeing, GE, Intel, ... leading industrial US companies continually divested from manufacturing, or shorted long term investment, not because it wasn't profitable, but because it wasn't profitable enough in the moment. It took decades, and many dividends and stock growth was taken in the middle, but the shortfall manifests in time.
Intel never outsourced its production, and it turned out to be the wrong call for it. They just made losing tech bets, while they kept investing in manufacturing.
You make that sound like it was emanating from the business community - the US has had a pretty significant period in there of 0% interest rates determined by a central committee. Return on capital doesn't really matter in a low interest rate environment, the important thing is access to the lending markets. Investors making sensible investments would have been eaten alive by those focusing on companies that were living off credit in ill-advised ways.
Uber still hasn't managed to make a net profit over its lifetime as a company, by the way.
Uber had EBITDA of $6.5B for full year 2024: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1543151/000154315125...
I agree with the rest of your comment, though. The US public markets reward creative accounting and mortgaging the future for quarterly gains. GE and Jack Welch are a great historical example.
If Uber had been founded in 2024 that would be really impressive. The problem is that its lifetime is somewhat longer than that.
Maybe, but 0% interest should have make it easy to invest in capital intensive endeavors that would have turned into great protective moats when the interest rates inevitably bumped up. Did that happen with factories and manufacturing?
I also think a significant influence on the Fed was a financialized business community demanding 0% interest.
> Maybe, but 0% interest should have make it easy to invest in capital intensive endeavors that would have turned into great protective moats when the interest rates inevitably bumped up.
It doesn't - if you look at the situation in real terms, the amount of resources available to invest is about the same (probably shrinking because some are diverted to people who aren't creditworthy and consume them). So the major effect of artificially low interest rates is to add a whole heap of artificially supported highly wasteful companies to the mix.
All that changes is the market started rewarding people with access to credit instead of people who were responsible and effective. The credit people aren't particularly capable and it'd be better if they had been forced out.
China invested their low interest fiscal capacity into developing over decades via coordinated policy of their central bank / industrial strategy nudges to their businesses. China's factory ecosystem and the ability to build stuff meets my definition of a protective moat. Its very hard to replace and one can only contemplate it over relatively long time frames.
US businesses were free to do the same over the past low interest environment, but we did not have the same incentives, not inclinations in terms of prevailing business strategic appetite for factories. In contrast, for big tech, there was interest and appetite for it and significant capability with protective moats were built - but one could argue that software based tech moats may be faster to bypass.
> I also think a significant influence on the Fed was a financialized business community demanding 0% interest.
This is the one upside of chaos monkey crashing the economy. They aren't going to be able to drive rates back to zero in the next four years.
Agreed. Well articulated.
>Many US business elected to chase short term growth, and short term and higher margins and minimize long term investments.
I would like to add that this was due to the influence of Milton Friedman. He put the emphasis on shareholder returns being the most important, without considering the survival of the company itself.
More generally, the financialization of the US economy (and of the Western economy more generally speaking) has a big part of the blame in this.
Yes, more evolved financial markets provided easier access capital, but, as it so happens in those types of situations, access to capital and enjoyment of said (liquid/financial) capital became a target in itself, the rest of society didn't matter. In fact, the whole (Western) society was moulded around (liquid/financial) capital, it became its raison d'être.
If the company doesn't survive, shareholders aren't likely to be that happy.
Actually I think it’s variation of this. Tariffs can protect high skill jobs with high value product output. They can also force the Chinese to make cheap stuff even cheaper ( back down below $1 goods plus tariffs ).
We don’t want the Chinese making high value goods at slightly lower prices. We want Americans making high value goods and we want to push cheap stuff as cheap as possible. Next step is enforcing environmental rules on Chinese goods and requiring escrow of the funds to pay the Chinese in American accounts until the goods are inspected and pass.
America already makes high value goods in China and takes most of the value from them since they did the IP and the software for those products. China desperately wants in on that, they are no longer happy making the product while America takes most of the profit! They would swap places with America in a heartbeat if that’s what Trump is offering.
Yes, they could make more use of the Uyghurs. https://www.state.gov/forced-labor-in-chinas-xinjiang-region... not to mention other slaves. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...
Your second links puts the number of slaves in China at 4 per 1000. The USA is at 3.3 per 1000. Why not mention that the USA could make more use of their slaves?
Because patriotism demands that we never look at ourselves in the mirror.
> The labor wages themselves are a factor, but an increasingly minor factor in product costs.
Not disagree with your main points, but labor inputs are still very much a huge part of product costs, and often the biggest driver of where to build a new factory when a company is scaling up. Companies aim to build their new factories wherever there's a sufficient pool of cheap labor with the necessary skills.
> Companies aim to build their new factories wherever there's a sufficient pool of cheap labor with the necessary skills.
Of course, even where labor cost is truly inconsequential, you would still do that as all the correlations that come alongside cheap labor are still very attractive to manufacturing.
> I think the mistake here is the model of low-skill/high-skill labor is not a useful distinction.
IMHO it still is. There are tasks, especially in assembly, that for now require humans to do because robots can't match our dexterity. Stuff like mounting through-hole components like a cable from the battery compartment to the main PCB. That's a few seconds worth of time, and you need barely more than a few days worth of training to get a worker up to speed - a low-skill job. China, Thailand, Vietnam and a bunch of other places have an ample supply of people coming out of utter poverty, which means the pressure on wages is massive - a Chinese worker on average earns about 13200 dollars a year [1], an American worker is 3x-4x that amount and more if the shop is unionized. And on top of that, Chinese workers work 996, American or European workers have much MUCH more employee rights.
The problem is, low-skill employment opportunities are going down and down because automation gets better. For now, China can compete because Chinese workers are cheaper than machines... but once that changes, it's going to get nasty.
> The labor wages themselves are a factor, but an increasingly minor factor in product costs.
There's soft factors as well. Stuff like workplace safety/OSHA regulations, environmental regulations... Silicon Valley is a bunch of Superfund sites from decades of toxic emissions. China? They barely have regulations in place, and other sweatshop countries are even worse.
The core problem we're talking about anyway is that a certain percentage of any population is just, plain and simple, dumb as rocks. Over half the US population is barely literate [2]. No matter how good your education systems are, no matter how much money you invest into equality in schools, no matter how much you protect them from stuff like lead - they are dumb, will remain dumb, and probably their children will also remain dumb. In ye olde times you put them on farms, meatpacking or in factories so they had gainful employment... but that all went away, and now we got hordes of utterly dumb people with no hope of ever getting smart and, crucially, no hope of ever getting a meaningful job.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/743509/china-average-yea...
[2] https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literacy-s...
The problem is ecosystem effects. High-tech industries evolve from and depend on low-tech ones. There is a limit to how much they can be separated.
Moving the low-cost jobs offshore was fine until automation filled a lot of those jobs. Now the high skilled automation skills and infrastructure (production lines and robots) are also offshore. I have done my fair share of western factory tours and the number of people on the factory floor is soberingly low... they are simply not needed, as they line runs like a vast, complicated machine.
Japan led in automation in the 90s before the rise of China put a stop to those investments paying off. Now China is making those same investments at a time when the tech is much better. America could solve its manufacturing problem in the future just by importing China automation tech.
>"America could solve its manufacturing problem in the future just by importing China automation tech."
Assuming there is no embargo by then.
It is theoretical, I also doubt China would help the USA develop like that directly and lose its advantage. We would have to trade something really valuable in return (like modern semiconductor or jet turbine tech).
Trump et al. really run a motte-and-bailey argument here. They woo reasonable people who agree that critical industries: food, energy, defense-adjacent, metals, etc. - must have substantial capacity on-shore or at least very near. They then flip to what amounts to massive handouts for his rust belt base, basically saying we should make everything here.
The obvious answer is this:
1. it doesn't matter if our t-shirts are made in Bangladesh.
2. it does matter if our stuff is made in an enemy nation (china).
3. U.S. labor is too expensive to move back to mass manufacturing the way we used to do it, c.f. baumol's cost disease.
4. offshoring and illegal labor have suppressed investment in automation and manufacturing technology for decades, which will be painful to undo.
The sensible outcome of these facts is
1. Focus on moving everything out of china to other cheap countries with reasonable levels of human capital.
2. Focus on re-shoring critical industries.
3. Launch moonshot investments into robotics and automation. Bringing back a big chunk of manufacturing is sustainable; bringing back jobs is not.
4. Invest in large-scale roll-out of SMR energy so we have reliable power for this new industrial build.
Completely agree with your main point.
I do disagree somewhat with point 4. I think this is frequently overstated:
Building and operating automated factories is just as wage-dependent as anything else (just the coefficients are a bit smaller). You still need engineers, construction crews, supervisors, repair crews, etc. (and those could all be doing something more profitable as well).
You can see this very clearly in the EU, where there is a pretty smooth wage-gradient, and even the super highly automated automotive manufacturing has moved down that gradient towards Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, despite language/culture barriers.
> Bringing back a big chunk of manufacturing is sustainable; bringing back jobs is not.
I think a decent sized manufacturing industry is a realistic goal long term. But longer term US global supremacy in it is not even a realistic goal to begin with, because not only are you gonna fight against the wage gradient now, you are also gonna face the fact that the US is only ~5% global population, and manufacturing will naturally drift towards the very biggest markets for its goods, which the US probably won't be in half a century or so, simply because of demographics and economical growth in China/India generally.
> 3. Launch moonshot investments into robotics and automation. Bringing back a big chunk of manufacturing is sustainable; bringing back jobs is not.
Absent sufficient jobs, or some other arrangement for the masses that provides both material comfort and some sense of purpose, you'll never get to the automation because you will likely have a revolution first.
So basically, Biden's CHIPS act plus infrastructure (energy, roads, etc.) investments (e.g., solar and wind and battery part of Biden's IRA plus additional baseload). Yeah, we had all that going under the previous administration, and the current administration is distracting us from their dismantling of these sensible investments and incentives by strangling the entire global economy. Is it still "fringe" to think Trump is a foreign asset?
china isnt an enemy nation unless we decide we want to fight them
Or, if they decided to take lands belonging to allies.
Though after this administration I'm not sure we'll have any allies left.
If Trump’s term ends with NATO still intact I’ll be surprised.
If the US left NATO the remaining members would have even more incentive to stick together.
Ya, but not being intact doesn’t mean completely destroyed. I just don’t think the Europeans will ever trust the USA enough again to let them have a close relationship, even if Trump’s presidency ends with the US still a democracy.
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Thing is, manufacturing in America is up. The 2008 crises dealt a blow, but manufacturing has been building-back. I don't think people realize how many high-value items are made in the United States. Let the East Asians make our mass-consumer junk while we focus on the high-value stuff.
Just goes to show the administration isn't working with facts and doing the hard-nosed analysis required to drive effective policy.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/tags/series?t=manufacturing%3Bou...
The administration is probably aware of this and doesn't care. A huge portion of his base were rust belt voters who want what are essentially handouts, which trump intends to achieve by forcing the American consumer to pay $30/hour for el cheapo goods that could be made elsewhere and have no tangible security impact.
You're mistaking the rhetoric he uses to sell this idiocy to the rest of the country for a good-faith argument.
> and have no tangible security impact
I would not object to a tariff on shitty IoT devices, with the level determined by things like if the default password is "admin".
And America can't even export any off it because Trump managed to start a trade war with the rest of the world.
Apparently the US doesn't need allies anymore against China...
The joke is on them. We'll simply buy less stuff and make due more with what we have.
Yeah personally I buy very little and live pretty minimally so I'm not impacted much either way. I think most people's takes, however, are influenced by what is best for their pocketbooks short-term rather than for the nation long-term. And Trump is influenced by what's best for him short-term.
> Thing is, manufacturing in America is up.
I'm looking at the first chart, "Manufacturing Sector: Real Sectoral Output for All Workers" [1]. It grew until Q2 2000, when it was at 97.2. In Q4 2024 it was at 98.6. And let's not ignore how almost all leading semiconductor manufacturing (which are in and required for nearly everything) has moved to East Asia.
[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS
I didn't notice it before, but these are not per capita numbers. In 2000, the US population was 281 million, and in 2024 it was 340 million [1]. So per capita, manufacturing went from 97.2 in 2000, to 81.5 in 2024.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...
This one also bad, stagnant last 15 years:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OPHMFG
Labor Productivity (Output per Hour) for All Workers
> we focus on the high-value stuff.
agreed but Trump just gutted the CHIPS act for no other reason than because it was enacted by Biden (the typical "undo everything the last prez did" just like Trump 1.0).
You can argue that Intel is a badly run company, not worth saving etc etc, but if want to save US manufacturing, then Intel, and its ecosystem, would be the first place to start. Otherwise, TSMC, Samsung and China (still playing second-fiddle but investing billions to catch up) will dominate. Certainly better than trying to keep coal plants open.
Ideology aside it's really hard to find _any_ rational thought behind these moves.
It turns out good policy takes a long time to play out and isn't well suited for the current destabilized US political system where nothing good gets done and the rare things that do get reversed within four years.
That IS what Biden was trying to do though with the CHIPS Incentive Act. He was trying to onshore production of semiconductors in a partnership with TSMC. Didn't do him any favors, and Harris lost the state of Arizona anyway. Americans had the choice between a party that was serious about trying to onshore some manufacturing and a party that wasn't, and it made the wrong choice because vibes, basically.
> because vibes, basically
This may be more accurate than you realize. Both Democrat and old Republican party rhetoric and policies were pro-globalization/offshoring, with the occasional exception such as CHIPS (and corn subsidies). It's not surprising nobody believed they were changing direction, if for every "we're bringing semiconductors back", they heard ten "your car is German your phone is Chinese your tacos are Mexican, how dare you interfere with glorious Free Trade!"
Also one can't ignore that the GOP managed to remarked the CHIPS act as a key source of inflation, which they also managed to pin on "Bidenomics". Which was another source of "vibes, basically"
Weren't we hearing for years about how it went to waste because Intel did stock buybacks or whatever using the CHIPS money. Now we are supposed to believe it's critical?
CHIPS incentive funding is way bigger than just Intel, so it’s a bit disingenuous to write off the whole program just because of one (or even several) high profile bad actor. We should have a nuanced discussion and fix the shortcomings of our programs, but at least assess things in a balanced way.
If you check the transcript of the confirmation hearing for the current Commerce secretary, practically every Senator brags about their state’s CHIPS funded R&D hub. Lots of growth in small and medium businesses there. And CHIPS incentive funding played a huge role in bringing the new TSMC fab in Arizona
https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/jobs/2024/04/...
R&D is a cost center that can no longer be written off of a company’s taxes.
I don’t believe that cost centers are a good example of returning manufacturing onshore. Or an example of a state using federal funding well.
Cost centers are not a good investment for federal funding, without a clear path to paying back our taxed dollars.
This entire post is so wrong, it is difficult to know where to start. The first sentence about taxes is wrong. The second statement is an entirely unsupported opinion. The final statement miscategorized "cost centers" as some sort of federal investment? As for "clear path", the road US exceptionalism is paved with the gold derived from sensible investments in R&D and tech advancement. There was no clear path to paying back our investment in the federal highway system, but it did pay back indeed. There was no clear path to paying back our investments in basic physics, chemistry, and biology, but it did pay back indeed.
> R&D is a cost center that can no longer be written off of a company’s taxes.
Can you elaborate on this? It was my understanding a company only pays taxes on profit. So isn't the revenue that goes into R&D effectively taxed at 0%, since at that point it's not yet profit? I.e. only dividend payouts get taxed.
2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made it less beneficial to use R&D for tax credits because they had to be amortized over five years. Not good when you're an MBA looking to financially engineer your way into a fat bonus.
> It's annoying Americans were given only two choices - offshoring is great and let's keep doing it, and, as you say, the opposite, meth-fueled let's bring back manufacturing overnight.
There were a lot of slower manufacturing on-shoring incentives during the Biden administration that would have presumably continued under the Harris administration. Mainly around green energy and electric vehicle manufacturing incentives - which have successfully resulted in new auto, battery, and supply chain factories being built mostly in red states - and semiconductor manufacturing. The Biden administration also maintained and increased tariffs on specific types of products coming from China including EVs.
So I don't think your categorization of the two choices Americans were given is quite accurate.
As someone watching EV & battery plants break ground in my state (GA), this is absolutely my take.
Biden's infrastructure and funding bills were basically doing exactly this, and their foreign policy largely aligned with this goal as well.
I was not a huge Biden fan early in his presidency (Breaking the rail union strike and the complete lackluster response to actually prosecuting criminality in the outgoing admin were not my desired policies - democrats are markedly too corporatist in general).
But his infrastructure bills were sorely needed practical steps to doing a lot of good for a lot of folks in the US. There's a reason so many politicians then tried to take credit for them (incl Trump).
We were getting the slow and steady version at least for chip manufacturing with the CHIPS Act but Trump has a major need to get credit for everything so that's being torn apart too.
The US faces a much tougher hill to climb though in regards to bringing manufacturing back. China had it easy because they had most of what you could want; a huge labor force that could upskill to manufacturing (the rural poor population), cheap labor (kind of an extension to point 1 but also includes their lower COL and wage expectations over all), and low environmental barriers.
To bring manufacturing back to the US is a way harder lift; we have a lot tighter labor market, if we shift a lot of people to manufacturing someone needs to take the jobs they leave. We (well I at least don't enjoy the idea of going back to when rivers caught fire on the regular) don't want to strip environmental protections back to a level to make it cheap to dispose of waste. The best targets are low labor, high price, high skill goods, like, I don't know, chip manufacturing!
>The US faces a much tougher hill to climb though in regards to bringing manufacturing back.
I saw a headline yesterday that says there are more pets than children in Japan. How long until this is true in the US? The truth of the matter is that there is no workforce left in the United States, and will be less of one by the time manufacturing does spin up. In WWII, the Army was happy at how many of the young men there had come from farms and were familiar with using/driving heavy equipment, how many knew some welding, etc. Then after the war, that translated right back into mnufacturing there these now older men were familiar with "making things". They could do actual labor. How well will the part-time baristas and Uber Eats delivery drivers and Dollar General shelf stockers do on the assembly line?
>if we shift a lot of people to manufacturing someone needs to take the jobs they leave.
If we could bring back manufacturing, then we would need to restructure our society such that those jobs lesser/menial jobs could go undone (or be automated). But we can't really bring it back, and they will bring in others on any number of weird visas no one has really heard of to do the lesser/menial jobs which are the only ones left. The people who set this in motion aren't even just retired, they're already dead of old age and there's nothing anyone can do about what's coming.
People are part-time baristas and Uber Eats delivery drivers because there aren’t other jobs available, and people can pick up skills faster than you think.
I know a lot of people in the Bay Area with serious fabrication skills (mainly applied to art), who would love to have a stable job using those skills in a factory setting, but who are constantly looking for gig work instead.
There were two different fabrication jobs I nearly took the last time I was looking for work. I have what amounts to a second job as a creative producer and art fabricator, but it doesn’t pay the bills, so I need a day job. All else being equal, if factory work was enough to pay the bills, I’d choose that over a full time job with a heavy mental load.
It’s easy to dismiss factory work as menial, but like, seriously watch Starbucks baristas working during a morning rush, when there are tons of mobile app orders and also tons of people in line. It’s an assembly line. Different technical skills, but similar structure and pace. And at least in a factory you can sit down.
tl;dr I think we’re vastly underestimating the capabilities of our existing workforce, and unfairly dismissing factory work as a viable replacement for certain kinds of jobs.
>and people can pick up skills faster than you think.
Possibly. But they can't change the attitudes that created them from childhood up. The barista that complains on r/antiwork that their manager is a douche and that they're taking another mental health day because standing upright is too challenging for an hour at a stretch isn't going to like mandatory overtime spot welding or manning the torque wrench. Can they be taught to do it? Yeh, probably, theoretically at least. Supposing they don't get out because they'd rather be scrolling on a phone.
I can foresee this, it's not prophecy... just common sense. But I suppose other people need to run the experiment and see the results for themselves.
Out of high school, I must have worked 4 or 5 factory jobs (even in the early 1990s that was drying up), and so I have some idea what this is like. It's not a long-form media article for me. I don't think it's menial. When I use that word, I'm talking about the person at the cash register at Dollar Tree, or the job where you scrub the toilets at Wendy's.
>I think we’re vastly underestimating the capabilities of our existing workforce,
Maybe. But I'm not understating its size, or the demographic projections that say it's shrinking quickly.
>and unfairly dismissing factory work as a viable replacement for certain kinds of jobs.
They'd be great. But you can't just make a magic wand and have them appear, and if you could you'd never fill the positions.
Well, money talks and it's hard to choose the other option. On one hand bring manufacturing back to US and pay them higher, because otherwise the pay in McDonald's is better with a less demanding physical (cmiiw, don't live in US).
On the other hand, keep manufacturing outside of US for cheaper labor to keep price low and having bigger margin. It's an easy choice to make.
And again this is not a US specific problem, it's almost all of countries nowadays have a massive wealth gap that makes people racing to the bottom of living / working standard.
The thing is also that absolutely nothing about the overall situation changed meaningfully over the last 50 years or so.
People had the exact same concerns and fears when electronics manufacturing started shifting to Japan like 50 years ago-- they went in the same way up the value chain that China did, and they started losing a lot of the industry with rising wages, too, exactly like what we see with China => Vietnam/Indonesia/... nowadays.
I think 90% of the whole political debate about the economy is misplaced nostalgia combined with problematic local wealth inequality-- poor countries lifting themselves up by manufacturing stuff for low wages is how the whole system is actually supposed to work from my perspective; describing that as "ripping off the American people" is completely unhinged, misinformed self-delusion to me.
> I think 90% of the whole political debate about the economy is misplaced nostalgia combined with problematic local wealth inequality
When Trump said that new manufacturing facilities would be fast-tracked to being able to build their own on-site power plants because the grid is "at risk of bombing", I've come to think that the whole political debate is really about: What the hell are we going to do if WWIII happens?
Manufacturing capability and capacity is an incredibly precious resource if you find yourself in a large scale war, and there is growing concern (realistic or not) that America has given it away/lost it. It makes no difference in peaceful times, but there is growing belief that the era of peace is coming to an end.
In fact, if you take a higher level view of what is going on, like the wanting to annex Canada and Greenland, it seems the entire motivation for it all is preparing for the possibility of war with Russia (and China).
> When Trump said that new manufacturing facilities would be fast-tracked to being able to build their own on-site power plants because the grid is "at risk of bombing", I've come to think that the whole political debate is really about: What the hell are we going to do if WWIII happens?
I'm not buying that whole argument. At all. Because this looks too much like a "lets find favorable talking points for the middling plans we already put in motion"-exercise.
Can you honestly argue that current economic policy and decisionmaking was mainly driven by strategic military interests and planning, as opposed to Trump being a big fan of tariffs as a concept?
Because I don't think you can. And I think we don't need more than a glance at the liberation day proposals to identify this; if the aim was to war-proof US supply chains, then you would expect a big focus on military relevance of tariffed goods, coupled with long term investments into defense-relevant local industry and a glut of defense-spending in general.
Instead we got blanket tariffs that were so ill-conceived, they mostly had to be rolled back/suspended the next day, and generally pretty much no apparent guiding focus or much thought at all.
Concerning possible war: Russia is not a credible military opponent to the US and is not gonna be one within decades, either. Their land army basically got stopped by a country a fifth of their size on mainly donated (and frequently old) western equipment, and the Russian Navy embarassed itself even worse.
China is a somewhat credible opponent, but what would they even go to war over that would actually affect the US? Panama? They might be more serious about taking Taiwan back, but I honestly doubt that the US would involve itself in that business too much anyway; considering how the whole support for the Ukraine, whose territorial integrity it formally agreed on to protect, amounted to some military hand-me-downs and a bit of intel sharing (no longer even that from what I know?), I would NOT hold my breath waiting for US carriers in a Taiwan invasion...
> Can you honestly argue that current economic policy and decisionmaking was mainly driven by strategic military interests and planning, as opposed to Trump being a big fan of tariffs as a concept?
Well, like we established in a discussion here yesterday, argument only takes place if you don't know. It is the mind's way to explore and learn. So, yes, obviously I could as I don't have enough information to know for sure. If I did, there would be nothing argue about, now would there? I'd already know everything there is to know. It would be a pointless endeavour.
But I don't think an argument is what you are actually looking for. It seems you're simply looking for someone to do free work for you. As great as that may sound to you, there is no reason for anyone else to cater to that. For the sake of good faith, I'll spare you anything more that would be serving to me.
They gave you plenty of things to rebut or discuss, but instead of doing any of that you got hung up on a rhetorical device that is used to imply poor or empty argumentation which, frankly, seems to be on point.
>the whole support for the Ukraine, whose territorial integrity it formally agreed on to protect, amounted to some military hand-me-downs and a bit of intel sharing (no longer even that from what I know?)
Let's not forget that Trump and his clown show are now attempting to bully Ukraine into paying the full, inflated to the max, US government contractor price for the new versions of those hand-me-downs. Partly because that was how the accounting was done - very often, $X of "military aid to Ukraine" = $X spent on a new weapon for US military to replace the decades old weapon to be sent to Ukraine.
well, if the first step to prepare for WWIII is threatening to annex nearest allies with their own sovereignty (Canada), I'd say it's a very very bad preparation. Secondly, imposing tariff for raw materials and tools while you don't have all the groundwork domestically to do the manufacturing, is also a very very bad preparation. If this is the best US can get, I'm disappointed.
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Seeing it as a "rip off" is indeed delusion, but turning a blind eye to the dangers of becoming (ever more) dependent on a foreign country is an even worse folly.
If the dependencies go both ways, it's probably a good thing.
> The kind of slow and steady protection and promotion of home-grown industry that China and most of Asia so successfully used to grow their economies was completely absent as even a talking point
The slow and steady way that post-WW2 Korea and Japan did needs a unanimously agreed 10-20 year long game plan between industry and government, which is incompatible with democracies who change colors and strategies every 4 years where the new administration begins to tear down everything the previous administration did because they serve different voter bases and corporate lobby groups.
It is also incompatible with the US since a lot of corporations made bank due to offshoring and will fight it every way they can since they don't want to deal with costly US labor who can unionize or sue you for millions if they break a finger at work. Even TSMC Arizona had to bring half the workers from Taiwan, and it's not like they're making tchotchkes.
They were brought from Taiwan due to their expertise and familiarity with TSMC processes. America doesn’t have a glut of people with EUV fab experience — they all already work for Intel.
Sure, but it's not like they're paying them super competitive wages. Some people on HN said the Taiwanese TSMC Arizona workers already started applying at Intel.
If you want to kick-start manufacturing, you're gonna have to attract people somehow initially, either through more money, or free education/training, etc
>The slow and steady way that post-WW2 Korea and Japan did needs a unanimously agreed 10-20 year long game plan between industry and government, which is incompatible with democracies who change colors and strategies every 4 years where the new administration begins to tear down everything the previous administration did because they serve different voter bases and corporate lobby groups.
The message of "we're gonna find some way to undo some of the damage of off shoring and find some way to put heavy industry back to work" has been included in one way or another in every presidential candidates platform at least as far back as Obama's first term.
The specifics change from party to party and candidate to candidate but this isn't a new thing. The common man has been clamoring for some sort of change from the status quo for the better part of a generation now. It's only recently that the situation has become such a priority that elections are won or lost on it.
I fully expect that whatever administration comes next will continue on the path of on-shoring, if perhaps in a more reasonable way.
>It is also incompatible with the US since a lot of corporations made bank due to offshoring and will fight it every way they can since they don't want to deal with costly US labor who can unionize or sue you for millions if they break a finger at work
The people who actually run manufacturing and heavy industry really resent the current off-shoring status quo. They only do it because the sum total of other policy pushed by short sighted wall street financiers and/or environmental/labor advocates makes it the only viable option. I think they'd be happy to come back if doing so was financially viable, they just want it to be predictable (something current policy making surely isn't, lol) so they can plan around it because investments in those industries are made on decades long timelines.
I think we're at the point now where there's the political will to let the punch press eat some fingers to keep the factory open.
There's various forms of democracy and many are not as chaotic as the US kind in regards to long term plans.
A good example is the general global approach to Net Zero. It's slow, methodical, science based, negotiated.
But if anyone brings up planning for 2050 it's usually in the context of "It's all bullshit, politicians are crap, they're just lying to you and kicking the can down the road till they retire" (and if you scratch the surface you'll have even chance that the person saying that has been radicalised into not even believing there's a problem to be solved).
But only the US is in and out of the Paris agreement etc.
What makes the US more chaotic (and UK to some extent and probably more) is the political system first-past-the-post which does nothing to promote collaboration. Quite the contrary the winner does its best to crush every sprout of the loser to make his future win more likely. Now if you had a few parties which would be forced to forge alliances to govern, they would probably govern in alliances in the following terms as well so some of the politics for sure get carried over. But, such ideas help now nobody, the current system is how it is.
Countries change policies all the time based on the whishes of industry lobby groups or voters, not just the US. People focusing exclusively on what Trump is doing are myopic or arguing in bad faith.
And the global approach to net zero is not global, nor is it binding, it's more of a gentlemen's agreement bet which is basically worthless. Ideologically it sounds good, the issues are always when the tires hit the road, and then some spanners get thrown in on top: wars, pandemics, revolutions, natural disasters, political feuds, etc.
So yeah, outside of bubbles of privileged mid-upper class people in safe rich countries, nobody gives a crap about what's gonna happen in 2050 when they can't pay next month's rent/mortgage or their car doesn't start and their bank balance is red.
Capitalism got us chasing next quarter returns at the expense of what's gonna happen in 2050, so we'll be kicking the can down the road until everything falls apart, first very slowly, and then very suddenly.
> Countries change policies all the time based on the whishes of industry lobby groups or voters, not just the US.
It is irrelevant what other countries do.
What matters is whether or not other countries and industries trust that a country has sufficient stability to do business in and with. If there are actual or perceived signals that suggest chaos, rational people will not be interested to be tethered to that dispensation.
> The kind of slow and steady protection and promotion of home-grown industry that China and most of Asia so successfully used to grow their economies was completely absent as even a talking point.
I think this is because China is an autocracy, so they can make long-term plans. Democracies that swing as wildly as the US currently does is no place for that, and that's not limited to the new administration.
Did America stop being a democracy under FDR? Conflating specific term limits with autocracy/democracy is a bit dramatic.
There isn't anything physically stopping America from doing what China is doing. We literally did it first (in modernity)! Albeit for too short a time before the robber barons and foreign interests retook control.
I think what I wrote here covers what you're saying:
> Democracies that swing as wildly as the US currently does
It's not "robber barons" etc. It's just two very different worldviews existing in one place that cause big swings in policy when the other one is elected.
I'm not talking about Red vs. Blue. US national policy doesn't actually swing that much when Red switches to Blue and so on. Yes, Trump abandoned this or that agreement, but Biden generally didn't reverse.
I believe Lee Kuan Yew said "In China, you can't change the government but you can change the policy. In America you can change the government but you can't change the policy", referring to the postwar neoliberal / Deng era.
>It's annoying Americans were given only two choices - offshoring is great and let's keep doing it, and, as you say, the opposite, meth-fueled let's bring back manufacturing overnight.
Excuse me, but I am old enough to remember Biden's program such as CHIPS, a slow and steady protection and promotion of home-grown industry.
America had the choice. It chose wrong. Are Americans going to assume the consequences of their choices or are they going to lie to themselves they weren't given the choice? That last option would fit more with the "character" of the America nowadays, the one who voted Trump: make mistakes and blame someone else for it.
I don't think the Rust belt really gives a shit about high tech industry making chips.
I have seen this in my own country when mega corps build highly automated data centres that only employ a few local cleaners and security guards.
Chip making is manufacturing and requires far more engineers, technicians and a wide network of suppliers than data centers or Amazon warehouses.
Was it absent? The "Green New Deal" was hitting on some of that. You can't beat "<Some other country> is going to pay for it" and "Coal jobs are going to come back", especially when there's no accountability or fact checking.
But Americans were given that choice? The chips act was an industrial policy play based on the industrial policy playbook of east asian countries like South Korea and Taiwan.
I'm not a fan of industrial policy or the chips act, but it seems to be just the choice you are asking for.
I find it annoying that you think the other choice was “offshoring is great.” Spending on US factory construction surged under Biden. This was largely due to stuff like the IRA and the CHIPS Act. If voters had made different choices in November 2024, in Congress as well as the Presidency, I think we could have had even more aggressive industrial policy — instead of this absolute shitshow that will permanently damage the US’s economic position.
On the other hand, I am a believer in the idea that voters get the government they deserve. So maybe we deserve this.
Largely due to government welfare, business is great!
There are carrots and sticks. The current plan seems to be to cut down giant trees at random and hope they don't fall on anything important. If they do there will need to be government welfare applied anyway to keep businesses alive just like during the previous Trump administration.
I've mostly decided to stop arguing about this stuff, since it's fairly obvious that Trump is going to ruin the economy and discredit his party for a generation.
The candidate who opposed Trump during the primaries would have done something very similar to what you said. But then she was born with ovaries so the Republican Party wanted nothing to do with her as the top boss.
Democrat voters didn’t want anything to do with her during the 2020 primaries and didn’t turn out as much for her in 2024 as they did for Biden in 2020, so who are the real misogynists here?
Pretty clearly republicans, to be honest.
And this is why Democrats lost. Why admit and address that perhaps they ran a candidate that was deeply unpopular, even within her own party, when they could just instead blame the “misogynistic Republican” boogeyman.
> And this is why Democrats lost.
What do Democrats have to do with Republican candidates in a Republican primary?
Ah my mistake, I missed that this was referencing the Republican primaries here. Forgive me, the whole "Harris wasn't elected because Americans are misogynists" trope has been repeated so often I had that burned into my brain.
Addressing the primaries, no one was beating Trump, it has nothing to do with his closest but still far distant challenger being a woman.
Republicans would have voted for a Republican woman, they aren't the misogynists. Its more common for conservatives to elect women than for progressives to around the world, most female national leaders are right wing.
The reason there aren't many women in the Republican party isn't the voters, its that not many women likes right wing politics no matter where in the world you are.
> Democrat voters didn’t want anything to do with her during the 2020 primaries and didn’t turn out as much for her in 2024 as they did for Biden in 2020, so who are the real misogynists here?
Are you talking about Harris? I'm pretty sure she wasn't in the republican primaries so that isn't who the previous comment was talking about.
NO candidate should get a free pass. They should _all_ _always_ have to primary. That would have likely sorted out Biden earlier in the cycle and we might have had real choices other than Harris to replace the incumbent who flubbed that debate so badly that it was clear they were not going to get elected.
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> China generates over twice as much electricity per person today as the United States. Why? >> This appears to be completely wrong? All the stats I can find say that the US has about 4x the per capita electricity generation of China.
I believe the comparison is absolute production, not per person. Anything else would be odd. Considering China has 4x the capita of US it would mean that in absolute terms China is producing 8x the energy of the US. In reality it seems to be roughly 2x (although both sources are a bit outdated):
US 2023: 4.18 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity from utility-scale generators. Additionally, small-scale solar photovoltaic systems contributed around 73.62 billion kWh 1.
China 2021: 8.53 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity
--
But the staggering difference is how much of the electricity is attributed to the Industrial sector:
China: 70% (~6 trillion kWh)
US: 26% (~1 trillion kWh)
So overall China allocates 6x the electricity to production compared to US...
China electricity consumption is growing by 6-8% a year and is likely to hit 10500 trillion kilowatt-hours in 2025. Which at $0.10/kwh the avg is a $1 trillion dollars. Though from what I understand in China home users are charged about $0.07 and industry $0.08 so $7-800 billion a year on electricity alone.
They are rapidly moving to renewable with grid scale BESS auctions avg $66-68/kw they are likely to have electricity prices at $0.01-0.02 over the next few years. I think it will be extremely tough to compete with China in manufacturing unless there is huge investment in renewable and storage systems to keep electricity prices competitive with China who are going to move on from coal over the next decade.
Not only that. Renewable tech is also a major export sector for China. Most batteries and solar panels bought elsewhere are Chinese. And they are dominating EV manufacturing and manufacturing of pretty much everything else. China has invested and is now getting enormous returns on investment. The rest of the world has divested and is now missing out. Not investing enough was a mistake that needs to be corrected.
It used to be that the Chinese economy was based on just cheap labor. It's now increasingly based on cheap energy and automation. Replicating that elsewhere needs to start with modernizing energy infrastructure. Without that, there is no chance of competing. Manufacturing is energy intensive. So, cheap energy is indeed a key enabler.
The cost per kwh is a good one to call out. I think the medium term target for that should be < 1 cent per kwh. Effectively it trends to zero because there is very little marginal with solar, wind, and batteries other than the depreciation of infrastructure, equipment, etc. over time.
> I believe the comparison is absolute production, not per person
Original article definitely said "per person".
China allocates much more to industry and/because it allocates much less to personal consumption. Especially things like air conditioning. US per person consumption is still 2x that of EU average.
> Original article definitely said "per person".
Yes, not your fault, I believe the AUTHOR meant to compare absolute production.
> China allocates much more to industry and/because it allocates much less to personal consumption
Let's not fall into the same hole: In relative terms, US residential is more than 2x of China's residential power use, but that's relative to the much larger production use. In absolute terms their residential power-allocation is not that different actually:
CN: 15% (1.2 trillion kWh)
US: 35% (1.46 trillion kWh)
Now, on a per-capita basis the difference is staggering, as China consumes 20% less to serve 4x the population...
China is also more electrified generally than the US. They only just pulled ahead but the rate of change is startling.
Since 2000 they've gone from 10% of final energy being electricity to nearly 26% while the US has been basically flat around 23% and they are both predicted to grow (or not grow) at roughly the same in the next few years.
Well, they are making all the stuff for the rest of the world!
Despite all the hand wringing, heavy industry uses a lot more power than data centres.
I did some quick research on this. McKinsey has a pretty slick-looking web-facing report titled "Global Energy Perspective 2024" report [1] has a table [2] showing breakdowns by industry.
[1] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/energy-and-materials/our...
[2] SVG...! https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/industries/energy%...
Can someone explain to me why EU VAT is considered a tariff, while US sales taxes are not? They both seem a sale tax to me.
Because VAT is collected at the border on imports, some people (wrongly) consider VATs a tariff. Considering that VAT is rebated on exports, VATs are trade neutral.
Sales tax as implemented in the US is not as tax efficient as VAT due to the impact of sales taxation on intermediate transactions during manufacturing. VAT only taxes the incrementally the value added at each transaction) whereas sales tax applies to the entire value at each stage.
Hmm how is it different in the US do you not get back in the sales tax that you paid for your input. Here the middle man pay tax on the buying price and then collects on the sell price. Then has to pay the government minus what they paid as input sale tax. So all increments on the price gets taxed till the end user. But the tax itself is not taxed again.
Im fairly certain VAT is collected at point of sale in the EU.
Does the US charge sales tax on B2B transactions? Really? Well no wonder you have problems with domestic manufacturing.
Many B2B transactions are tax-exempt but it's complicated. And gets really complicated once international transactions are considered. And also whether the company has a physical nexus in the place the product is being purchased. All in all, I think it would be simpler if the US adopted VAT. But that seems very unlikely.
Unlikely, given that the current administration seems incapable of understanding what VAT is in the first place…
Last I checked VAT is the same rate regardless if the product is made in China or by pinguins on Antarctica so why anyone in the US gives a damn is beyond me.
There's no federal sales tax so it varies by state.
Only people who are wrong consider VAT a tariff. Yes, importers have to pay it, but so do local manufacturers.
VAT has basically the same effect as sales taxes with a much more complicated tax incidence.
At an individual level, it’s not more complicated: it’s reimbursed instead of exempted. And if you’re charging it, it’s easier, since you simply always charge instead of maintaining your list of exceptions.
UK VAT certainly has a complicated list of exceptions, especially "non-luxury food" (see the Jaffa Cake case https://www.astonshaw.co.uk/jaffa-cake-tax/)
But these are per-product, not per-customer. (Businesses, charities, and some customers are exempt from sales tax regardless of what they are buying.)
Really wondering about the same, since VAT is applied to everything too, not only imported products and services.
The answer is: rhetoric. It's a fake argument to justify US tariffs. It won't work for people like you and me, but Trump fans will love it.
They're not. Only disingenuous charlatans say they are.
On crime they most centrically do, watch the China Show (not the bloomberg one) on youtube. One example given on the show is that Once you go into northern villages and small towns you start seeing propganda posters on why you shouldn't take drugs. Homelessness is widespread and present too but you just wont see it in city centers more on the outstkirts.
Police in cities will beat homeless people and get them back on buses to where their hukou is, so the homeless that remain are very good at hiding. Hostile architecture is also very common in China. But there is a lot of sub quality housing (eg in sub-basements that lack windows or good ventilation) that allow much of the working poor to at least be technically housed even in expensive cities (many restaurants also provide housing for their staff in the dining area after closing, or did at least 20 years ago). The outskirts used to have more slums than they had today in Beijing, most of the slums have moved into sub-basements as far as I can tell (called the “ant tribe”).
Crime really is much lower than it was a decade ago. People have more money, societal trust is higher. Drug use in clubs has always been a thing, but China differs from the USA in that their is no social support at all for addicts (so they either get clean with help from their family or they die).
Do not watch it please unless you want to consume worldview-distoring propaganda and become more ignorant as a result. It's made by 2 American expats who gotten kicked out of China when visa-requirements were tightened, and no-skill immigrants were no longer welcome.
They've become anti-China youtubers serving the hungry China-hating audience on how China is bad and a paper tiger.
Instead watch this guy (https://www.youtube.com/@Awakening_Richard). I'm not saying he's unbiased, either, but he's thoughtful and I think he brings insight into how the Chinese intelligentsia thinks about how the world works.
But back to your point - it's oft repeated that Chinese population decline will destroy China in the long run and poverty in Chinese society.
He made a video on this exact issue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdRH7aPWGGc
The TLDR version is that about half of the Chinese population lives in desperate poverty (and are economically invisible), and just a couple decades ago 90+% of Chinese lived like this. One cannot bring about a transformation into an industrialized wealthy lifestyle overnight, but coming from the experience of the past decades, the Chinese have been remarkably effective in this, and the following decades will see these people lifted up to modern societal standards as well.
By this alone, one can conservatively expect a doubling of Chinese GDP, as there will be twice as many consumers and laborers who consume and work at the level of the current workforce.
This also means that China has a huge and high marginal utility domestic demand for goods, and even if sanctioned, they wont run of people to sell to.
When I visited China, the expats told me that recreational drug supplychains were strictly compartmentalized. There was the supply of illicit drugs for Westerners (imported by the sons of Nigerian businessmen, the cliche went), the supply of illicit drugs for Chinese people (who only dealt with Chinese people), and then there were the vast array of drugs that are completely legal to get over the counter in China without a prescription (at a pharmacy or CTM shop) that would be controlled substances in a US pharmacy.
That the official line from the CCP was that China had no drug problems, no prostitution, a variety of other things†, and that there were no gay people in China; That these were all Western ailments.
Urban China is a panopticon state not only digitally, but culturally. Housing is much tighter than the US, walls thinner. Your underwear is hung out to dry in clear view. "Privacy" in terms of politeness norms mostly consists of pretending you don't see or hear a thing. Neighbors generally know a lot about what each other are doing. 7% of the population are Party members, and in Marxist-Leninist systems this connotes something closer to earning a military officer commission; The Party is not trivial to apply to, the Party is strictly regimented, Party rules are held above and before the civil law, Party members are expected to be informers and have a strict lawful-good orientation from the perspective of the regime. Penalties for commerce in illicit drugs are even more extreme than the US, and due process is not bound by the same presumptions.
There are lots of factors conspiring against the sort of informal US inner city street drug distribution being as big of a deal in China.
Disclaimer: All my information is more than a decade out of date, and was only ever a thin slice of opinions from mostly Westerners in some first tier cities.
† From an academic paper: "2 The Six Evils are prostitution, drugs, selling women and children, pornography, gambling, and feudal superstition. Criminal gangs, or triads, are often counted as a seventh evil. These vices represent impediments to modernization and throwbacks to social problems that were present prior to the Communist takeover. Elevation of a problem to an "evil" symbolizes that the Beijing regime will mount a "campaign" or "struggle" against it."
> The Party is not trivial to apply to, the Party is strictly regimented, Party rules are held above and before the civil law, Party members are expected to be informers and have a strict lawful-good orientation from the perspective of the regime.
If only... (source: am Chinese)
> hat the official line from the CCP was that China had no drug problems, no prostitution, a variety of other things
Reminds me of a book I read years ago about the Soviet Union. Officially prostitution didn't exist there either, so there were no laws on the books about it. Enforcement usually was around various "antisocial" laws and usually for the street-walkers. Crime in general was mostly fine, so long as it wasn't a threat to the state, against well-connected people, or otherwise visible.
No wonder Russia got so bad after the strong state dissipated.
That's an interesting subject. Are there any books about it?
Regarding the potential to annoy small businesses, it’s actually pretty easy to hire a firm to represent you in the EU. You’ll need a lawyer at some point anyway so it’s often the same firm.
If we had the same requirements here in the US it would likely become the same.
Delaware / Ohio corporations? I think those already exist for 'business friendly' incorporation states. Might also be Nevada and Texas, though I'm more speculating there or recalling singular offhand cases I heard about.
Once again, want to point out how this is simply American leadership not wanting to accept their loss and move on. For the first time in the history they're not being perceived as the "global leader", and that's not acceptable from their POV. Now it's just freaking out and hoping that some extreme policy changes will change the course. From my personal experience, most people act this way when they're in distress and can't think ahead because of all the externalities.
This isn't just ego. This is an impending existential issue.
America needs to increase manufacturing capacity if it wants to maintain hegemony and possibly world peace.
China will soon have the ability to take Taiwan and Korea and Japan. If that happens it's game over for any American interests and perhaps democracy as a whole.
Wargames[0] paint a grim picture of an upcoming conflict between China and America over Taiwan with the US barely winning at a great cost including the loss of many ships, aircraft, and the depletion of missile stocks.
The Chinese have a naval production of 260 times that of America and account for an ungodly amount of global steel production so they'll be able to bounce back faster than the US can. With a lead time for producing American missiles measured in months and years it will be just a matter of time before they take the countries in the region that are critical to American manufacturing if they're so inclined.
[0] https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites...
Do you think that global hegemony by force is long-term (centuries) sustainable at all?
What makes you confident that this could ever work on a longer term? The US is only ~5% of people globally, and I would expect any industrial/technological lead to melt over the years unless there is a monumental, continuous difference in spending (like what the US military did since WW2).
But I see no indication that you can keep that situation stable over the long term, and I honestly think that attempts like the current tariff approach don't help one bit in the long run while having massive harmful side effects (price inflation, loss of planning stability/soft power/productivity).
Global hegemony of the US is based not on 5% of people, rather the US sphere of influence. US, Canada, EU, Japan, Australia, South Korea, etc. The combination is immensely rich, powerful and advanced. Even more so when you keep India on board as well.
It at least stands a fighting chance if it wasn't the case that this alliance is being destroyed before our eyes.
I will admit that even an integrated alliance cannot push around China in the way it could decades ago.
Yeah, but look at what GP is responding to:
That does not make sense.Low value manufacturing has been disappearing from the US for decades and arguably the US -- up until the recent turmoil -- has continued to maintain its hegemony.
Yes America needs to do this because the manufacturing capacity of allies in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan is under threat by China.
America is the only country with the military capacity to take on China, and Europe isn't going to get up to speed in time to defend Taiwan.
It must be America out of necessity not preference.
Great, but as I said, it does not make sense for the US to chase low value manufacturing.
Apparel, shoes, things you might find in a big box store -- zero sense. Low value manufacturing - leave it to China, Vietnam, India.
Jet engines? Advanced polymer materials? Batteries? All make sense! CHIPS act was intended to accelerate US IC R&D and manufacturing...which was cancelled.
In an impending war with China who will manufacture the ammunition needed to win the war?
And the boots, the uniforms, the helmets?
You're assuming that China is manufacturing the ammo being used by the US armed forces? Gonna need some receipts.
You misunderstand.
I am concerned that the United States does not have the industrial capacity or institutional knowledge to make relatively simple but essential things for war.
In a protracted conflict with China will the US have the industrial capacity to produce enough ammunition? Does the US have a sufficient stockpile of ammunition to buy enough time to scale up the industrial capacity to manufacture more ammunition? Are there enough skilled people in the US who can teach more people to become skilled in this endeavour in time?
Does the US even have enough industrial capacity to produce enough iron, aluminum, nickel, copper and other such things to do this?
I can see your point, but I disagree on this.
It is specifically "US hegemony" and not "western democracy hegemony" because the US is so extraordinarily powerful in economy and military.
Interests/culture with other democracies aligns well enough (and the power differential is large enough!) that US leadership is tolerated/supported.
But Canada, EU, Australia, Japan are NOT vasall states: If interests would clash and/or the US lose a lot of its relative power, those would cease being majority supporters and push for domestic interests instead.
Calling them "fairweather friends" might be too cynical but I think it's much more accurate than considering them integral parts of the US hegemony.
The reworking of the AUKUS deal seems like turning Australia into a vassal state
I think "centuries", plural, is too long for anything much to last since the industrial era. I'm not comfortable guessing past 2032 even without any questions about AI.
The United Kingdom of England and Scotland didn't exist until 1707, and even that was sans-Ireland until 1800.
And yet, even with the biggest empire the world had ever known, WW1 could only be won with the support of another huge empire (France) and the subsequent arrival of the USA; shortly after this, most of Ireland became semi-independent.
WW2 was "won", again with huge support, but a pyrrhic victory from the UK's point of view, and India soon after became independent. The Suez Crisis was 1956, and showed that the old empires of the UK (and France, Union française) were no longer economically hegemonic — even when working together — and the US had replaced them in this role.
Looking into the future, there's no way to guess. The more tech advances, the easier it becomes for a single person to cause enormous, world-altering impacts: hackers are already relevant on the geopolitical stage; there's good reason to think that quality of life is directly related to how much energy a person can process, but once you have sufficient energy per-capita, it's not hard to use a cyclotron to brute-force the purification of weapons grade uranium, or to transmute depleted uranium into plutonium; simple genetic manipulation has been a standard technique for first year biology students for at least two decades, and can be done in a home lab, and at some point we will have risks from someone trying to use this for evil rather than decorative bioluminescence. All these things can topple a hegemon that spends its tomorrows looking at yesterday's battlefield.
That is not an existential issue; many former hegemons, such as the United Kingdom, continue to exist. Coalitions exist to ward off hegemons.
The UK continues to exist because it was replaced by a democratic American hegemony.
If an authoritarian country like China achieves hegemony the continued existence of democracy is at risk.
I want to live in a democratic world, not an authoritarian one.
America's democracy is a flawed one but of the two choices -- American hegemony or Chinese hegemony it is the best path to a flourishing global liberal democracy.
Can you foresee Chinese hegemony leading to increased democracy, individual property rights, due process, and rule of law?
No, I do not, but I also do not much stock in America's policy of spreading democracy. I believe that America will do best by setting a good example at home, and it is failing in this regard. China is obviously not a democracy.
My fear is that people will look at China's might and economic success and conclude that democracy is overrated.
France and Spain continue to exist and they were former hegemons. China has stably existed with long periods of turning inwards after more regional hedgemony.
It's really straight forward -- Do you consider things like liberal democracy, property rights, freedom of expression, freedom of thought, freedom of association, due process, and the rule of law to be essential features of society?
If you don't -- Chinese hegemony and the path it will lead the world down is the one for you.
If you do -- Then American hegemony with all its flaws is something worth fighting for.
It’s hard to convince people to think the US is in any position to protect those principles when the current administration is attacking each and every one them head on.
Recent events have showed that all that good American stuff doesn't really exist.
Being ideals, all of those ideals in reality are implemented with different tradeoffs in different nations with different risks going forward. Discussing in more detail how one arrives at that particular choice of options is more interesting than an end presentation of what looks like a fallacy of false dichotomy.
People value freedom in different ways. Personally, I would ally myself with tomorrow’s bully, rather than today’s. I understand the implications, but it looks like most of nations are shifting in the same manner.
One note, some of the things you’ve listed has been proven as “mostly on paper, once people get their way, mental gymnastics will overcome the reason” in the past month. For a bastion of “freedom and democracy”, it’s really not looking like one from outside.
It's easier to fix a broken democracy than to turn an authoritarian state into a democratic one.
Authorian to democracy transition happens more often than democracies come back from severe backslides, which... is basically never. I struggle to think of an example.
China hasn’t threatened to annex my country.
I'm Canadian as well.
Stop and think about this for a moment -- do you think that China doesn't spread authoritarianism across the globe because they don't want to or simply because they can't do it yet?
One is actively threatening, and one may threaten in the future.
Also, I am Canadian, but I could also be Panamanian, or Danish. Maybe it would be different if I were Taiwanese or Vietnamese or Japanese, but, China is far away and playing nice, and America is close and not.
It sounds like you agree with the premise that we need to see a return to democratic ideals and a rules based order in the United States?
It’d be amazing, but I don’t have a lot to do with that one way or the other. If it happens, I might reconsider my stance on US v China. Right now it looks unlikely.
>such as the United Kingdom, continue to exist
They were really close to not existing. France stopped existing, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Yugoslavia, Greece, all stopped existing. China, Thailand, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Myanmar, New Guinea, Guam, East Timor, and Nauru all stopped existing.
That was in a pre-nuclear weapon world.
It certainly was. You think nuclear weapons are less or more likely to have countries not exist anymore? If you believe MAD works, then countries can easily not exist the conventional warfare way. If you think MAD won't work, countries can easily not exist the nuclear war way. The only difference is speed.
Of your list I've been to France, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, France (you seem to have it twice for some reason), Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore.
They all most definitely did not stop existing.
Also I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about when you say the United Kingdom came really close to not existing.
>I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about when you say the United Kingdom came really close to not existing.
Battle of Britain, Battle of France?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_France
>They all most definitely did not stop existing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German-occupied_Europe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_territories_acquired_b...
You didn't study WW2 in high school? It monumentally shaped the current world order.
I did. Austria, Belgium, France etc all existed during WW2. They were occupied, but they existed. Also lots of countries you listed definitely don't meet any sort of reasonable definition of "hegemon".
To pick another example, Singapore was a crown colony before the war, then they were occupied by Japan during WW2, then they were a single nation with what is now Malaysia, then in the 1960s they two countries became independent from each other. They didn't under any reasonable reading of the situation cease to exist and they also have never been a hegemon of any kind.
>They were occupied, but they existed.
So what's your criteria for existing, dirt in the same place? Their governments were dissolved. That means they don't exist anymore. Does the confederacy exist since the boarders are the same and the dirt is in the same place? I would argue not.
>Also lots of countries you listed definitely don't meet any sort of reasonable definition of "hegemon".
I agree, just pointing out countries that no longer existed.
Genuinely, USA as of now is threat to both peace and democracy - both at home and abroad. Whether it manages to bring back manufacturing is irrelevant to that.
> America needs to increase manufacturing capacity if it wants to maintain hegemony and possibly world peace.
This argument is based on experiences in WWII, i.e. the previous war. You need to be cautious about basing military doctrine on the previous war. I’m not sure the next war will be won by churning out aircraft carriers.
Regardless of what economies will be churning out to fight war, it will more than likely be the side that churns out more stuff that wins.
If not aircraft carriers then what sort of physical objects do you think will critical in winning the next major war?
I don't know why people keep thinking that China will attack Taiwan. It took HK and Macao without a shot. I think China is following Sun Tzu.
"subduing the enemy without fighting," is the epitome of strategic thinking in his book, The Art of War. This means achieving victory through cunning, deception, and maneuvering, rather than through direct confrontation and bloodshed"
They are increasing their military knowing that US military costs 4+x as much. It might be 4x better so don't fight. Just bankrupt the US. Trump wants a $1T military budget next year.
Why would China want to conquer the West? Buying what it wants is cheaper than an uncertain military battle fought with Nukes.
What I still don't get is what could China possibly want with Taiwan?
Naval routes? Just negotiate and use money instead; it'll be cheaper than war.
Brainpower? Just offer higher salaries to come work in China.
Taiwan is a tiny island smaller than Florida with only 20m people.
1) Historical claims - the CCP views Taiwan as a breakaway province and considers unification important. After the Chinese Civil War ended in 1948, the defeated Republic of China (ROC) government fled to Taiwan while the CCP took control of China.
2) Political legitimacy - successful unification would be a nationalist victory for the CCP
3) Strategic importance - key geographic asset. It lies in the first island chain, a line of US-aligned territories that can potentially restrict China's naval access to the Pacific. Control over Taiwan gives China more leverage over sea lanes critical to global trade and security influence in East Asia
4) Economic, technology bonus points - Taiwan is a global tech powerhouse, especially in semiconductors. TSMC is the world's leading chipmaker.
5) Global power dynamics - unification would weaken US influence in the region
1-2 really just do not matter; I can't imagine anyone in the CCP views that as more important than their own internal matters.
3 as I said, they can just negotiate and throw money at the problem; it's cheaper than fighting a war.
4 they can already buy hardware from them and was doing so just fine before US stepped in. DeepSeek seemed to do fine and China may likely surpass Western AI development in the near future
5 I don't see how that's the case when the US has very little presence in TW compared to SK or JP. Taiwan is a hair on a gorilla's right knee.
1 and 2 are the biggest reasons by far and matter a lot. Dictators are people too, they are susceptible as anyone to their minds being poisoned by too much nationalism. And even if it wasn't for that they would still view it as a way to get back flagging support from a nationalistic public(even dictators need a minimal amount of support from the population).
They do see Taiwan as an internal matter, that's the problem they don't recognize this sovereignty and don't like or understand Democracy. It's like Russia with Ukraine but they'll also claim Taiwan isn't a country because even most western nations technically don't recognize them. It makes me think we made a mistake not recognizing Taiwan as it's own country back in the 90s when China was less powerful.
Nationalism makes it very easy to make it seem like (1) and (2) matter even if they don't.
If you want a semi-serious example, check the "Taiwan #1" gaming video on YouTube for a taste of Chinese nationalism.
Read certain declarations by Chinese ambassadors in Europe for more serious nationalistic takes.
Just answering your question "What I still don't get is what could China possibly want with Taiwan?".
If you don't believe the rational I sketched, informed by analyses such as that by the Council of Foreign Relations[1], you can also learn more by reading directly from China's Mission in the EU about the China One principle: http://eu.china-mission.gov.cn/eng/more/20220812Taiwan/20220...
[1] https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/china-taiwan-relations-tens...
They can say and write whatever they want, it just doesn't make any logical sense like the US getting all worked up over Cuba.
Are you trying to evaluate their intelligence or predict their actions? I for one agree that attacking Taiwan is strategic folly. That doesn't mean they won't do it. Invading Ukraine was strategic folly too. The CCP are smarter than Putin, but not immune to mistakes. And again, look at their built strategy.
Regardless of the reasons (mostly political rather than rational, as my sibling comment laid out), the beach invasion barges we've been seeing are IMO a dead giveaway of intent and resolve to take Taiwan. Between that and American fecklessness, if I was Taiwanese I would be shitting my pants.
Hello slippery slope how are you doing?
> For the first time in the history
I'll charitably assume you meant first time in post-war history.
USA as "The Global leader" didn't emerge until after Europe was ravaged first by The Great War and then WWII.
No-one was looking toward the USA for leadership during The Great Game. Even by the time of the outbreak of WW1, the size of the USA's army was very small, half the size of the British army, which was itself considered small compared to the French and German armies.
US foreign policy was still inward looking, protectionist and isolationist until it could no longer ignore the case for war.
The foreign power projection really didn't kick into gear until 1945 onward and the determination not to let too much of the world fall to communist ideas.
I was a few drinks in on a sunny Tokyo day when I wrote it, my bad. But yeah, sorry, that’s what I meant. Basically since gaining the “leadership”, which you’re completely right about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_(psychology)#Burst
That is really the big problem with the current policy in the US: it's completely unclear what the policy is and how long it will last. This is not a stable climate for investment. Would you invest in a country where the president plays Russian roulette with the economy?
Most corporations will wait it out. Corporations that have an established interest (like Big Tech) will bribe Trump to get the exemptions they need to continue their business. Everybody else will have to decide how much they will want to depend on such an openly corrupt system. There industries that see no problem in dealing with corrupt regimes.
I think they conflated electricity production growth with total output.
Output in the US has been flat for some time, while China has been on a steady rate of climb for several decades.
> To sell in Europe, we must register for their tax system and nominate a legal representative.
American companies? Register for EU tax system?
I can buy from anyone in the US and worldwide for that matter, and as long as they're willing to figure out shipping they don't need to register anywhere, I can handle taxes myself when receiving.
What "AI" did they use to write this?
You can’t handle VAT rebates on your own, but America lacking a VAT system itself can’t really take advantage of that.
What VAT rebates if i import something into the EU?
It says "to sell into Europe" not "to buy from Europe". In first case I, the EU buyer, owe VAT.
In second case whoever buys may be owed a VAT rebate. But it's not selling any more.
Theoretically, sales tax could act as an anchor for VAT rebates.
> You can’t handle VAT rebates on your own
Individuals (sole traders, contractors etc) can claim VAT rebates. You don’t have to have a lawyer or an accountant if you’re prepared to figure out the rules yourself.
Tl;Dr: The author makes a strong case for broader, higher tariffs but understands it is impossible to help American manufacturing knowing that the next administration will cave to China and Wall-street and immediately move to undo everything. The solution is to work together to make American protectionism work.
1. They are not high enough: Correct. Raise them more.
2. America's industrial supply chain is weak: That is why we need to bring the factories and resource extraction home.
3. We don't know how to make it: Perhaps we can steal the IP like China? We will figure it out.
4. The effective cost of labor in the US is higher than is looks: Then raise the tariffs higher.
5. We don't have the infrastructure to manufacture: You have to build it first, This will get cheaper and easier as we continue to bring industry home.
6. Made in America will take time: Blaming permitting time and Bureaucracy is a ridiculous excuse. The federal government can override all state and local requirements here. Its a choice to slow projects down.
7. Uncertainty and Complexity around tariffs: Democrats will have a hard time undoing progress if there is movement to reshore industry. War over Taiwan seems basically inevitable and this will harden resolve.
8. Most Americans are going to hate manufacturing: Most (well a very large and non-negligible percent of) Americans are going to loose their jobs because of AI. Most of us hate our jobs already, manufacturing will pay better. There are always endless service industries...like delivering food, if they do not like supervising a robotics controlled factory. It is disingenuous to imagine a return of American manufacturing without Huge AI and robotics investments. More factories will be lights out than the alternative. The jobs will be in servicing the robots, computer systems and quality control. We aren't talking Rosie the Riveter and the author must know it.
9. The labor does not exist to make good products: This is why there must be some discrimination over tariffs and why they should not be a simple even percentage. We can choose to bring back GPU manufacturing but pass on fast fashion. And during the process of negotiation we can give up those industries we do not want in exchange for support of a China embargo.
10. Automation will not save us: The author cannot imagine a world where manufacturing is not motivated by global trade. They fail to understand that it does not matter how much more productive China is when protectionist policies prevent trade. The goal is to get America to a place where it can manufacture everything it NEEDS on its own.
11. Americans file lawsuits: Good- this will increase the quality of goods we enjoy and we can get past the disposable foreign garbage that floods our markets. 12. enforcement will be uneven and manipulated: so get on board and help to improve it, stop undermining the attempt to help this country.
13. tariff policies structured in wrong way: Really not a terrible idea to have a disparity in tariff between input goods and finished goods but it is a half measure. We need the entire supply chain from resource harvesting, to tooling, to components to final finished manufacturing if we want to ensure national security in a world post-NATO.
14. Michael Jordan sucked at baseball: Was there serious consequence to MJ trying his hand at baseball? We got through COVID. We have survived massive supply disruptions and the market has been pumping as hard as ever. If you are not currently retired it is absurd to worry about fluctuations in the stock market. And if you are, you likely invested in companies that sold out America.
> The goal is to get America to a place where it can manufacture everything it NEEDS on its own.
That is just incredibly stupid. The only country that tries to do this is the hellhole known as North Korea and even they fail. No country is an island and doing this will just ensure America becomes a third world country or worse
The other day I saw the results of a poll [1] where 80% of Americans thought the *country* would be better off if more Americans worked in factories. However, only 20% of Americans thought that *they* would be better off if more Americans worked in factories. It was surprisingly bipartisan.
In other words, people like the idea of this, but no one actually wants this.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/845917ed-41a5-449f-946f-70263adba...
Americans are cosplaying (voting their belief system, not what they'll do, the "revealed preference"), as they do as farmers [1] [2] [3] [4], as they do as "rural Americans" [5]. It is an identity crisis for tens of millions of people [6]. Their crisis is our shared political turmoil. Happiness is reality minus expectations.
From the piece: "The people most excited about this new tariff policy tend to be those who’ve never actually made anything, because if you have, you’d know how hard the work is."
[1] https://www.agriculturedive.com/news/agriculture-shifts-farm...
[2] https://www.terrainag.com/insights/examining-the-economic-cr...
[3] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor
[4] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/agriculture/our-insights...
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q_BE5KPp18
[6] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/11/there-are-a-...
Agreed and the same people do a lot of their shopping at Amazon/Dollar General/Wal-Mart where low price goods are only possible because they are made off shore for much much lower wages. Bringing that manufacturing back here would destroy their buying power.
I do find it interesting that a lot of these same people are against raising the minimum wage because "it will bankrupt all the businesses" but somehow think that bringing manufacturing for the goods they buy back to the US won't do the same. At best, going from off-shore labor costs of say $15/day to $15/hour (minimum for US workers) is an 8x multiplier and will somehow magically work but a 1.5 multiplier on minimum wage is just untenable for any business.
Honestly, it is mostly an emotional response around "fairness". They don't want others getting a "raise" when they don't "deserve it". However, everything they get is 1000% deserved. The greatest trick the rich ever pulled was convincing the middle class that all their woes are the fault of the poor. The political comic of "That foreigner wants your cookie!" captures it pretty well (imo).
Offhand, I believe that trick started with tribalism (generally, the 'other' is the most obvious scape goat), became racism in various forms (they look different / go to a different church it's /their/ fault), and has shifted to classism with thinly veiled racism included.
It's not much different than how a young child will blame anyone else for something that's gone wrong / they got caught doing. Maybe our society should do a better job promoting responsibility and allowing parents to offer oppertunities for children to be responsible; instead of infantalizing everyone entirely until some magical number has passed and suddenly they're an adult who was never previously empowered to be responsible.
Othering has driven a lot of the hate and derisiveness of the 21st century. A lot of the political messaging and advertising tends to specifically focus on othering.
While simultaneously needing migrant labor with lower minimum wages and labor laws for agricultural workers.
The control and status they've had is diminishing, and they are taking it out on the rest of us. Regardless, it will be lost. People are tricky. Onward.
> people like the idea of this, but no one actually wants this
As others have pointed out, this is not a contradiction. (Read their reply.)
However, the question of 'Do YOU want to work in a factory?' is heavily influenced by the fact that we don't see factory work as a high-paying career, or a career at all. Part of the solution to the factory problem is enhancing the value proposition for the employees.
I am ambivalent toward tariffs, but the idea is that if we make foreign products more expensive then the higher price of domestic goods becomes more palatable by comparison. If paying domestic workers more raises the price of domestic goods, and if people are willing to pay that price for whatever reason, you will start to see growth in manufacturing.
It's also silly to reject long-term goals simply because achieving them is difficult.
> If paying domestic workers more raises the price of domestic goods, and if people are willing to pay that price for whatever reason, you will start to see growth in manufacturing.
We ran this experiment for decades. It turns out that Americans are not willing to pay the higher prices, which led to our manufacturing consolidating around higher-value items.
This notion that we should move Americans from high-productivity jobs to lower-productivity jobs, and that such move will somehow enhance our prosperity is nutty. Lower-productivity jobs mean less income for workers, means less income in the system, means lower prosperity for all Americans. Moving tens of millions Americans to higher-productivity jobs while maintaining relatively low unemployment has to be seen as one of the economic success stories of the modern age.
Separately, Americans do not feel like this happened. That's a different discussion, about allocation of wealth. Our poorest states have higher GDPs per capita than many "rich" western EU countries. Mississippi has a higher GDP per capita than the UK. The difference is that the US has designed a system where every citizen lives a precarious existence, potentially a few months from destitution while other rich countries have not done that. We are allowed to make different choices in the US if we don't like this outcome.
> We ran this experiment for decades. It turns out that Americans are not willing to pay the higher prices, which led to our manufacturing consolidating around higher-value items.
But did we run that experiment while foreign alternatives were nearly or equally expensive? That's the real test, and whether foolish or not that's what they are trying to do with tariffs.
> Lower-productivity jobs mean less income for workers
Are you suggesting former factory workers all became scientists and engineers? If that's true then fantastic. But I'd like to see evidence that what they are doing now is somehow more productive.
> Our poorest states have higher GDPs per capita than many "rich" western EU countries.
Is the result of that a higher median income, or is it a reflection of a higher wealth inequality?
> But did we run that experiment while foreign alternatives were nearly or equally expensive?
Tariffs will have to go a lot higher than 145% for this to be a relevant question. US labor (and now due to tariffs, raw materials) costs are so much higher that frequently even doubling the import price would not make US cost-competitive.
> Are you suggesting former factory workers all became scientists and engineers?
No, I am suggesting that those people currently work in jobs that support higher productivity of the overall labor force, and that higher productivity creates the conditions necessary for increased prosperity for Americans.
Let's take QA for example as something that is often thought of as lower-skilled (but which is not) job that a hypothetical former factory worker could retrain to do. A person could QA a T-shirt or QA the Netflix app. The Netflix QA impacts more flow of money than a T-shirt QA, and so supports higher income for everyone working at Netflix than those working in a T-shirt factory. It is not possible for a person to manually QA enough shirts to have a similar economic impact as QAing the Netflix app.
Or compare the typical factory worker to a profession that is often denigrated in the US: retail. A factory worker making cutlery or light bulbs will generate less money for the economy than the average Costco employee[1].
Or look at a company that moves these goods around, like UPS. $360k revenue per employee @ 21% gross margin.
> Is the result of that a higher median income, or is it a reflection of a higher wealth inequality?
This is the continued choice of the US polity to not use our wealth to improve our common good. We instead choose to allocate it in ways that are markedly different from other rich and developing nations. So a high-productivity state with a higher GDP per capita than the UK is "poor" because our chosen combination of labor laws, tax laws, etc. are designed to produce that outcome. There used to be robust debate about the best way to make our economy less anxiety-inducing for individuals, but that discourse ended and everybody pretty much accepts that this is how it has to be. Nonetheless, we are allowed to choose differently.
1 - Costco produces close to $100k of gross profit per employee. This is multiples of the prevailing wage even in rich countries in Western Europe, much less countries like China.
> A factory worker making cutlery or light bulbs will generate less money for the economy than the average Costco employee.
The good news is that we don't need to calculate the value of an employee, because the market itself makes it loud and clear: wages. The higher the wages, the higher the value. In any sane company, the less valuable an individual is to the bottom line, the less they get paid.
So then, if the wages of a factory job start to eclipse that of other fields, that's all the evidence we need of higher productivity/value/whatever-you-want-to-call-it.
Agree 100%. And in this case, the market is yelling that we should not bring low-productivity jobs back to the US.
*Yet ;)
> A person could QA a T-shirt or QA the Netflix app
Netflix famously fired all their QA people and requires their devs to do test automation.
I guess HR didn't get the memo?
https://explore.jobs.netflix.net/careers/job/790301756355-qa...
> > Our poorest states have higher GDPs per capita than many "rich" western EU countries.
Not the OP, but poor as used here seems to refer to average quality of life , quality of infrastructure, etc.
> Is the result of that a higher median income, or is it a reflection of a higher wealth inequality?
Higher wealth inequality leading to stretched public services and infrastructure, which lead to lower quality of life , despite higher nominal GDP per capita.
You are probably much better off being a poor person in Spain (33k GDP/capita) vs Mississippi (40k GDP per capita), because at least you don't need to worry about the cost of healthcare.
You're more likely (but still very unlikely) to get extremely rich in the US though, although probably not in Mississippi.
Spot on. I would extend your analysis to include the median middle-class person is probably better off in Spain vs most/all US states. This, even though the Spaniard personally earns less income. Largely as a result of the economically precarious nature of living in the US.
Healthcare, childcare, education, retirement are all big expensive things the US does incredibly poorly.
Even more, the huge problems in the US like crime and poor healthcare outcomes are made worse by the increased inequality.
This is spot on. To add, it won’t even matter the outcome of upending our entire society and economy this way (tariffs) if the wealth distribution remains unequal. Nor will these types of jobs equalize wealth distribution (which is never mentioned because that probably sounds like communism) Look at the poor factory workers in china! You want to bring that here? Insanity.
Instead the products might just cease to exist. Or cease to exist in a particular market. Tariff-free trade brings into being products or markets that previously didn't exist.
> If paying domestic workers more raises the price of domestic goods, and if people are willing to pay that price for whatever reason, you will start to see growth in manufacturing.
Why would you need to pay them more? Remove their legal ability to organize, cripple their social safety net, and they will either work or die.
I'm not advocating for that, but it does seem to be the path we're deliberately taking.
Great, so we have enormous consensus and prestige for 60 million willing participants in the re- industrialization of USA. What's the problem again?
This lines up with the experience of the people I know who have worked in factories, there seems to be a disconnect with all these pundits and economists (and many people on the internet in general) talking about basic manufacturing work and the people I have met with actual factory jobs. The pay could've been worse and it wasn't the worst job I've heard of but it also wasn't great (they said they would've preferred a boring office job). There's a reason the pundits talking about the virtues of manufacturing jobs are pundits.
We already have a massive prison industrial complex, a lack of basic rights and a complete disregard for due process.
Very soon we'll be forced to make shoes and other things behind bars. No trial needed, just indefinite detention.
Now that is an elegant solution! They are starting to punish people with the wrong opinion and strip them of their citizen rights already; instead of flying them to El Salvador, might as well keep them as slaves in a federal prison! Pesky dissidents and manufacturing problems solved at the same time!
Arbeit macht frei.
Old school Soviet school of thinking, very nice.
There's absolutely no contradiction here.
Currently less than 20% of Americans work in factories. All those 80% need to want is that the 20% of people who want to work in factories can do so.
If that 20% never had a factory job before, it is not a reliable indicator. It just means their current job is already shitty. They may get a factory job and realize that they were better off flipping burgers, even with less pay.
From TFA:
> When I first went to China as a naive 24 year old, I told my supplier I was going to “work a day in his factory!” I lasted 4 hours.
This poll is being propped up as evidence that people don't actually want to work in a factory, yet more people voiced interest in doing so than are currently, by an order of magnitude. If you believe there's a disconnect between perception and reality, that's fair, but it would have to be off by an order of magnitude on the positive side to support the premise, and an anecdote about a Chinese factory is very weak evidence of that. I would posit that many people would be happier and more fulfilled working in a factory than being stuck doing gig work or packing foreign products for Amazon or even bullshit desk work, but I'm not elitist enough to pretend to know what blue-collar workers in stagnant towns actually feel, let alone argue that they actually want the opposite of what they say. Personally, I wish I had the chance to work in a factory at 16 years old instead of a call center.
Would interesting to know what percentage themselves or their own children wanted to work at a factory. Can tell with a huge degree of confidence for all practical purposes thats 0.
Its always easy to expect other people to make sacrifices working these jobs, while imagining you and your kids working office desk jobs.
Is everyone on hacker news so entitled and privileged they cannot even imagine an American citizen wanting to work for a living?
I absolutely would work a factory job if it paid 100k+ and meant owning a home someday.
Instead I got 100k student loans and make 60k at a desk and I'll never have a life outside of work because I simply can't afford it.
I'll be 35 this year after 12 years of working and just starting to have a positive net worth.
American dream my ass.
A 100k factory job and you're calling others entitled? This is the equivalent of the famous Arrested Development skit, "what does a banana cost, $10?"
Every tradesman I know makes north of 80k, granted it's backbreaking work. I assume working in a factory such as semiconductors pays 6 figs, as an engineer or foreman of some kind.
If they are literally stamping parts together on an assembly line then I guess yeah it's not going to pay 100k.
> if it paid 100k+ and meant owning a home someday
That is not going to happen.
how would a 40k a year manufacturing job help though? (real salary of someone I know in the field right now)
Bringing back factory jobs isn’t bringing back the American dream. It’s just replacing the shitty gig work you have to do to barely get by with a shitty factory job that you have to do to barely get by. If they pay well, it’ll drive up the cost of goods a ton and still be unhelpful for people.
You would be able to afford a lot less if everything you bought was made in factories where every worker was paid north of $100k. That includes your home, by the way.
I would consider factory work if it paid a liveable wage and I didn't have other options.
I started out asking myself, what would it take for American's to be okay with factory work. For example, my grandfather worked in a GM plant in Kansas City for most of his life. I mean he had started out wearing suits and doing books for a bank when he was young and fresh out of high school.
And then I remembered, oh yeah, the Great Depression happened when he was young and he was let go from his bank job — the bank folded. When the decent paying factory job at an auto assembly plant eventually came along he probably jumped at it.
Yep, and that’s what they’re doing. They’re wrecking the economy so much that factory jobs might look desirable to some people.
Everyone wants more manufacturing in the US, but nobody wants to be a factory worker. People would rather starve or go homeless than work in a factory. Until Americans overcome their pride, this is going to make building manufacturing in the US very difficult.
Everybody wants to be a factory worker if the compensation is good. Why do you think Chinese people work in factories? Because it pays better than other jobs they can find.
"But if factory wages are good then products will be expensive"
No, because the wages for the factory worker is less than 1% of a products shelf price.
If 20% of people really think they'd be better off as factory workers, that's actually kind of a lot. Can you imagine if 20% of the working population really did work in factories? That's an enormous number.
> In other words, people like the idea of this, but no one actually wants this.
Misinterpretation of data.
> The other day I saw the results of a poll [1] where 80% of Americans thought the country would be better off if more Americans worked in factories. However, only 20% of Americans thought that they would be better off if more Americans worked in factories. It was surprisingly bipartisan.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2023/a-look-at-manufacturing-jo...
Compared to the current percentage of people employed in manufacturing (9.9% - 12,759,129 / 128,718,060), there are **more** Americans that would like to move into manufacturing, not less.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belling_the_Cat
It’s the same as every tech bro on here who says, “Go join the trades!”
People want to be sure that their success is protected and they love telling other people what they should do.
Reminds me of the "college is a scam, learn a trade" people, all of whom went to college and plan to send their kids to college as well.
just like management class in any typical corporation
Let's me real... 80% of the hard shit in US factories will be ran by mexican migrant labourers like in agriculture. And maybe that's enough of a "win" for US interests.
I mean 20% of the population thinking they would be better off working at a factory is huge. So we need more than that?
It says "only 20% of Americans thought that they would be better off if more Americans worked in factories." Which isn't the same as believing they would be better off if they worked in a factory.
I agree with that sentiment. I would be better off if more of you, just not me, worked in factories instead of trying to compete with me for my non-factory work.
Jonathan Blow's "Preventing the collapse of civilization" [1] makes a similar point. It is easy to assume that, if we can build EUV machines and space telescopes, then processing stainless steel and manufacturing PCBs is baby stuff, and is just waiting for the proper incentives to spring up again. Unfortunately that is not the case -- reality has a surprising amount of detail [2] and even medium-level technology takes know-how and skilled workers to execute properly. Both can be recovered and scaled back up if the will is there. And time -- ten or twenty years of persistent and intelligent effort should be plenty to MAGA :)
1. https://www.youtube.com/embed/pW-SOdj4Kkk
2. http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-...
But the important question is - is it worth it? Should we be doing something more valuable instead?
> But the important question is - is it worth it? Should we be doing something more valuable instead?
It's hard to quantify. E.g. the CHIPS act is a strategic thing in case TSMC is disrupted for some reason. How valuable is insurance? How much useful work (and skill) do you ship overseas in exchange for promissory notes[0]?
[0] https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/tariffs-saving-and-invest...
People seem to want jobs with the macho kudos of manual labour, but with the physical comfort and salaries of email jobs, and I have some very bad news about that combination.
Those people need to watch a few episodes of Mike Rowe's "Dirty Jobs". Also people need to stop saying "unskilled labor". There is no such thing as labor without skills, outside a category in an archaic way of justifying low wages.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/unskilled-labor.asp
This is a pet peeve of mine: yes there are unskilled jobs. Lots of them. The term is maybe slightly misleading, but there absolutely is a class of jobs that any able-bodied person could perform given at most a few hours or a few days of training, and they are qualitatively distinct from jobs that require education, specialized training, and/or months or years of experience to be considered proficient and productive in them.
That doesn’t mean people who work jobs in the former category deserve ridicule or disrespect. But the distinction is important because finding workers to fill an unskilled role is just a matter of finding said able-bodied person, while for the latter you need some kind of system of education, training and/or apprenticeship (either explicitly or effectively) to be set up and functioning to even have an industry that depends on those jobs.
Not everything is some silly game of political fighting through language. Some things we actually need terms distinguishing “this” from “that” so we can have real world conversations about them.
Working at McDonald's takes 1 day of training.
Working as a doctor takes 10 years of higher education on top of secondary school.
Calling McDonald's "unskilled labor" seems quite fair to me.
Mike Rowe is a shitty human being who delights and is gleeful about the idea of those folks in these same “dirty jobs” being paid less, forced to work more and harder with less safety equipment, and with less respect.
He hates the idea of people getting ahead in life with anything but the most extreme back breaking labor. That’s why he’s hardcore MAGA and makes such a big deal about trying to shit on folks who do desk jobs.
Fuck him, fuck his show, fuck the “good parts” where he tries to show you that being a garbage man is hard. If it’s really that skilled, the market will pay it as such.
I think it is pretty useful to be able to distinguish between jobs that don't require much education/training, and jobs that do. "Unskilled" and "skilled" are how we do that. Do you have alternative words you'd use?
Behind the Bastards podcast on Mike Rowe opened my eyes to him.
IMHO, with the Big Tech boom winding down, what is more valuable for us to do? Manufacturing could prepare us for the next wave, whatever that might be.
> IMHO, with the Big Tech boom winding down, what is more valuable for us to do?
Tech isn't winding down; tech, as the sector that draws the most investment based on long-term development, had the biggest response to tight monetary policy designed to slow the entire economy down, but that response demonstrates that tech is where most of the marginal dollar goes.
> Manufacturing could prepare us for the next wave, whatever that might be.
Trying to work our way down the raw materials -> manufacturing -> finance/services ladder that countries usually try to work their way up for maximum prosperity in globalized trade isn't going to prepare us for anything other than lasting economic decline. And why would “manufacturing”—which you can't build generically, but only by specific, usually impossible to reallocate to a different use that isn't closely similar without sacrificing most of the value, major capital investments in particular subareas of manufacturing, prepare us for anything else even ignoring that we’d have to regress to do it?
> And why would “manufacturing”....prepare us for anything else even ignoring that we’d have to regress to do it?
The American production machine (aka manufacturing) is a major component of what won WWII.
The big tech boom is winding down?
Just because we ended the era of cheap money to try and stop runaway inflation doesn't mean the tech boom is winding down.
Look at everything that's happening with gene editing, in physics, with the jwst, with LLMs and robotics and computer vision, with alt energy sources, batteries, in material sciences, etc.
I mean this is such a myopic take. We are in just now in an era where people are now capable of finding needles in needlestacks.
You are confusing easily manipulated economic vibes that feel bad right now with the rapid approach of a complete overhaul of the human experience.
The U.S. has basically supported the strip mining of our economy by value sucking predatory investment firms. There is a reason why China have more robotics per capita in their factories than we do and it has to do with a complete failure in strategic thinking, long term planning and ultimately a hatred for our youth.
> gene editing, in physics, with the jwst, with LLMs and robotics and computer vision, with alt energy sources, batteries, in material sciences, etc.
These are tidal waves compared to the tech boom tsunami we experienced in the last 25+ years: enabling rapid communication of every human on the planet and democratizing access (anyone can create a app/website/etc to enable other people to communicate/make money/etc).
> where people are now capable of finding needles in needlestacks
Yes, exactly. all that is left is going after hard problems that impact the long tail.
I've seen this brought up with board games that are now primarily made in China, because injection molding is cheaper there especially for small quantities. The US could make the board game minis, but everyone who is capable of it in the US is producing high value high quality aerospace, industrial, medical parts. It's a waste of their time to produce small runs of toy parts.
mold making is also pretty complicated -- anything in the 1,000-1M parts produced will _probably_ be an aluminum mold (cheaper than steel) but they're still heavy and large to keep around.
I haven't met any injection molding shops in the US that do a huge amount of specialty parts like toys. The industry tries to get as many medical device jobs as possible.
I've thought about this and love board games. I don't want cheap plastic anymore. I want a reusable modular gaming system that let's me use more imagination.
This seems like the kind of thing where 3d printing is probably good enough quality wise.
Of course, the 3d printers themselves are probably being made in China.
3D printing absolutely sucks for production runs of more than a few dozen, and it produces finishes nowhere near as good as injection moulding.
Is that still the case? Even for a simple (presumably) board game piece?
Finishes are getting much better, especially with the high resolution resin based printers. But they are still slow and labor intensive compared to a "real" factory.
That's a crazy statement. It is clearly not true that every single person in the US capable of making board games now or in the future is instead already making high-grade aerospace and medical components.
Depends -- do you want the US to become a vassal state of China? That's the trajectory we were on. China is going to catch up rapidly on technology, AI, and services, and before a few months ago the US was going to continue falling behind in every other conceivable area.
That’s a hilarious thing to say considering our behavior towards trade lately. We’ve burned bridges with our closest trading partners and made everyone else uncomfortable to trade with us because they don’t know what the eventual tariff rate will be, or if it will change tomorrow. We’re retreating from the world stage, and guess who’s sitting there ready to take the reins. It’s genuinely the opposite of what you seem to want.
Want? Parent was predicting not saying what they wanted.
>do you want the US to become a vassal state of china?
Parent was making it clear what they do not want, for the US to become a vassal state of China.
Depends on how evaluate what is valuable. E.g. here in europe a lot of people think subsidising local agriculture is not valuable and we should just import cheaper food. On the other hand, a lot of people agree that food security is kinda valuable by itself. And want similar security in more fields. In that sense yes, doing „low tech“ is valuable in the long run.
I've been thinking lately that we don't properly account for things like security. I've also been thinking lately that a lot of people have terrible ethics and are more than happy to engage in nepotism and or fraud. Don't know what to do about it personally, I just try to keep my needs small and be happy with what I've got while trying to prepare my own children to have some level of a good life.
More like common man does not think long term (and I'd say rightfully so). While democratic regime embraces populist hedonistic solutions.
Who cares about defense capabilities 10 or 50 years down the line? Lots of people in West had a good run outsourcing everything. But once there's nothing else to outsource and IP to sell... It's not gonna be pretty.
Next generations in West will have to work very hard to recover from this mess.
Hate to agree.
@agriculture.
Have you ever heard any concrete strategies and plans regarding food security?
Wouldn't there be policies about how many calories should be produced in what form, how long can it be stored, what would a local ramp up look like if there was a global catastrophe?
What percentage of agriculture is really relevant to food security?
Those are just empty words so farmers can get their subsidies and go on to produce more industrial rapeseed oil.
As long as you have whole supply chain locally, you don't need to store too much.
The problem with agriculture is you can't really „ramp up“ it on a whim. That's why you need to keep it going and you can't just kick start your food production when outside suppliers start to blackmail you.
> In that sense yes, doing „low tech“ is valuable in the long run.
Sure. But how much tax money do you want to throw at entire industries to hide the basic fact that wages are lower elsewhere? Where do you want to take the labor away from? And where do you draw the essential/wasted subsidies boundary line?
Because in my view, Trump tariffs just ignore those very basic questions and don't even attempt to answer them.
It's perfectly reasonable IMO to throw 20 billion a year to agriculture, because that is a very essential sector. But doing the same for the textile industry? Ore/Oil refining? Steelworks? Chemical plants?
I don't wanna subsidies 20 non-essential industries just so that some former fast-food worker can assemble overpriced shoes inside the US (and labor demand from all those industries would drive up wages/costs in the fast-food sector, too, thanks to the Baumol effect).
I'm not against nurturing some important local industries, but Trump tariffs are a complete failure at achieving that IMO.
Don't want to make hypothetical shoes? Fine. One day soldiers may end up marching barefooted and loosing a battle though.
IMO the global economy eventually self-levels. Either you go up the chain so far that you eventually go off the rails by being unable to make basic stuff. And eventually being eaten by more hungry people with the basic skills. Or you keep yourself down by forcing yourself to not loose basic skills. Former gives you a short moment of glory with a high price for future generations. Later forces people to be more ascetic if that's the right word.
You misunderstand me. The US is making shoes-- just not as many as it imports from Vietnam or China. In fact enough shoes get made locally to export about 1$ billion worth of them (while ~$20 billion are spent on imports).
But I don't see the point in throwing billions of dollars from taxes at this industry just to make all those shoes here-- that is stupid (because the jobs that would create are not gonna be very desirable, they are gonna drive up costs all over by competing for labor, and that kind of protectionism is gonna invite retaliation).
The situation is very similar for a lot of industries.
I also think it is extremely unhealthy to baby an industry long-term by isolating it from competition like this.
I'd be totally on board if there was like 20% unemployment in the US, and this was a short term plan to give those people work/income.
But that's not it. This is in my view really bad policy driven by emotional arguments, and actual numbers, expected outcomes and historical precedent (for "I know better than market economies what ought to be produced") all heavily weight against this.
I'm very confident right now that the whole "20%ish tariffs for everyone to balance trade deficit with everyone" approach is gonna be walked back or lead to abysmal outcomes, and people should have realized that from the start.
> In fact enough shoes get made locally to export about 1$ billion worth of them
We have far more shoes than we need.
> the jobs that would create are not gonna be very desirable, they are gonna drive up costs all over
Only because our government is run by billionaires. Elect politicians that care about the median American and this problem can be resolved quickly.
> I also think it is extremely unhealthy to baby an industry long-term by isolating it from competition like this.
This “babying” you mention results in decent working conditions and guaranteed jobs for Americans. It’s a trade off I think is worth it, as your proposal disproportionately benefits the 1%.
> I know better than market economies what ought to be produced
Have you looked at the astronomical surplus of useless goods we have here? Those come at the cost of labor that could be put towards jobs that benefit all Americans (building more homes, cheaper childcare, cheaper food, etc). Again you’re arguing for a status quo that is designed to grow the wealth gap and make billionaires richer. Essentially trickle down economics.
I think large scale modeling and allocation for "more valuable" has been overly narrow - insufficiently diversified for uncertainty/unknowns, and subtly incorrect for western nations for decades now
It is if war is in the future. And I’m not saying this as hyperbole but based on statements made by NATO secretary general (both Rutte, previously Stoltenberg and former General Bauer) about Russia’s military production outproducing NATO, or Finish President Stubb speaking on the powers of the world shifting and the need to ramp production which were echo’d recently by Macron, or the Arctic region soon to become a contested region with China and Russia attempting to stake their influence in the area which is obviously at conflict with the personal interests of the other countries in the region. It seems obvious to me that the world is a bit hotter than before 2022, with the likelihood of some conflict between powers of the world coming to pass being greater. If production of raw materials to usable materials is all contained within countries that are deemed to be unfriendly by the one lacking this production capability, it’s a clearly in their vested interested to not be in that situation. Only problem is there is a seemingly idiotic US administration attempting to address these deficiencies, unless there’s some weird 4D chess play going on, but I’m not convinced it’s that.
Define "more valuable."
Leading to higher profits, jobs people want, and security, for starters.
Security needs taxes which lower profits and salaries (= jobs people want). On top of that, security needs a lot of not-so-profitable capabilities.
High profits and jobs people want also don't exactly go hand-in-hand.
yes it's worth it, no we should not be doing something more valuable
Ah, okay. Glad you got it all figured out then :)
Okay great, so ten to twenty years to onshore manufacturing. Why?
The US can't even make EUV machines, just parts of it.
I thought one of our labs invented it. maybe we are already doing it.
EDIT: no sorry wasn't a secret project. it was a consortium
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_ultraviolet_lithograph...
"Can't even". I think there's only one country that can, so the US is not alone.
The EUV light sources are all made in San Diego. Currently, there is no single country that can make an 3600D or equivalent machine. Which shouldn't be surprising given the complexity.
I think the collapse of the American Empire is no more preventible than the collapse of the British, Spanish, or Roman empires. The issues with the US being the reserve currency has been known for a while now (and was even predicted by Keynes before the Bretton-Woods summit):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma
Any discussion of "bringing back manufacturing" that doesn't mention government spending or social programs to educate and upskill the population is not genuine. The current leadership are fools and ideologs who will only hasten the decline, which might actually be better globally if it lowers emissions. Time will tell I guess.
Empires come and go, that's just a fact of life. The question was whether they'd fall back relatively gracefully like (Western) Europe, now with multiple countries ranking at the top of "World's Happiest Countries", or whether they'll become Russia 2.0 with the biggest guns, richest oligarchs, and the worst quality of life.
It's still far from played out, but right now they're solidly on the road to Russia 2.0, with decades-long trends pointing that way.
The fall of the Soviet Union was arguably more graceful than the two world wars and myriad of colonial worlds it took Europe butt out. Even if you exclude the world wars it probably holds.
The fall of the Soviet Union was anything but graceful. Within months of the dissolution of the USSR Russia had children becoming prostitutes in order to get money for food.
In 1986/87 top USSR newspapers were covering high class prostitution for foreign businessmen in Moscow hotels. A few years later, foreign currency prostitute was ranked among most desirable occupations for women in an anonymous poll.
[dead]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_territory...
Very graceful.
The sum total of the fatalities column on that page is joke compared to even the most optimistic assessment of how the British middle east or French Indochina went, and that's before you add in all the crap in Africa.
Edit: You could probably even include the current Ukraine shindig and my statement would still hold.
The toll was far greater than just that of conflicts. If you look at increased mortality during the period you'll see excess death in the millions. Wiki says 3.4 million: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Un...
In absolute terms it's one of the harshest death tolls in the last decades. It's far from a joke. Though for completeness, AIDS was also going on there and it's hard to tell from the stats the proportion of impact
Yeah in retrospect I could probably have phrased that a little better!
I think the current Russia-Ukraine war is the delayed end of Soviet Union collapse.
Boris Yeltsin in Aug 1991 called for "Russian Federation to reserve the right to review its borders with any adjacent republic" [0]. Yeltsin did that for a couple of weeks - until Leonid Kravchuk (Ukraine's last Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR and Republic of Ukraine's first president) said he will not support Yeltsin in dissolving USSR. By then the Baltics were already independent countries, but Yeltsin still needed Ukraine's Belarus' and Kazakhstan's support to get rid of Gorbachev.
So Yeltsin acquiesced the borders at that time, four months followed up with the Belovezha Accords and USSR dissolved without a fight a couple of weeks later.
I think what we see today is are some repressed conflicts being fought out in the open.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/27/world/soviet-turmoil-yelt... - free to read with NYT registration
This is explicitly referenced in “A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System”, written November 2024 by Stephen Miran—current Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers of United States—which outlines the general ideology and strategies behind the current tariff situation.
https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/rese...
I'd believe that article more if Trump hadn't called on congress to eliminate the CHIPS act, or if tariffs+Musk hadn't undermined it, or if republicans were for the Green New Deal, etc. If you're interested in onshoring, the smart thing would be to work on a targeted approach in high-value areas.
It's a really complicated manoeuvre even if you're not actively trying to shoot yourself in the foot. Eg Domestic factors (automation, corporate offshoring decisions, etc) also contributed to manufacturing job loss. A weaker dollar would probably help, but isn't a silver bullet.
The main article for this post goes into this in a lot of detail.
My pet theory is that he was in his 30s when the Plaza Accords happened and they really imprinted on him. If the rising Japanese economy could be brought to heel then so could the Chinese (ignore the fact that Japan was under the US security umbrella). It's no more rational than the fondness you might have for the first car you drove.
The American Empire never existed, because it never could. The US made the explicit decision not to occupy the defeated forces after WWII, save for strategic forces in place to protect the interests of the host countries. The US opened its market (the only market of size left and still the largest consumer bases in the world, by far) with no tariffs.
What the US got in return was cheap goods and a whole lot of debt. What the world got was stability. The US is no longer interested in subsidizing the global order.
The current discussion re: “bringing back manufacturing” is making the mistake that everyone always makes when Trump is involved: taking him at his word. The point isn’t to bring back all manufacturing. The point is to profit off of imports. Some manufacturing will return — whatever is high value added and benefits primary from cheap shipping internally - but nobody thinks that Americans are going to sew t-shirts.
Also, those who are looking for an American decline as comeuppance for being unkind to allies are going to be sorely disappointed. The US has everything it needs to be self sufficient, and no matter how batshit crazy the leadership is, it’s still — still — the safest place to park capital, still the largest consumer market by far (more than twice China), has a stable demographic and a middle class country to its south that brings in lower cost workers as needed. Not to mention being totally energy independent, bordered on two sides by oceans and with more potential port coastline than the rest of the world combined… and also holding the virtually all of the world's supply of high-purity quartz, which is a requirement for semiconductor production.
> The American Empire never existed, because it never could
This theory doesn't really explain what was going on at tremendous expense in Iraq, Afghanistan or even all those years ago in Vietnam.
If there is a decline, I expect it to be in internal security and the transition from high-trust to low-trust society.
It explains it precisely. The United States is a maritime power. It has never had the capability to maintain longterm occupation the way the Soviets or Ottomans did.
You realize that an Empire does not need to be configured the exact same way as the Roman Empire, right? A combination of soft power, clandestine operations, and targeted military intervention is more resource-effective than a constant occupation, and should still be considered an empire.
The English will be glad to hear their empire remains!
The Five Eyes Nations are part of the US Empire, that is a correct assessment.
Their empire worked differently.
Fighting wars isn't the same as having an empire.
You don’t have to physically occupy a country to exert influence over it, and we weren’t “subsidizing the global order.” We profited from the order, so continued to bring it about. How do you think we became the economy we are today?
> The American Empire never existed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
Then explain what they've been doing in South America for the past 100 years.
> the collapse of the American Empire is no more preventible than the collapse of the British, Spanish, or Roman empires
They each had longer runs than we’ve had.
My pet theory is lead. From 1950 to 1980 we birthed a leaded generation [1]. Today, up to 60% of American voters were born before 1975 [2]. (Voters born between 1950 and 1980 came into the majority in the 1990s and should fall into the minority by 2028, but only barely. So in summary: Iraq War, Financial Crisis, Covid and Trump 47. It won’t be until the 2040s when truly unleaded voters, those born after 2000, command a majority.)
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35254913/#&gid=article-figur...
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/the-changing...
Idk about the lead idea. There was a lot of BS going on in the world before it showed up.
America doesnt really have an empire. What is America's Hong Kong, India, etc?
America's empire isn't really built on blantant colonialism (although we do that, too). It's built on "planting" US favorable governments all around the world.
I mean, we have half of Africa shooting themselves in the foot over and over for our own benefit. And every time it looks like an African nation is going to do something about it, some counter-military force appears out of nowhere (with US arms?) and some important political heads are assassinated.
This isn't a conspiracy theory, either. The destabilization of world governments done by our government to our benefit is well recorded.
Dude come on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_imperialism#Strategy
Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa, are locations that are directly under US control. The entire western hemisphere is within our sphere of control, and a huge chunk of the planet was either directly aligned with us (EU, AUS/UK) or was compliant for fear of regime change.
The country itself was founded on the destruction of dozens of civilizations, a victory so total you don't even consider it as part of US imperial conquest. I can't believe I even have to explain this to people on here my God.
The combined population of those locations is about 5 million people. Compare with, say, colonial India, which was about 300 million people.
I’m not denying the existence of American imperialism entirely, but let’s be real about its scope compared to old school empires.
7. Uncertainty seems overlooked these days. The job of politicians is to make people and businesses dare. Making people dare getting an expensive education or starting a business or hiring your first employee or whatever it might be. What that requires will vary (if it's a social security system or a tax break for new companies or whatever). But something it always requires is trust in the stability. That the calculus for an investment is valid over N years. That laws or taxes don't swing wildly with political cycles.
That has been the bane of brazil for decades, every politician, at every level, undoes or stops whatever the previous politician was doing so there's absolutely no guarantee what you're doing today will still work tomorrow.
Its a terrible state and situation to invest in a business doesn't benefit anyone. My hometown had a large cultural center built by the mayor, he couldn't run for reelection again, new mayor is elected, completely ignores the whole thing was built and lets it rot. Everything is only done for an election cycle, the next cycle could bring something else entirely.
Its terrible to live in a place like this, Americans have no idea how bad this is going to be for the country.
For decades one political party has fomented this by pushing disdain for intellectuals and experts and the effectiveness of government itself.
Missing reason #15: commercial lenders with a brain realize that these tariffs and this self-imposed domestic crisis will dissipate in the next ~6 years. Nobody's going to lend in this market to try to spin up a new greenfield project in the US that will take years to get operational when they can sit and ride it out - ESPECIALLY at these interest rates.
The government could make loans directly and guarantee purchase prices, but it's also stopped making payments congress committed it to, so you'd be crazy to trust any promises from the administration.
This is a big one. Once upon a time, the Democrats and Republicans listened to the same think tanks, so there was continuity in planning. Now, they seem to be opposed to plans simply because the "other side" came up with them. The whiplash we've been experiencing has torn the economy apart and scared businesses away.
You’re almost right. This is not a both sides issue. One side has made a concerted effort to get us to this point, and it started in the 80s or before.
Not only will it take years to get operational, there is no way it would ever reach the scale and reach of Chinese manufacturing, not in six years, not in sixty. Even if they throw trillions of investor money at it.
China and others are clearly demonstrating the power of capitalism with state support. The US is too busy infighting and keeping capitalism and politics separate (small government, let the market decide etc). You wouldn't find enough employees that want to work in manufacturing; you'd need millions to even try and get close to what China is doing.
Now I'm not actually OK with what China is doing, the paragraphs about worker conditions were quite telling. But I will recognize that it gives them the upper hand in manufacturing that the US hasn't had since the 50's.
(meta: I'm gonna have to specify "the 1950's soon" don't I?)
The apostrophe when specifying decades is incorrect, it's a common grammatical error.
Should be "50s" and "1950s". Sorry, I usually don't do this but I otherwise liked your comment and thought you might want to know.
hacker news is so much fun.
> demonstrating the power of capitalism with state support
This is actually an excellent reason for tariffs. If we can't beat them at their game because it goes against our principles, then just don't buy their stuff.
So rather than competing when a more efficient innovation seems to have come about, just put our hands over our eyes and pretend it doesn't exist to our markets?
It's almost like the U.S. is going to lose either way.
I'm not so sure.
The tariffs most certainly will dissipate but we can't discount the chance that they may be replaced with actual written in law voted on by congress and signed by the president taxes that have similar but much more durable effects.
Manufacturing and heavy industry really hates off-shoring. They only do it because the sum total of other policy makes it the only viable option. I can see them taking a decent haircut in pursuit of some longer term goal.
If it looked like congress was eager to vote these tariffs into law, things would be different, as that sentiment might outlast the current administration, but that doesn't appear to be the case.
I have a suspicion that the coming tax cuts will be extreme, and the gaps in critical funding will be covered with tariff income. This will essentially make tariffs a cornerstone for government finances.
Political suicide to roll back tax breaks if they are primarily for the <$150k earners, like trump wants.
> Political suicide to roll back tax breaks if they are primarily for the <$150k earners, like trump wants.
What tax breaks has he aimed at these people beyond some of the overtime and tipping (which is expected to only equate to about $2K)?
Instead:
>The largest tax cuts would accrue to the highest-income families, the Treasury said.
> Household in the top 5% — who earn more than $450,000 a year, roughly — are the “biggest winners,” according to a July 2024 analysis by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. They’d get over 45% of the benefits of extending the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, it said.
> A Penn Wharton Budget Model analysis on the impacts of the broad Republican tax plan had a similar finding.
> The bottom 80% of income earners would get 29% of the total value of proposed tax cuts in 2026, according to the Wharton analysis, issued Thursday. The top 10% would get 56% of the value, it said.
I don't know what tax plan that is an analysis of, but Trump has stated he wants to eliminate income tax for those under $150k.
I don't know what news source you trust, but if you google it, he stated it back in March.
It's already stated in the source quote. Extending the TCJA.
What he says is almost irrelevant to what he actually does most of the time. He 'says' he wants to lower taxes on the lower income folks, but the tax bill he actually passed was essentially a handout to wealthy and businesses. He 'says' he wants to bring back manufacturing, but the reality is his tariff actions do nothing of the sort.
I admit I had not heard this one. But the first thing I saw on it said:
> According to Lutnick’s interview with CBS News, Trump’s tax policy goal is to remove federal income taxes for individuals earning under $150,000 annually.
(omitted some of the other bullet points around tariff funding and tip exemption)
> While Lutnick later walked back the certainty of these plans, he clarified that the proposal is aspirational and depends on the ability to balance the federal budget.
I have serious doubts about the likelihood of a Trump proposal that even his Commerce Secretary says are "aspirational". Then again, the other part of Trump is that sometimes he does whatever he wants, regardless of what his Secretaries have said or known (witness the tariffs being paused mid hearing, leading to a Republican politician frantically swiping at his iPad in the middle of his testimony about the value of keeping the tariffs despite widespread market uncertainty).
Trump is a populist president. He is the right wing Bernie Sanders. Eliminating income tax for those making under $150k is right wing version of a "Billionaire Stipend" for everyone under $150k. Of course the republican guard is going to downplay the insanity he spews, but here we are with blanket tariffs and China virtually cut off.
Trump and Sanders aren't opposites, they're next door neighbors with a common goal and mostly superficial disagreements like whether tax cuts or stimulus checks are better hand out approaches. They both want to trash trade deals and both want tariffs. If you are perplexed as many where why so many Bernie bros voted Trump over Hillary in 2016, this is the answer.
They are both blue-collar presidents, and both want to inflict damage onto the elite. The problem is that the elite are the system, their health is a function of the economies health, so it's a "buckle-in" moment when someone comes in who wants to rough up the elite.
If Trump and Musk aren't "the elite", I'm not sure who is. Unless what you really mean is "the educated".
Its the integration and overall combined effect of the entire industrial pipeline that makes China so incredible. It processes all the raw materials and the recycling/reuse of off cuts through every possible way to turn those raw materials into components and then into goods with very little need for import from other countries. Its the complete system for a huge variety of goods.
To compete with that the entire pipeline from raw materials through components and final product needs to be reproduced and its taken China 40+ years to build up to this capacity and capability.
I think its something more countries should consider and do for certain pipelines but we are in a world with vast international trade and the winner(cheapest) takes most of the trade so whatever it is needs to be worth while within country.
Absolutely. Canada for example should not be shipping lumber and oil to the United States for further refinement. It should be processed domestically.
Canada and the US are long time allies and should be able to benefit from eachother without much hesitation. China is an adversary, big difference in posture.
Canada and the US are no longer allies.
It’s either allies or you get invaded by us. You have no nukes. This isn’t the Micheal Moore fantasy of “Canadian bacon” where it’s all some funny post 90s joke: Trump hates Canadians and will use military force to annex them if he perceives that it will go well.
I fully, 100% expect this to happen, at least to Greenland and a real chance of this happening to Canada.
Unfortunately it's impossible to tell if they are de facto allies, because on the one hand they very much still are de jure still allies, and on the other all the stuff Trump is saying and doing.
Security allies? Sure. Economic allies? I don't think that has been the case for a long time. Even before Trump's second term.
Canada and the US have been to court multiple times over NAFTA violations (sometimes Canada is at fault admittedly).
https://www.international.gc.ca/trade-agreements-accords-com...
Why would that be better? Comparative advantage is real.
1. Jobs.
2. Profits.
3. Refined products can be exported to countries that don't have refinement capabilities. Not just the US and China. This gives Canada better trade leverage.
4. Security. A big one that's emerged in the last few weeks.
I don't see either Poilievre or Carney talking about this which is disappointing but not unexpected.
Do you not believe in the theory of competitive advantage? The tradeoff is higher prices, do you think that doesn't matter?
What is the competitive advantage here? That refinement exists in the United States and not Canada? That was a political choice made by Canadian politicians.
Even getting workers to the factory is a concerted effort of trains and public transport, Americans would quickly clog the highways with millions of single occupant large vehicles without first investing in more efficient ways to move people
Scenario: someone builds a factory complex employing thousands of workers. Government builds and improves infrastructure and roads leading to and from that factory to get the workers in and out, as well as getting raw materials in and finished goods out. Someone properly points to the roads and says "you didn't build that", pundits freak out.
> Its the integration and overall combined effect of the entire industrial pipeline that makes China so incredible.
The incredible part is USA exported that entire sector to China.
They saw extra profit $ and didn't consider the consequences. I suspect there was a bit of racism involved where they thought the Chinese would never learn to go from manufacturer to designing products nor master the entire pipeline and end up competing with them in the domestic market. China obviously did because they funded engineering education heavily and learnt all they needed to and surpassed the companies they built for some time ago.
>I suspect there was a bit of racism involved
Or they wanted access to sell to the Chinese market and they did whatever it took to get it.
It wasn't just the USA, the entire west collectively.
This is true, and at the same time, this article is absolutely rife with unsourced, unserious points. However insane Trumps plans, the fundamental "facts" presented here are largely a joke.
> Chinese workers work longer hours more happily and they’re physically faster with their hands; they can do things that American labor can’t. It’s years of accumulated skill, but it’s also a culture that is oriented around hard work and education that the United States no longer has. In China, there are no people who are too fat to work. The workers don’t storm off midshift, never to return to their job. You don’t have people who insist on being paid in cash so that they can keep their disability payments, while they do acrobatics on the factory floor that the non-disabled workers cannot do.
It's an actual joke to present something with such a derogatory view of the median American worker with no data to back it up. Most of America's "labor class" is in fact Mexican, the country with the highest annual hours worked per year. Secondly hours worked does not relate directly to productivity. American workers are the most productive in the world. [1]
More importantly, _we don't manufacture like this anymore, even in China_. Doing "acrobatics" on the factory floor is now obsolete. Much of what's said here fails to acknowledge that we would _not_ build our supply chains the same way as China does. China had a surplus of human labor (one that's facing an impending demographic crisis) and so used human labor in ways modern western countries would not and do not.[2]
[1] https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/01/the-countries-where-... [2] https://ifr.org/ifr-press-releases/news/global-robotics-race...
Reproducing these supply chains is more possible than this article states. Doing it via destroying our economy however will not work.
I was thinking the same thing while watching "American Factory" on Netflix.
scrolled too far to see criticism about all that
And if China invades Taiwan, which they have said for decades they will do (we just don’t like to believe them), what then?
Do we sacrifice a democracy for the dollar? If not, is our economy annihilated? We have no credible alternative to reshoring for this reason alone.
> Do we sacrifice a democracy for the dollar?
I've got some bad news for you.
>>Do we sacrifice a democracy for the dollar?
What democracy? Whose democracy?
Trump just blamed Zelensky for the war in Ukraine again. The entire administration keeps saying they will make Canada the 51st state and "destroy canada economically". They want to take Greenland by force. I don't think America cares much about democracy anymore, only dollars. China will take Taiwan and US will will keep buying chips like they always did.
> cares much about democracy anymore
Anymore? Arguably, the US never did. Ask, for example, the people living in Caribbean or Latin American countries what happened when they elected leaders that the US disliked.
Or Iran. Or Italy. Or Congo. And so on.
Or ask the Indonesians about the mass killings in their country in 1965-1966, supported by the US. Around 500,000 people died, though some estimates put the number of deaths at 1,000,000. Ask the Filipinos about how the US propped up their military dictatorship back in the 1970s-1980s.
I could keep going, but I think you get the point. The US has never been sincerely interested in democracy -- only strategically. The illusion that the US cared about democracy was a primarily Western luxury.
And when a Democrat is back in power in 2029, and China invades in 2030, what will she do? Protect Taiwan and destroy the US economy as we endure the equivalent of an infinite tariff; or appear weak by saying “that’s a shame”, even if China is doing a Great Leap Forward on the population?
I don't know and I wouldn't even hazard a guess. My entire observation right now as a non American is that America doesn't care about democracy anymore.
> I don't think America cares much about democracy anymore, only dollars.
I don't think it's a good idea to assign Trump's beliefs, or those of his administration, to America as a whole. Any more, frankly, than it's a good idea to assign those of his opposition to the country as a whole.
Well of course, but right now they represent the country.
The country contains all of us, all the time.
The leadership is not the country.
And yet, the ruling government are the representatives of the country.
The relations between Taiwan and the US have nothing to do with "democracy". First it was about anti-communism, when the Chinese government fled there and the mainland was taken over by the communists. Now it is about anti-communism and "China containment". The fact that Taiwan transitioned to democracy in the 1980s is just convenient to feed the public that this is indeed about "democracy", "freedom", the usual.
As a historical point, the US never had a problem with Taiwan being handed back to China at the end of WWII, since it is what happened. Again, this is all just a tool against the communists and then against China's increasing power as a whole.
Even if you are correct, we are in a situation where we risk having built our economy on the cheap labor of a Russia equivalent.
If that Russia equivalent invades an Ukraine equivalent, despite both instances being considered unthinkably crazy, what are we going to do? Or, what will China do, to us?
> Chinese workers work longer hours more happily and they’re physically faster with their hands; they can do things that American labor can’t. It’s years of accumulated skill, but it’s also a culture that is oriented around hard work and education that the United States no longer has. In China, there are no people who are too fat to work. The workers don’t storm off midshift, never to return to their job. You don’t have people who insist on being paid in cash so that they can keep their disability payments, while they do acrobatics on the factory floor that the non-disabled workers cannot do.
he knows a lot about manufacturing but weirdly not much about labor. very unsubstantiated, derogatory comment.
it gets worse!
> In China, there are no people who are too fat to work. The workers don’t storm off midshift, never to return to their job. You don’t have people who insist on being paid in cash so that they can keep their disability payments, while they do acrobatics on the factory floor that the non-disabled workers cannot do.
> Chinese workers are much less likely to physically attack each other and their manager. They don’t take 30 minute bathroom breaks on company time. They don’t often quit because their out-of-state mother of their children discovered their new job and now receives 60% of their wages as child support. They don’t disappear because they’ve gone on meth benders. And they don’t fall asleep on a box midshift because their pay from yesterday got converted into pills.
> And they can do their times tables. To manufacture, you need to be able to consistently and accurately multiply 7 times 9 and read in English, and a disturbingly large portion of the American workforce cannot do that.
like the fuck? where are your sources? this sounds like some ignorant shit to say
Lol that was my reaction too, this guy is an asshole. He should just leave.
I'd guess the source is stuff he has personally witnessed, which means even if it's true (would somebody just go on the Internet and tell lies?) it says nothing about prevalence.
It is extraordinarily malicious, and reminds me of Michael Richards.
Ignoring this is like ignoring the prophecitc Vivek tweet that triggered conservatives for him pointing out DEI for white people.
This post is basically correct. The Chinese will accept being exploited way harder than we will! Good going communism!
This shit is why I will resist Marxist bullshit with all of my fiber forever. Fucking barracks communist no matter how hard they try to claim “nah we don’t support that”.
"incentivize, subsidize" - yes. There should be less incentives and tax breaks for "holding an asset" and more incentives for making things that improve human lives. Most of the laws are set by the incumbents who stand to lose what they have built and who have the money to pay the lawyers to set the tax code. Real estate should not get incentives unless its getting someone in a home. Private equity, same. Venture capital, after a certain point, same. If you are worth a bazillian dollars, same. A lawyer with balls needs to take on the tax code. I'm kind of hoping the whole Harvard escapade awakens a few legal idealists out there.
America does need to bring back manufacturing. Not because a manufacturing job that pays $25/hr is somehow better than a service job that pays $25/hr.
The US needs to bring back manufacturing for strategic reasons and in strategic areas.
And it needs to have the capability to scale up manufacturing in response to emergencies.
But also, importantly, the US doesn't need to do this by onshoring all manufacturing. Near shoring and friend shoring will have to be extremely important components of adding these capabilities, and unfortunately, teh actions the US is taking will likely hurt nearshoring and friendshoring and will end up making the US less strategically capable in manufacturing even if it's able to reshore a significant amount of manufacturing.
A skilled assembly worker makes closer to $30 or $40 an hour than $25. And that doesn't account for overtime. A skilled tradesman can make $40+.
Manufacturing is skilled, well-paid labor that requires commitment, attention, and care. That is why there's a shortage of labor--not because of wages.
>>A skilled assembly worker makes closer to $30 or $40 an hour than $25. And that doesn't account for overtime. A skilled tradesman can make $40+.
In theory. In practice the numbers are way lower.
As some one who has done quite a big time in India IT services firms, have lots of war stories, our Delivery manager would often tell us if US managers only knew adjusted for regular all nighters, whole week on-call hell weeks. Development phases where teams would be working days at stretch in office. The actual per hour rate of an engineer in India is at best $1 - $5 an hour. You just can't bill the customer that way.
Only reason why this even works is India is still poor and people work for anything.
Im sure, adjust for everything(in real practice) manufacturing hourly wages in China aren't all that different and wouldn't be surprised if they are at something like $1 per hour, or something such.
Americans have little idea how much affluence and luxury their ordinary citizen has. Most of the world would do anything even to be poor in the US.
Fair enough to say nobody in the US is signing up to work a hellish factory job for $1/hr anytime soon.
I was talking about the cost in the US, not overseas.
Manufacturing can be automated, and that's what should be done.
Chinese finds it cheaper to pay people to do it.
America will find it cheaper to build robots to do it.
Then when no one has a job America will revert back to paying people to do it.
Life will always find a way to balance everything out.
The cheapest option would then just be to try to become allies with countries where manufacturing is growing the fastest.
Yes, China.
The policy should be collaboration with China. 50/50 state subsidized joint ventures with Chinese corporations on EVs, raw materials refining, solar panels and batteries, etc. At the same time, a gradual and predictable tariff in those targeted areas. All of this, with the explicit consent and collaboration with the Chinese government. You could kill 2 birds with one stone and focus these policies on green energy and energy independence -- lessening the effects of climate change.
That is what you would do, if you really cared about bringing manufacturing back.
As of today, there is absolutely no off-ramp. The Dem policy is basically trump lite with respect to China. We are moving in lockstep towards making them a geopolitical adversary, and for what?
Or, Mexico, Vietnam, India, etc. Despite perception, they don't have all the world's manufacturing.
None of those places have manufacturing prowess in EVs, batteries, electronics, and solar, which is largely where China has comparative advantage over the US.
But yes in general, if we want to re-industrialize, we need to move the collaboration into the physical world and out of the financial world.
If we're going to defy the invisible hand, we should at least do it to benefit people in a concrete way - health care, education, UBI. Doing it for "strategy" is equivalent to simply burning the money people would have otherwise saved by doing nothing.
The components of a strategic manufactured product can be as simple as an injection molded switch, a LiION battery, capacitors, copper wire, etc., so the notion of bringing only "strategic items" back is as much a myth as the idea its mostly coming back to the USA. The goal here is to diversify the supply chain globally so its not concentrated in China. Internally this is sold as bringing MFG back to the USA (will happen to a noticeable degree), but that's not the actual plan.
So putting tarrifs on Mexico, Canada, Europe helps diversify?
For strategic, economic, national defense and public health reasons, I completely agree with you.
Too bad a large portion of our electorate is brainwashed by propaganda and/or completely out to lunch.
I think of environmental conflicts that disappears in the US thanks to manufacturing moving to China.
In the 1990s there were numerous manufacturing plants in the US (two on the South Hill of Ithaca alone) that were found to be contaminated with solvents like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichloroethylene
People thought it was great stuff, you wouldn't believe how hard it is to get cutting grease off things after you turn them on a lathe and vapor de-greasing makes it go away just like that.
China has some of the most advanced agriculture on the planet including a "vertical farm" that can sell straw mushrooms for about $2 a pack where they are super-proud that humans only touch them with a forklift. (Contrast that to the labor-intensive mushroom farms of Pennsylvania where somebody cuts each one with a knife.)
We are pretty omnivorous (I think mealworms start with "meal") and my obsession with anime and Japan has turned into serious sinophilia but my wife and I are hesitant to eat "Chinese Food" grown in China because of widespread environment contamination, I mean they've been building up heavy metal stocks ever since Emperor Qin Shi Huang poisoned himself with mercury.
Yeah, it's underrated how the Chinese boom just did not care for environmental impact, and because political organizing is banned the public are limited in how much they can complain about it.
It used to be a thing that people were importing massive quantities of baby formula to China because they didn't trust locally manufactured stuff.
Why would obsession with anime and (I assume Jaoan is a typo for) Japan lead to sinophilia?
You know sinophilia means "love of China", and that anime and Japan are not Chinese, right?
Thanks for pointing out the typo, I fixed it.
Yes, but they're culturally related. Anywhere where people write with Chinese characters or used to write with Chinese characters has legends about nine-tailed foxes, for instance. The intelligentsia had access to Chinese literature and this diffused into the public imagination. [1]
For me it started out with being willing to enjoy media in an unfamiliar language (first Japanese) that gradually became familiar. Then playing the Japanese game Dynasty Warriors that got me thinking about the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and about the characters and the place names and other old Chinese stories like Journey to the West and pretty soon I am enjoying Chinese pop culture about old stories and new stories of the fantastic and even learning some Chinese, getting curious about Chinese mobile games that aren't known at all in the west because Chinese people cosplay as characters from them, etc. (At the university where I work I overhear conversations in Chinese almost every day)
Yes, Japan is a different culture which I still enjoy and appreciate, but for me it was also a gateway to China. [2] I was an anime fan for 30 years but in the last 3 years I've had the same kind of giddy feelings for Chinese pop culture that I had about anime at the beginning and of course that means I'm going to buy a whole fish and eat it with my family because my son's Chinese friend suggests it.
Lately I've been playing the Japanese game Dynasty Warriors Origins which has both Chinese and English voices and find it strange on one hand to hear legendary Chinese heroes speaking Japanese which I mostly understand and then listen intently to the Chinese which to me is still a wall of unfamiliar syllables where I struggle to pick out proper names and an occasional word or phrase -- but I have a great time trying!
[1] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinosphere
[2] ... and it goes the other way, China's pop culture is inspired by Japan (I think it's funny that many Chinese games like Azur Lane use Japanese voices in the west because they know the kind of person likely to play that kind of game knows phrases like suki da! and has an emotional feel for Japanese even if they aren't fluent in it)
This pretty much mirrors what a friend of mine said (he is a recently-retired Co-CEO of a medium-sized manufacturing business).
He's been telling me this, for years. It's not a secret. The information has been out there, for ages. I'm surprised that the administration didn't understand this.
> I'm surprised that the administration didn't understand this.
Why would you assume they don't understand? Every time they're questioned about the tariffs the narrative shifts. We have a trade deficit, we're getting ripped off, we want to bring back domestic manufacturing jobs, we'll automate them with robotics and AI, we're playing hardball to negotiate a better trade deal and get rid of fentanyl, it's a matter of national security, an economic emergency, the dollar is overvalued.
You cannot trust a word from them. If you want to understand why they're doing something you must look only at incentives and outcomes. My current analysis is that there's some internal conflict, but the overall push for tariffs comes from a desire to crash the economy and use the downturn to consolidate wealth and power.
I genuinely don't believe there's five-dimensional chess happening here. The problem is simply that the US president is a repugnant, stupid, erratic egotist who's surrounded himself with nasty people of varying levels of intelligence, with stupid ideas about how to run the country, and this is the policy result.
To be clear, I don't think it's chess either. I think Trump likes tariffs and wants to appear strong by slapping them around. I think some, but not all of his hangers-on are using this to push for a recession. There are multiple hands on the levers of power here, but there's a common interest in transforming the US into a Russia-style oligarchy.
A genuine question, presuming no correct answer: what is to be done about it? China is reportedly on track to run more than 50% of global manufacturing by 2030, if the World Bank is correct. What would you do to act against this? Is doing nothing acceptable?
Start by realising this is going to take decades to reverse.
Given the timescale any solution will require cooperation across political parties. You can’t start something that will get undone in four years.
Then accept it won’t make much difference to the inhabitants of bumfuck USA. Automation is what took their jobs.
Start at the top of the food chain and gradually work down. If America can make cars but not car tyres then implement gradually increasing tariffs on imported tyres. 1% this year, 2% next and so on. Pretty soon you have a car tyre industry again.
Know when to stop, just like it doesn’t make sense for a banker to clean their own house it doesn’t make sense for a rich country to be making tee shirts.
Of course this won’t happen because of the American political system.
> Then accept it won’t make much difference to the inhabitants of bumfuck USA. Automation is what took their jobs.
If automation took those jobs then why aren't all those automated factories in USA?
They are. Manufacturing output in the US has never been higher.
If it doesn’t make sense to make t-shirts, why does it make sense to make tires?
They’re an environmental nightmare and very, very thin margins.
Tyres were just an example I plucked out of my arse, I wasn't suggesting they were important.
>They’re an environmental nightmare and very, very thin margins.
Which is an argument for consuming less tyres. It doesn't really have much to do with where you make them other than perhaps it is better to make them in a country with stronger environmental regulations.
I would act against China - because China is making political moves that I do not like. (they are supporting Russia in Ukraine, they are building up to invade Taiwan, they are supporting terror in the middle east...)
By acting against China that means I applaud moving manufacturing to Vietnam. I want to help Botswana grow - and I wish there were more countries in Africa I could name that seem to be on a good path (I cannot name the majority of countries in Africa, the ones I can are because they are in the news for bad things happening. I'm not even sure Botswana - I mostly know about them because last time I brought up Africa someone from there said their country was an exception).
Overall the world is better off with a lot of trade. Comparative advantage is real. There are things I can do that I don't want to become good at. However we also need to be aware that not everyone in the world is the friend of freedom and some must be cut off lest they grow. Nobody is perfect though, so you can't cut off everyone.
There are plenty of countries in East Africa ripe for this, unfortunately China is beating us there, too. Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania ... all are pretty well positioned right now for development, but rn China is mostly the one doing it.
(Source - worked in int'l remittances w/ African receiving countries)
africa has constantly been exploited by those who offer money with a catch. China is investing a lot but those investments tend to come with a catch they are better off without long term.
it is a hard problem
By acting against China that means I applaud moving manufacturing to Vietnam
and
last time I brought up Africa someone from there said their country was an exception
Making what are essentially strategic decisions in this "shoot from the hip" fashion is what lands us repeatedly in these situations. By way of illustration, let me try one from the 1980's out on you:
"By acting against Iran that means I applaud men like Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden"
(In fairness to the americans who made that colossal blunder, I'll assume that, to them, it seemed a good idea at the time. They were simply not long term thinkers. So no one ever asked, "Hmm, what comes next though?")
We, as a people, need to start thinking a bit further ahead than the ends of our noses.
It probably was the best option available at the time.
What would prevent Vietnam or Botswana do make political moves 20 years down the line? Surely it is not their economic reliance on you, as China clearly demonstrates.
I see exactly zero point in repeating the example of China again. Why would the outcome be different? Vietnam is another Communist pseudo-dictatorship. Why is this one so different that it won't support Russia?
Vietnam is making moves in directions I want to encourage. Only God knows the future and he isn't talking. (there are some who will disagree with various parts of that statement, but they have offered no evidence that they get useful information on the future.
Vietnam has been at war with China in the recent past. Today China is claiming seas that the US and internal law both call Vietnam's territorial waters - though currently they are not at war. Thus even if Vietnam doesn't move in a good direction, just keeping them where they are (as opposed to supporting China) is useful if only because all indications today are China will start a war in the future. (again nobody knows if they will, but they are preparing as if they will)
Nothing prevents anyone from making moves 20 years from now that are bad. All we can do today is encourage those who seem to be moving for the better. We have no clue how things will turn out. Even when we make what in hindsight now looks like a bad decision, we have no idea how it would have been if we had done something different.
>Vietnam is making moves in directions I want to encourage.
Just like China did? They had a whole phase of economic liberalization and opening trade.
>Nothing prevents anyone from making moves 20 years from now that are bad.
Vietnam is literally another communist pseudo-dictatorship. Their place in the world is obviously far more ambiguous than that of e.g. England. The idea of shifting manufacturing to Vietnam because you do not like the positions of China is just absurd.
>All we can do today is encourage those who seem to be moving for the better.
Why should the US not focus on supporting long term allies who aren't communist single party states?
20 years ago China looked to be going in the right direction. However things change. If they get rid of their dictator I might again support them - depending of course on how they change.
we should of course support most of europe which usualy has better government. Likewise the other countries in America - both north and south. And so on for anywhere else we can find friends. I an not a Trump fan even if once in a while he does something I support
What does support mean? Ship most of our manufacturing there or politely meet their political leadership once a year?
Free trade. So their ecconomy grows and with it edutated people who can afford to see the world and in turn how thep have been lied to.
>So their ecconomy grows and with it edutated people who can afford to see the world and in turn how thep have been lied to.
As has happened with China? When they opened up trade and became part of a global economy their nationalistic ambitions stopped and they ceased to support dictatorships like Russia. Also their political system opened up and they morphed from a uniparty communist country to a liberal democracy. Oh wait, the exact opposite happened on all accounts.
You didn't answer my question. Why would Vietnam be any different? Why should the US help build their economy so that they can do the exact same thing as China did. Your theory of how this works is disproven by reality. You can not make a country a liberal democracy by opening up trade with them. It failed with China, it failed with Russia.
The irony is that China was actually against Russia into the 90s (Sino Soviet split was still on), and nationalism was taboo also because too many people were burned by the cultural revolution. Changes were made after 1989 to encourage more nationalism, and that all culminates with Xi (China and Russia are still frenemies, but mutual antagonism with the USA has brought them closer).
> You can not make a country a liberal democracy by opening up trade with them. It failed with China, it failed with Russia.
It worked with South Korea, and Taiwan. (Japan and Germany, but they were on the losing side of a war with us which is a confounding factor). It is by no means perfect, but I've yet to see anyone suggest something else that has any chance of working.
SK and Taiwan weren't communist dictatorships.
Japan and Germany did not get convinced by the virtues of liberal democracy and free trade. They were both forcibly converted under US occupation.
> SK and Taiwan weren't communist dictatorships.
They were by all means military dictatorships, just not communist.
Yeah, there's no painless answer. China is not a democracy. They can force millions of people to endure terrible working conditions, pollution, corruption, and abuse, and take a very long view. The US can't do this.
Why do the working conditions need to be terrible?
Why does there need to be corruption and abuse?
Why do they have to expose their workers to pollution?
As far as I know, none of those things are required for manufacturing.
No, but like so much in life, doing it correctly is always more difficult and expensive, so people that “shortcut” the process, often win.
That’s why strong regulations are actually important (not something that businesses want to hear -until a “shortcutter” starts to eat their lunch).
>What would you do to act against this?
Bloc building. Europe has countries which do lots of manufacturing. Use those to gradually reduce reliance on China by slowly restricting Chinese access to the Bloc market and build up supply chains inside the Bloc.
Making everything in the US can not be done without a very severe decline in living standards.
>Is doing nothing acceptable?
How high is your desire to learn Chinese?
Under normal circumstances, when a country is running a massive surplus, their currency should appreciate, weakening their exports and thus recalibrating trade balance back to zero. That isn't happening right now, because China (and other surplus nations like Germany and Japan) relies on buying massive amounts of US treasuries to weaken the Yuan. That's one of the reasons why the US dollar is the reserve currency. It has to be, because only the US has an economy large enough to provide high-yield, low-risk treasuries and is willing to do so.
Trump's tariffs would theoretically rebalance trade on the long term, albeit in a highly destructive manner. But the more diplomatic solutions as proposed by other commentators like Catherine Tai, Yanis Varoufakis or Michael Pettis would be the introduction of capital controls to stem the demand for US treasuries, or better, the reintroduction of Keynes' proposal of the International Clearing Union back in 1945. The ICU's role would be to actively balance global trade surpluses via the international currency bancor, of which would have fixed control of FX rates rather than relying on FX markets to punish surplus nations and help deficit nations respectively. As for nations outside the Union, they would just get treated similar to the USSR.
I think they should want to do something - it's just that torpedoing your ties with your closest allies and trade partners then lighting the stock market on fire is maybe not that thing. China spent decades building up their supply chains, infrastructure and manufacturing capacity and had support for this at state level.
If the US sees it as a threat and wants to do something it should maybe look to what China has done. Because tbh what Trump did re Tariffs is pretty close to "nothing" all things considered.
They won't though because as soon as you have someone saying "look, let's just put together a staged plan so that in, say, five years we'll produce X% more electronics domestically..." you'll have a Republican shrieking about "five year plans" and how the USA is becoming communist
A great analyst once taught me the response question: "yes, and so what?" What's so magic about manufacturing as opposed to all the higher value work of the US economy? Have people not noticed that the average American is still richer than the average Chinese person by a long way, and (yes, painfully) more so than the average European?
If you're going to talk wars, then .. US military manufacturing is still the world leader yet again. Plus the nukes.
Here is a what: there are a lot of Americans (and similar for Europe) who did not go to college, and their kids are not going to college. Of they went to college but got a degree that doesn't have good job prospects. These people would be better off with manufacturing jobs than what they can find. This is probably a minority, but it is a large enough minority to swing elections and thus important.
A lot of the war stuff gets framed in very odd terms. If you want a local defence industry then pay for it. Enforce component sovereignty requirements... Which everyone already does. Then actually react to reports which call out the gaps and pay to close them.
This bizzare "we'll bring back manufacturing and be ready all the time" thing seems to imagine you'll just turn the local widget maker over to knocking out high temperature stealth composites for hypersonic missiles real quick.
Which is of course the story of a lot of American manufacturing: it's hard to get a hobby run of PCBs because all the PCB makers are optimized for large orders for defence procurement (and the clearance, supply line and stuff requirements that brings).
> I'm surprised that the administration didn't understand this.
Curious why you are surprised at incompetence being unable to understand complexity.
The thing is the US already experienced Trump 1.0, so it was presumably easy for many to assume that Trump 2.0 would follow broadly the same pattern and that there'd be an "adult in the room" somewhere to say "this will crash the world economy and do three consecutive 9/11s worth of damage to the stock market". So even though there are some very silly people in very high places saying some very wild things, the assumption for many is that there's someone there to manage the chaos and minimise the stupidity.
This has been a pretty sobering reminder to anyone that, in fact, there is no such thing.
The amazing things to me is people still are not asking why people are so mad about the state of things they voted for Trump in the first place. Trump is the only one promising to make some changes to make life better for those who don't want to go to college. "Maybe he will, maybe he won't, but everyone else is ignoring us" is what I keep hearing when I listen to those people.
Fix health care - socialism isn't the only answer despite what many hear will say.
Fix school - it shouldn't be all sit at your desk but that is what we get. Bring back gym class. Make kids get practical experience building the things they designed (that is shop class). Math could be fun - but most teachers don't believe it themselves, and so they haven't a hope of passing that on to students.
Do you think Trump has some ideas on fixing healthcare or school? Is there even a consensus on what needs fixed?
You've said re healthcare that "socialism isn't the answer" - assuming you mean "I don't want a single-payer or free-at-the-point-of-use system" then I'm not sure what is the answer then. They've currently got some of the worst health outcomes on the planet despite spending amongst the most per-capita. They can either try more privatisation or maybe give something like Medicare For All a shot...
And re "fix school" you seem to suggest that shop class needs to be more widespread and maths teachers just need to be more enthusiastic? If the idea is to give kids more options then things like making sure that there are widely available apprenticeship programs and technical colleges to develop these skills, as well as strong (dare I say, union) jobs waiting for them when they complete their training.
And re maths teachers, if it's anything like the UK I suspect that teachers are being expected to do more with less at every stage of schooling. They handle more kids per class with fewer teaching assistants available. They need to handle more diverse lessons than before because there are insufficient PE teachers, Music teachers, Drama teachers etc). They're having a tougher time with kids behaviourally due to the rise of social media and a broader economic decline that causes a whole host of social issues that end up being schools' problem. Having poor school system is a symptom of greater societal problems, you don't fix schools without solving those (sidenote: you also don't solve those by pointing the finger at vulnerable communities like immigrants and LGBTQ+). Telling maths teachers to be a bit more enthusiastic doesn't fix any of that, it just makes the maths teachers hate their job a bit more.
The US has great health care. It is marginaly worse than some other examples but nowhere close to amoung the worst. As for what I'd do: I would eliminate the employer contribuition - I hate my insurance but if I go elsewhere I leave behind more than $1000/month and nobody can compete with that - thus I'm stuck with health care that my HR department has choosen for me.
i'm not suggesting enthusiastic math teachers is all we need: lack of enthusism is a sympton of a problem but fixing symptoms isn't enough. Likewise I'm not sure shop class is the answer - but schools are leaving a lot of people out by not having them.
the us has a great school system overall but it needs to be better.
I mean if you want to compare the US to Angola, Yemen etc then hell yeah it's "great" and you can sorta kid yourself you're up there with the best of the bunch. But as a wealthy nation that is a pretty low bar and really shouldn't be what you're aiming for. Perhaps I didn't word that very well - you're having some of the worst healthcare outcomes among all of the planets developed nations despite spending the most on it. Like it is shocking how much of an outlier the USA is, there are multiple things you can measure but a really nice simple one people can wrap their head around is life expectancy: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health.... When you plot it against average annual expenditure it is clear that you're getting a truly terrible deal.
I dunno what to tell you man, it sounds like you're a true believer on this. I reckon everyone who has undergone a healthcare bankruptcy (a uniquely American thing, btw) or could not get treated be cause they couldn't afford it was a true believer before they were let down.
Those plots are meaningless because countries measure things differently. Many countries for example don't count anyone before they are a year old while the US does. The US shows up very well for life expectancy, yes it costs a lot more to get there the outcomes of the US healthcare system are very good according to your own data (which as I said isn't good data, but it is data)
Honestly this has been extensively studied and the "the US gets shocking value for money and poor health outcomes" is the consensus. You can either take that as a personal insult, dig your heels in and say "the data is wrong" or "they're lying", blame immigrants or other things I've seen some Americans do when their "we're #1" belief is challenged ... or you can take notice and demand better from your country.
It is really of no consequence to me which you choose, I don't live there and it's looking likely I'll probably skip even visiting let alone consider moving there in future.
You changed your arrguement. You started with the us has terrible outtomes. When I refuted that you changed to value.
I am not desputing that we spend far too much for what we get. I am desputing the solution.
Relative to its peer nations it has terrible outcomes. If you think that I'm moving the goalposts and that you should instead be focussed on the fact that you are streets ahead of the developing world, rather than lagging behind your peers in the developed world then go right ahead. As I said, I'm just bringing you the facts - what you choose to do with them is on you.
To answer your first question which I just realized I hadn't: I don't think Trump as useful ideas on fixing healthcare of school.
Healthcare and schools are both important and hard problems. Most people with ideas have bad ideas IMHO.
Fair point. :/
My friend is watching his business get ready to die. His wife is still the CEO, and she's losing her shit. They're not alone. There's thousands and thousands of similar operations, all over the US, that will have to shut down, if something doesn't give.
I guess the mega-rich oligarchs think this is great, but they don't employ the majority of Americans.
> They're not alone. There's thousands and thousands of similar operations, all over the US, that will have to shut down, if something doesn't give.
I wonder where they were on election day, when they had a choice. The record of business owners voting D is .. not great.
D has not been a good choice for small business either.
The electoral Monty Hall problem offered people a choice of two boxes, and we can all see what's in the one they picked.
The majority of Americans simply are not going to benefit from this administration, it seems.
Some did understand it I think (maybe not Trump), but were tired of hearing it couldn't be done and decided to try. A large % of Americans are happy at least someone is trying, and at the very least perhaps some lessons will be learned, and the parties will recalibrate their policy platforms to actually accomplish reshoring.
That's the optimistic POV at least imo.
I work for a US startup manufacturing (as much as is feasible) in the US.
Because of the embarrassment that is meant to be our government, DoE hasn't paid for a contract completed in December (including physical goods), and DoD has silently stopped all of the R&D contracts we've been applying for.
We're about a week or three away from bankruptcy.
Our only foreign vendors are for PCBs and a particular type of motor. US PCB fabs are and have always been vastly more expensive and really don't do small scale runs at any sort of reasonable price. The motors? No one makes them domestically.
I'd gripe more, but this administration simply doesn't care about little guys like us. US small business are going to start dropping like flies soon.
America?
No.
The shareholder class underestimates it.
A lot of Americans realize that it's going to be hard, which is why we should have made an example out of the first guy to profit off of sending manufacturing off to the shores of a geopolitical rival.
Question: if the jobs were off shored, but the resulting profits were shared more equally, would Americans still complain?
Yes, definitely yes.
America suffers from a flattened income curve. There are many many more people earning $100k+ today than in 1960 (inflation adjusted). America has an envy problem first, equality problem second, spoiled child problem third.
I would not necessarily say that the envy is unjustified. If you live in a rich country you ideally want all citizens to become wealthy. Else, irrespective of income, you will be lorded over by those who are magnitudes richer than you.
I'm not talking about billionairs or the ultra wealthy. I am talking about the 60-90% top earners category.
You can cut out the top 10% of earners in the country and it still wouldn't do much to change the situation for those in the <60% earning percentiles.
To put it short; the reason you cannot afford a home isn't because of Bezos, Musk, and Blakrock. It's because the other bidders have STEM masters degrees and dual income high paying jobs, and probably a few hints of financial literacy thrown in too.
> To put it short; the reason you cannot afford a home isn't because of Bezos, Musk, and Blakrock.
When one person holds the wealth equivalent to the total yearly economic output of a mid-sized American metropolitan area, yes, it's going to introduce distortions, even if only because the people who actually do the labor under those people are being paid less in order to better fund the equities that make up the wealth of that person.
And that's before getting into the other problems with the housing supply.
>who actually do the labor under those people are being paid less
No, that's where you have it backwards they are being paid more. That's the exact reason why they are buying that house when you say "who the fuck can afford that".
Ironically, they are also the ones being exploited the most by the top 1%.
An amazon warehouse sorter will never create or do anything that makes amazon much more money than what they are paid. They get $18/hr for producing $21/hr of value, doing the same static task all day everyday. Amazons "profit margin" on these workers is almost nothing.
The lead cloud architect though gets paid $350k/yr, but can design a single change that will make amazon $30-40 million/yr. The profit margin on them is insane. And they are the ones outbidding everyday people on things, driving up costs.
Back 60 years ago, everyone was much more clumped around the same (lower) income, so the houses where smaller and the prices more amenable to more people.
I wouldn't expect "now that you've caught us we'll pay you to shut up" to go over well.
"Caught us" implies that the capitalists, the people who own the manufacturing plants, did something immoral, or illegal or under handed, but in the economic system that everyone championed in America, especially at that time, this was simply allowed. Seems like the fundamental anger is about the injustice of the economic system that leads to such consequences.
Americans also have more free time and disposable income because of that decision, among others. Why would you want them to struggle more?
The people in the areas where things used to be made certainly have more free time, but they don't have disposable income.
Unless we're just here to repeat canards from the 1990s given by financiers which explained why it was good to shut down the main employers for entire towns.
US unemployment rate floats along at about 4%, and is kept from going any lower to prevent inflation.
There are localized problems - and it's all very similar to the post-Thatcher UK - but you cannot be serious in imagining that employment would magically return to the exact spots it left. In fact that's one of the sub-problems OP talks about: so you want a US Shenzen. Where are you going to put it?
(UK equivalent: we're discussing keeping Scunthorpe blast furnaces open, so that we can have a "secure" supply of "domestic" steel .. made entirely from imported ingredients. Because the mines the plant was built to refine are empty)
It's odd how little factories moving from union areas to red states gets mentioned in this context.
Areas gutted, jobs lost and some lesser number of jobs with less benefits and pay created elsewhere.
So many political ideas seem to only be allowed to be discussed if you can add a garnish of racism or xenophobia to them.
You don't hear people complaining about that because the states that are the net losers of those jobs are full of people who think factories are dirty and unsightly and pay garbage wages, etc, etc, hence why they're fine with their politicians implementing the policies that are driving them out in the first place. Sure, the blue collar people know what's up but they're outnumbered by the white collar economy handily enough that it never becomes a leading political gripe you hear about from these states.
Whereas when states that aren't behaving that way lose jobs, factories and industries to Mexico or China they're all "hey WTF" over it because they actually cared and didn't want that economic activity driven off.
Boeing started a plant in SC: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jun/10/boeing-open...
Then later moved all 787 production there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24544139 https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/09/09/44441906/the-dea...
While the main articles seemed to have a good riddance tone, the HN comment section seemed to be more restricted in that view.
>It's hard to believe that the current Boeing leadership will turn things around with even less focus on quality and talented workers. Feels like they should be moving back towards engineering driven approaches.
Still, this kind of outsourcing of manufacturing (or even more food production) puts the US in an incredibly uncomfortable position, especially that China is its main geopolitical enemy.
What if a war erupts? Suddenly the US cannot produce a lot of essential stuff - I think Covid was a good example of that happening.
Of course the question is can this be done and what will be the price if so.
What if a war erupts?
I believe we should scale up manufacturing in the US for different reasons.
But I'm also a realist. If war erupts between China and the US, then anyone in the US or China still alive 4 weeks after the start of hostilities will have more pressing concerns than worrying about where things are manufactured. Again, just the reality.
We shouldn't plan on the basis of end of the world scenarios. Rather we should plan on the assumption that we want to confer maximum benefit on the US in likely non-apocalyptic future timelines.
The author is not anti-US-manufacturing. He explained how the current tariff policy undermines US manufacturers. He is pointing out the obstacles and what we must do to overcome them. The obstacle is the way.
I wouldn't say he is anti-manufacturing but more that he takes a defeatist view.
Two of his points: "Industrial supply chain is weak" and "We don't know how to make it" are exactly the same. >all the factories which make the needed components are in Asia, >because they know how to make the best semiconductors in the world.
But this is looking at the problem and then missing the point: If I decide to start mfg. IPhone in the US, I can't because there are no suppliers.
As long as nothing changes, there will continue to be no suppliers.
If I HAVE to mfg the IPhone in the US, at first I will import due to no supplier but someone will make a local supplier because they can undercut my importer.
Subsidize the essentials let the free market sort the rest. I think we still want competitive markets within our borders for the stuff we subsidize so we don't get stagnation of the industry. Maybe there are clues how it could be structured like we subsidize farming.
Last time I looked the US was a net exporter of agricultural products to China. Well, until the retaliatory tariffs hit.
Food, airplanes, tech IP (eg software, phone designs) are the main exports of the USA to China.
it's like they believe building is as quick as destroying. almost like they think delete can be ctrl+z'ed back into undeleted very quickly
a generation of kids that never lost all their work because they didn't hit ctrl+s at the correct moment is now trying to run things
Weird take, since most of the people still in charge are old boomers who've barely even learned to use a computer.
Some very old kids, yeah. With a almost baby-like understanding of the world.
I think the main point stands, though, which is that you can't undo to the previous state. E.g., rolling back all tariffs/deportations/firings/budget cuts would not undo the damage done.
The state of the art is literally a half century beyond where american manufacturing was when it died. Anecdotally according to older family members who had those old manufacturing jobs, they were working at companies doing stuff like bending a steel rod at the end and then shipping it off to a sub contractor. This was not glamorous work. Most of them got into it because you don’t need to speak english to bend a pipe in a factory. And they did everything in their power to ensure the next generation would not have to work those sorts of jobs.
I think most people have a very confused understanding of money(currency) and value. Workers produce value, not money. Workers get a cut of that value, which is converted to money. To get by comfortably in the US, a first world developed economy, you need to be producing a lot of value. Everything is made to accommodate high value workers.
Producing t-shirts, window fans, or toilet brushes is not high value work. The slice of value available to convert to currency for the worker is very tiny. So you end up having to play games with the economy which inevitably will blow up in someone's face. $60 t-shirts so we can pretend that the value in a t-shirt is much more than it is, so we artificially make t-shirt manufacturing competitive with, say, automobile manufacturing.
I somewhat agree with your point, but it’s also important to include the other side of that pricing.
If it actually costs $60 (really more like $25 for made-in-America t-shirts I’ve bought) to make a t-shirt, with environmental regulations and human costs accounted for, then isn’t that the actual cost of a t-shirt? And they were artificially cheap at $10 for imported ones due to ignoring externalities? In that case, producing these simple products is actually a bit more valuable than you suggest.
> isn’t that the actual cost of a t-shirt? And they were artificially cheap at $10
Maybe a part of the $15 difference is in marketing.
You are missing something: quantity. A toilet brush itself is low value, but the US needs 30 million per year (this is a guess, but it seems reasonable enough - every person buys one every 10 years, which seems right based on how long they last. I am likely off, but probably not by an order of magnitude so let us use that number for discussion unless/until someone really wants to find a better number). If you can make/sell a million brushes per year with a gross profit of $1 on each that is a million dollars, if labor and the machines are amortize to $.50 each you net profit is then $500k/year - many small company CEOs would be happy with that.
You can run the numbers many different ways, but the important point is low value production is always about volume.
I disagree with this. Everybody wears clothes. Everybody eats food.
You can't put a monetary value on a t-shirt, because people will buy them anyways. Who is to say that t-shirts aren't $60? People only think that t-shirts are "low value" because we have offshored the labor and are used to very low prices. Meanwhile I bet most Americans can't even sew.
now do marx's labor theory of value
America does not have to bring manufacturing back. It has to devote resources to robotics and AI to replace workers to make products for itself and it's people.
The transition period is currently already underway due to the tariffs. An unintented consequences is that the big players in commerce(Nike, All Big brand names...) no longer have a monopoly due to China relaxing the regulation on it's factories to disclose for which brands they manufacture products.
Now that the everyday person knows that they can also buy products from the same factories at a fraction of what they used to pay. They will do that. So the middleman will slowly fade out unless they can compete with... Robotics and AI.
The other consequences of the shift in this consumption dynamic is that it behaves in a downward fashion on inflation. People's incomes did not increase but they can now purchase more with their incomes. Jackets that used to be advertised as 200/300/400 dollars now can be bought for $20/$30 directly from the middlemen in China and get shipped to the US since they are under the $800 dollar limit.
This is actually a win win for all US residents. Enjoy it while it lasts.
I am by no means an export on manufacturing, nor international trade, economics, or virtually anything relevant to manufacturing. Just a layman here.
Observationally I fear there is a lack of nuance in discussing "bringing back manufacturing" (really re-expanding) to the U.S.
I fear the lack of nuance is due to bias based on not liking the guy in the red tie or the other guy that's in a blue tie so there's just blinders about whether or not a particular policy will achieve a particular stated goal.
The next thing I see is it just lumping manufacturing all into one bucket.
Take manufacturing smartphones. Because the U.S. doesn't assemble iPhones the U.S. appears to be bad at manufacturing? No, I think it's just not good at assembling iPhones.
Just looking at numbers, sure the U.S. steel production is dwarfed by China but globally it's still a major producer. And there's no discussion of quality.
Look at oil & gas. I'm pretty sure the U.S. both produces the raw material and refined product at a significant amount globally.
Plastic manufacturing. I toured a bottle manufacturing plant last summer. It's primary a customer was Limited Brands (Victoria Secret)
It built molds. It upgraded factory equipment roughly every 8 years (increasing production & reducing labor costs). Why was it able to manufacturer bottles in the U.S. even it's selling at a higher price? Because it's primary customer was essentially down the street. That is, apparently the cost to not import across the globe more than offset the cost to manufacture here.
I understand that's just an example and I'm trusting the information from that company was reliable.
But first I think we need to be honest about how much manufacturing is here and what type. Then discuss which policies are likely to achieve goals we may have in mind.
I think there's merit to manufacturing semiconductors and batteries here. But we need to also be aware that while manufacturing may bring jobs, an increasing amount of labor will be automated.
Yes, there's little nuance. I see so many people saying it will be hard to bring back manufacturing jobs, or "we can't go back to the 50s," and then they just stop as if that settles the argument. The implication, which they never say out loud, is that we shouldn't even try, just accept things as they are. Just be the Big Consumer until someday the rest of the world doesn't want our dollars anymore, and then what?
Seems much better to look seriously at the manufacturing we still have (as you say, it's considerable), where we can expand on that, and where we're lacking and need to rebuild.
We also need to look at what manufacturing we want. That is why the military needs keep coming up - in case of war we are unlikely to be able to get things from China so we better have a different source (though the source need not be in the US - Canada should be just as good so long as we can keep Canada our friends - same with the EU).
Once the military needs are met, I don't care what we make, just that we need good jobs for people who are not able to handle more complex jobs.
> just that we need good jobs for people who are not able to handle more complex jobs
If manufacturing becomes more efficient at using labor from automation that seems like that would lower the number of available jobs wouldn't it?
Unless consumption grows with the increase in output so that more factories are needed to meet the demand?
If you need 1000 cars and automation takes it down to 10 people from 100 people before, where are those 90 other people to get jobs?
Unless you grow the need for cars to 10000.
Simplification I know, but I am confused at how manufacturing is supposed to endlessly support a large "less-complex task" labor supply while simultaneously providing a good standard of living?
for starters we need to make lots of different things.
we also need education reform so that those people get the education needed to do more complex tasks insteade of droping out. What this looks like I don't really know.
>There are over a billion people in China making stuff.
There surely can't over a billion factory workers in a population of 1.4 billion. I looked up a population pyramid, and let's say 100% of the population aged 15-64 is employed at a factory job, that's ~70% of the population which is only 985 million people.
The litigiousness point should have been at the top of the list. You can build roadways, but if you constantly have stories in the news of people striking it rich by suing someone, and half the billboards you see in your town is of people telling you they'll help you do it, then it's going to be extremely expensive to employ folks.
It'll be easier to teach folks hard work, it's very difficult to change a culture when 1. A huge sector of our legal system geared towards it 2. People can easily get rich off of it.
Isn't manufacturing mostly a red herring? Sure some select people who are currently in Washington might care about it from a geopolitical angle, but the electorate is not lamenting the lack of manufacturing jobs, but rather their decreased share of the proceeds of the no.1 national economy in the world. Even if you bring all manufacturing back, I doubt those same people will be happy working in those factories.
Exactly, especially in the conditions workers in other countries tolerate. It's the wrong solution to income inequity.
No kidding!
Beyond the obvious skilled labor there’s supply chain network, maintenance, townships and supporting system around them.
And all of this needs human labor which is taken from somewhere else. How do you incentivize them? Just throwing money at the problem won’t solve it either. Because more often than not it’ll attract charlatans who will promise the sky, take the money and move away.
And do not forget NIMBY :)
Where I live it is close to impossible to even get a Dog House approved and built.
Exactly!
The regulatory apparatus has to be rewired.
And then what happens when a new administration comes along 4-8 years down the line and decides to abandon some of those initiatives?
> The regulatory apparatus has to be rewired.
That has its own issues.
Not sure if it's still the case, but the Yangtze River used to be one of the most polluted water bodies on earth.
We can go too far into deregulation, but we are currently too far in regulation. Push for the correct middle ground.
I'm not sure exactly what the correct middle ground looks like. I do know that there are signs of a good system.
There can be no bribes in the system. All permits must have a clearly defined fee that is small and clearly covers the inspectors salary and no more. The vast majority of cases when you want to build it should be 30 minutes from applying for the permit to it being granted. The rules are clearly written up and so it isn't hard to look up the law and write up a permit that cannot be refused.
There are only rarely hearings. You have the right to do what you want on your property. If your neighbor doesn't like it for the most part they should have bought your property so you couldn't. You don't however have the right to let pollution escape your property - pollution isn't just things like chemicals, but also noise. In rural areas, or around airports we also give you rights to sun, wind, and airspace - in cities though you don't get to demand your garden isn't shaded. You don't get to tell someone what color to paint to use. You don't get to force any amount of parking (either minimum of maximum). You can't enforce building space (square foot, height). You don't get to tell someone not to run a business. You do get to require fire code such that any fire will not spread to your building, and if you want fire protection (which if you don't have you need to ensure smoke from an accidental fire won't affect the neighbors) the fire department can demand some additional features.
There is probably a lot more, and the above isn't quite correct either, but it at least gives a place to state the debate from.
St. Paul drinking water has suffered under 3m mismanagement.
Americans have a very 1980s idea of manufacturing (and China in general) in that there aren't actually that many humans being used in Chinese factories let alone the American ones some of them want to build here. There's even a concept of, "Dark Factories" in China which are 100% automated factories that operate in the dark. The only jobs that will come from bringing manufacturing back to the states will be in automation, robotics, AI, and roles to support those things.
Given the all the minimum wage staffing at most distribution centers these days despite all this off the shelf robotics technology seemingly available on order and already proven, makes me thing the american worker is cheaper than we might suspect compared to building out these dark amazon warehouses.
A business I work with has a factory in China that produces their devices. They absolutely do most of the assembly manually, as many of their sister factories do.
Robotics automation is a tradeoff to gain efficiency at the expense of flexibility, with a large upfront cost.
Well, even a better argument to bring those factories to the US. Why not develop the know-how on manufacturing and improve automation in the US rather have China lead there.
Because automation is expensive. It pays off in volume. A skilled human can often build a single widget faster than an engineer can write the automation for the robots (because a skilled human will see parts that don't fit and "file to fit" while the robot demands more effort to double check all that). When you only need 10, the program is faster to write, but you still need to pay for the robots and they are expensive (often $million each, while the human is only a few thousand for his time)
Of course there are a lot variables in the above. As time goes one automation gets better. You can buy cheap robots for some common operations, and a good engineer with good CAD can run various automated analysis to ensure fit and then export to the robot and build even a single part cheaper than the human - amortizing the cost of the robot over thousands of different single parts made this way. However as the widget gets more complex you reach the point where humans are needed. In some cases you just have humans to take the parts off of one machine and put them into the next, but it is still humans. We can automate even that, but often the robot to do that would cost more than a human for 10 years.
>The only jobs that will come from bringing manufacturing back to the states will be in automation, robotics, AI, and roles to support those things.
You're saying it like it's a bad thing.
Wouldn't it be better we have automation in the west, instead of sweat shops in the east?
> It’s years of accumulated skill, but it’s also a culture that is oriented around hard work and education that the United States no longer has.
Sounds more like China has an exploited educated class/lack of oppurtunity than America has bad education.
Plenty of American workers can multiply in their heads and diligently perform there work. These people work in white collar jobs though, not in factories snapping together phone cases for 12 hours a day.
The author isn't totally wrong here, Americas bottom tier labor pool sucks, but they miss the bigger picture when comparing Chinese and American workers. China has skilled workers doing unskilled work. That's why they are so good. That's also why bringing manufacturing to the US will be so hard. Ain't nobody wanna get a degree so they can work a hot factory floor all day.
Westerners have had too good of a life and you cannot compete with an asian who is told every day if he doesn't perform he will be homeless. You just cannot compete.
> Westerners have had too good of a life
You're not going to sell the electorate on ".. and so we're going to make your life worse to compete with China", though.
Just talking about the reality we face
Combined with his point 8 about work conditions, the exploitation seems willful.
Factories can be air conditioned.
America doesn't underestimate it, its president does.
For better or worse the man is exposing the mindboggling scale of deindustrialization that was hidden underneath America's transition to a "knowledge economy". Decades of failed economic policy has led America to this point.
Unfortunately, that ship sailed a long time ago. Why is no one in the administration paying any attention to the outsourcing of high skill knowledge work to India and elsewhere? Obviously I have a bias working in technology, but it seems to me to be a much more CURRENT issue and one that can actually be addressed in the present.
That job retraining is going to happen ANY DAY NOW I tell you, and then those textile workers are going to be so glad that they can be call center workers.
I saw a chart passing around from this Cato Institute survey (Cato is a right wing think tank) [0]. It made me laugh.
> America would be better off if more Americans works in manufacturing than they do today. Agree 80%/Disagree 20%
> I would be better off if I worked in a factory instead of my current field of work. Agree 25%/Disagree 73%
[0] https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2024-08/Globalizat...
Those two are not in conflict. The claim is 20-25% of the population would be better off if they moved to a manufacturing job. The other 75-80% are better off where they are, but making the bottom better makes everyone better.
They're going to end up with some sort of corvee forced labour scheme enforced by ICE, the logical conclusion of "other people should go work in the factories".
We already have that, it's called prison labor. The current regime will certainly ramp that up and throw even more people into forced labor camps.[1]
BTW we don't talk enough about the gigantic loophole in the thirteenth amendment: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. [emphasis added]
1 https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/flyover-country
That is not a loophole. Also prison labor tends to be "unskilled", so useless and even counterproductive in manufacturing roles the US would need if they were to compete with China.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/unskilled-labor.asp
"Unskilled" is what I meant. People with zero economic value who only can do tasks where machines are already superior to them. That definitely is the case for much of the prison population. It is better that they are kept far away from manufacturing because they are unskilled.
> It is better that they are kept far away from manufacturing
I've got bad news for you, then. https://www.vox.com/2018/8/24/17768438/national-prison-strik...
I prefer the alternative explain: this is just trump bringing in a national sales tax without having to go through the senate or eat the unpopularity.
There seems to be no actual plan to actually bring back manufacturing (this would require different tariffs, loans, tax accounting rules, etc). And there seems to be no targeting of china (everywhere is being tariffed, allies and enemies, strategic suppliers and places with no trade with the USA etc)
I don't think anyone underestimates that, as much as some people with the author's viewpoints would like it to be true.
To paraphrase Kennedy: "We choose to [bring back manufacturing]. We choose to [bring back manufacturing] in this [or the next] decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."
We will do it, and we will win, whatever that means.
> To paraphrase Kennedy
What in the modern situation suggests the comparable level of diligence in approach to the goal? The fact that both goals are far-reaching does not suggest comparability of approaches to the solution.
Changing the way society/economy operates is nowhere near "building X," whatever X is, whether it's something hard like a bomb or a collider.
> We will do it, and we will win, whatever that means.
How do you know that you haven't won already? Shouldn't the end goal be clear? In the case of Kennedy you're referring to, criteria and motivation were clear.
--
To a non-US bystander, your comment sounds like a no-thinking patriotic slogan. The details of the article are such that you can take any argument and bring it into discussion in order to show its irrelevance. But we're discussing slogans irrelevant to the situation and belief in the win, even though the win is not defined.
How many additional hours are Americans going to work? What pay cuts will they take? How many years later du they want to retire?
These are the questions people need to ask themselves. We both know what the answer is.
Americans need to take pay cuts so we can bring back high-paying manufacturing jobs!
/sarcasm, or summary of other discourse in this thread?
High paying manufacturing jobs seems entirely delusional. If you want to compete with China your workers must be as efficient as Chinese workers, so US manufacturing workers can't be better paid and doing less hours. That can not possibly work.
Putting aside the rah-rah patriotism, you perhaps don't understand the problem any better than Trump does. The moon mission to which you allude was difficult but, critically, that difficulty was not felt by most Americans: it was a challenge for NASA engineers. Trump's current economic plan will increase inflation, cripple America's role in world trade, and result in negligible increase in manufacturing in the short term. Wildly unpopular policies do not last in a democracy.
Did you read the article? The author is advocating for manufacturing in the US, but is pointing out the ways these policies undermine that very goal.
It's easy to bring manufacturing back, just give it a decade or two, but impossible to make it internationally competitive without large-scale market regulation such as tariffs or handing out government subsidies.
This view is too trivial. You could also stimulate manufacturing by promising tariffs increasing over the next X years, while not taxing the imported building materials and machines for longer. Or you could use tariffs to both break trade and make the environment too expensive and uncertain to invest in large construction - and delay the process by a few extra years.
I don't see how this is a reply to my point. Building up manufacturing takes a decade or longer (putting the problem aside that there aren't going to be enough workers). Tariffs are heavy market regulation. Even if manufacturing was brought back successfully, the production costs would be too high without such heavy market regulation.
You seem to assume that once manufacturing has been brought back it would somehow be internationally competitive. I don't see how that's possible.
Maybe I didn't get your point.
My problem with large-scale market regulation is that it also increases the price of inputs for companies who would otherwise be interested in building a factory in the US. Do you have a solution for that?
Inputs are cheaper (and thus have lower tariffs in an absolute sense) than outputs. I think the author underestimates the ability of the market to adapt to incentives.
They're still correct though that there are plenty of good reasons why we don't do manufacturing in the US right now, and tariffs do absolutely nothing to change that reality, they just artificially make the alternative worse at significant expense to consumers.
I feel misunderstood. I'm definitely not advocating for tariffs. The point is that even if this strategy worked for bringing manufacturing back (it won't in general and widespread because of labor shortage), it would result in products that are not going to be internationally competitive.
Why would you incentivize foreign companies to do that, when you want American companies to build factories in US?
To build assembly lines, one has to first make custom tools, jigs, and parts and apply processes to them that cannot just be 3D printed in plastic or metal or FDM'ed.
The main show-stopper to them is the lack of working knowledge about precision tooling manufacturing.
For example, some of the best power machine tools in the world came from Germany and from Bridgeport, CT between 1910 and 1965. There are/were moderately large, 1 micron runout milling machines such as Moore No. 2 and No. 3. These things generally aren't made anymore and not many people know the tricks and processes to make similar or equivalent machines that make other tools and machines. Like that the unshielded body heat of an operator can swing the runout of a precision machine in an otherwise climate-controlled environment.
Could anyone clarify what the author means regarding duty drawback? He writes:
"There is no duty drawback for exporting. In the past, even in the United States, if you imported something and then exported it, the tariff you paid on the import would be refunded to you. They got rid of that..."
My understanding was that duty drawback—where import duties are refunded if the imported items or their components are later exported—is still broadly available in the U.S., though with certain exceptions (like steel/aluminum tariffs under Section 232 or trade within USMCA countries).
Is he referring specifically to recent tariff changes or targeted exceptions rather than a general elimination? Or has there been a broader policy shift I'm missing?
Setting geopolitics aside, Russia was able to revive and ramp up domestic manufacturing after the sanctions. So this should be possible in the US.
I think it's a little early to hail Russia's war economy as a success story worth emulating.
> And if we want to apply tariffs, do it slowly. Instead of saying that products will be tariffed at 100% tomorrow, say they’ll be 25% next year, 50% after that, 75% after that, and 100% in year four. And then make it a law instead of a presidential decree
This is the big difference between a tariff regime that is credible in such a way that the business community can plan investment around it, and the current one that has mostly just caused chaos and confusion.
Building up manufacturing has always been a period of pain for the population. There is so much to learn and so much hard work to do with, at least initially, so little gain.
Competition is extremely high initially, products will be ridiculed for being expensive and low quality. Companies will fail and go bankrupt, workers will suffer from that.
"Bringing manufacturing back" is a path of pain, not a way to fast economic success. There is no way to change that, tariffs will certainly not change it. Are Americans ready to leave their office job and work overtime in factories and engineering departments? No, automation will not do this for you, you are competing with a country which knows far more about automation than you do. To compete with them you need to be better and cheaper.
Lastly look how Germany struggles, right now. Their industry is in large parts starting to loose any competitive edge and will continue to do, unless very significant cuts are made somewhere. You can not keep the same living standards while someone is doing twice your work for half your costs.
>We don’t have the infrastructure to manufacture
It is really that hard. Look what happened in Arizona. TSCM brought the most complex semiconductor chip making supply chains to the US on a vacant piece of land in NW Phoenix in about 4 years. And it wasn't just TSMC that invested in the Arizona site, but also companies like Linde ($600M), APS ($100M), Sunlit Chemical ($100M), Air Liquide ($60M), and Chang Chun ($300M).
Maybe others can comment, but are semiconductor chips the most complex thing to manufacture in the world? Not sure but the Arizona TSMC supply chain proves it can be done.
Like OP, I work in manufacturing (after 15 years in startup land). I'm not as experienced as him, but I work in manufacturing that makes similar products on both sides of the US/Mexico border.
Let me add some thoughts:
1) Capacity, not cost, is the main driver for nearshoring. All things being equal, a manufacturer would rather produce a product in the US than overseas. The cost of modern products is mostly parts & material, not labor. When you add logistcs expenses, the theoretical cost advantage of overseas vs local is not that great. Remember:the people on the other side of the border are capitalists too! They want to keep most of the surplus of nearshoring to themselves! The problem is that there simply is no capacity, both in facilities and especially in people.
2) What matters even more than capacity is the first derivative of capacity. In other words: how quickly can I spin up a new factory if I win a big deal? How quickly can I spin one down if the client goes away? How long will it take me to get a permit to connect my new factory to the highway? In the US, these costs and timelines are massive. Real estate, permitting, hiring. There is an order of magnitude difference here, in cost and time.
3) The labor problems are real. I don't want to disparage the american workers I work with, because they are amazing. Truly fantastic craftsmen. But they are hard to find. You'd be surprised how many people show up who can't read or can't read a tape measure. How hard it is to find people that want to work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. By contrast, in our overseas facility we have qualified workers literally showing up at our gate every day asking for work.
In other words, the root cause problems with american manufacturing are—-surprise surprise!--the same problems as with other parts of the US that are in decay:
- Disfunctional local government, especially around permitting, construction, housing and transit
- Disfunctional education & healthcare systems.
- A lack of strategic investment in infrastructure (rail, highways)
- A social safety net that is totally out of whack, with a high cost burden for employers & employees, with little to no immediate quality-of-life benefits for the working population
Tariffs solve exactly zero of those probems!
The cost of manufacturing your stuff is not labor dependent only because you are probably putting together low cost components made with cheap labor. What if you had to make the spring or the resistor or the little painted metal box? Could you do that without labor being the big cost?
I actually make pretty high cost products with relatively expensive labor (welders, electricians).
Even then, materials & parts dominate.
What? How much labor do you think goes into making a spring or a resistor? These are parts which cost fractions of a cent and are cranked out by the tens of millions.
It's difficult but necessary to bring manufacturing back due to defense logistical reasons.
We build about 100 SM-6 missiles a year. How long does this last against a peer? 12 hours?
I don't know if tariffs are the best way to do this but some manufacturing must come back one way or another.
Tariffs work against the goal.
The only sane way to bring back manufacturing is investments like the chips act.
Think about it this way, you are a widget manufacturer trying to place a new factory. You could put it in say Canada and enjoy cheap imports and exports of your product globally. It's cheap to produce and easy to sell.
Or you could place it in the US, but now you are looking at a minimum 10% tax on importing the resources you need. On top of that, a significant portion of the world (especially the richest nations) are tacking on an addition 10% or more tax on your product because it came from the US.
Would you build a factory in the US? Maybe if you can source everything in the US and you are fine with your primary market being only the US. Otherwise, it's a bad business move.
When talking about something like semiconductors, global access is really important to be profitable. Low or no tariffs and the proximity to China and other raw resources powerhouses is a major reason why so much of the semiconductor industry is in Asia.
These are all good points, but I’ll add a different take here.
The points are correct but rather than bring “all manufacturing back”, the goal should be to aim for an 80:20 or 70:30. And it will still take decades, but at least with a far better chance of success.
For companies that rely on a global supply chain, manufacturing and even raw materials should aim for mostly global but a guaranteed 20 to 30% local.
It’s one way to offset a real market problem, where unchecked market forces drives all production offshore or “nearshore; leaving the nation vulnerable to supply chain disruptions.
For essentials like grains, I’d even argue that the nation should opt for an 70:30. It’d be insane for us to offshore the majority of production.
Pol Pot wanted his people to go back to agriculture society. Mao wanted his people to build steel smelters in their backyards…
We offshored manufacturing for profit. We are now offshoring brainpower. Manufacturing will only come back in the form of intelligent robots .
It really is starting to bother me when people attribute a deceptive narrative crafted by one individual to "American thinking" as if there was even a lone individual in this country who was earnestly believing a global trade war would solve a non existent trade problem before the narrative became convenient to our dictator
Basically [Inside Business China](https://www.youtube.com/@Inside_China_Business) in a blog post.
> It may seem trivial to make that glass that separates your finger from the electronic engineering that powers your ability to access the internet, but it’s difficult.
Out of all examples one could pick, this is the worst, as Corning Gorilla glass is actually made in the USA (Kentucky), and used by all other manufacturers.
There are plenty of people saying these tariffs will not work.
But a person used to be able to graduate high school and get a job that could support a house with a yard, a car, a non-working spouse and children.
How we get that level of prosperity back? That's the people really want. Tariffs are simply a means to that end.
I wish people would stop writing articles about 100% criticizing tariffs and instead write articles 50% about criticizing tariffs and 50% brainstorming alternative solutions to achieve the same objective.
> There are plenty of people saying these tariffs will not work.
Work to do what?
> But a person used to be able to graduate high school and get a job that could support a house with a yard, a car, a non-working spouse and children.
Why do you think this has anything to do with tariffs or manufacturing?
> How do we get that level of prosperity back?
Better pay for the jobs people actually work. Reducing inequality by preventing the richest 0.1% from capturing all the massive gains in wealth the US has seen over the past few decades. Removing regulations that prevent the country from building housing and therefore driving up housing costs. Switching to a healthcare model in nearly any of the comparable developed countries almost all of which deliver better healthcare at half the cost. Not expecting everyone to be able to live a completely unsustainable suburban life. Having the government support children's upbringing by paying for high quality education, instituting rules and regulations that require mandatory paid maternity/paternity leave, etc.
Lost of poorer countries manage to do this and more just fine. The US is far richer than most of those countries.
Very little of this has to do with manufacturing jobs falling from 18mm to 13mm.
> Work to do what?
Bring back manufacturing, and make the US economy work better for workers.
> Why do you think this has anything to do with tariffs or manufacturing?
Because usually the best-paying jobs were in factories, especially if you didn't have a college degree. A lot of towns in the Rust Belt were economically dependent on a local factory -- think cars or steelmaking. Often, part of the reason these factories were so high paying is because the jobs were unionized.
Companies moved overseas to save money on that expensive labor.
Now, companies have all the negotiation leverage. "If you unionize / demand higher pay, we'll move operations overseas" is a real and credible threat, as countless companies have already done it.
Tariffs are supposed to make operating overseas more expensive. Undo the economic justification for moving the jobs overseas and they will come back.
This takes away the companies' negotiation leverage. The "If you unionize / demand higher pay, we'll move operations overseas" threat isn't credible if everyone knows overseas manufacturing is super expensive due to tariffs.
I grew up in the Rust Belt and I'm old enough to properly remember when some of those factories were still operating. I saw with my own eyes what used to be a respectable blue-collar community decay into an economic wasteland. The drugs are getting bad. A lot of people have lost hope. Young ambitious folks see no reason to stay here.
The problem and its underlying factors are so obvious to me that I'm constantly amazed to see well-informed, intelligent people who don't seem to understand it.
> The problem and its underlying factors are so obvious to me that I'm constantly amazed to see well-informed, intelligent people who don't seem to understand it.
Do you understand that labor is priced into the cost of the product? Who is going to buy all of these American products made by highly paid unionized workers?
I understand the Rust Belt situation sucks, but people can’t afford to buy everyday consumer goods made with American labor. I’m wearing an American made pair of shoes right now that is 20-30x more expensive than a pair of shoes from Walmart, and even ‘less expensive’ US made shoes like Red Wing are 10-15x as expensive. Now imagine paying 10-30x more for everything, it’s not sustainable.
Hey, guess what would help the average American with being able to afford something that is expensive?
A job that pays a living wage!
I am reminded of when the great offshoring started and everyone was looking down on poorer folks for shopping at Walmart because it was filled with cheap junk and they should know better than to buy that stuff(when in reality it's all they could afford since their good job was gone...).
It's all relative, though. If those same things were inexpensive, one could earn a lower wage and still afford them.
>Bring back manufacturing, and make the US economy work better for workers.
Seemingly, this is going to magically happen? Where are the programs to make sure this does happen? Erecting tariffs is one thing, but having an actual plan and executing on said plan is another. So far, all I see is rising prices and looming threats of job cuts due to slow downs which stem from increased costs, and there is nothing coming to buffer that.
Let alone, the investment capital isn't moving in this direction. As of this writing, the general posture of the Republican donor class is 'wait and see how long the tariffs last' not 'lets invest in American industry again'
>Because usually the best-paying jobs were in factories, especially if you didn't have a college degree. A lot of towns in the Rust Belt were economically dependent on a local factory -- think cars or steelmaking. Often, part of the reason these factories were so high paying is because the jobs were unionized.
Emphasis mine. Do you believe that the modern Republican party is pro union? Do you really think they won't undermine organized labor even if jobs come back in some form? Even though the modern Democratic party have a spotty history on labor issues, the Republicans have shown for 40 years to be the anti labor party. They rarely - if ever - pass legislation that is pro labor. This administration isn't proving to be different in that regard either, and it wasn't different the first time around.
>I grew up in the Rust Belt and I'm old enough to properly remember when some of those factories were still operating. I saw with my own eyes what used to be a respectable blue-collar community decay into an economic wasteland.
So did I. Hallowed home town and all. One of the poorest in the state I grew up. You know what else never happened? Sustained public policy to help these areas. There were largely no programs to help transition workers from one industry to another. We don't have comprehensive safety nets and retraining / re-education programs for workers. We lack all of that. Why aren't we starting by implementing those programs? Its rather wishful thinking that bringing manufacturing back to the US, that it will end up in these same areas to begin with, because manufacturing is very different than it used to be. I doubt most of these areas would be good places to re-build manufacturing capacity in the US. What manufacturing is done here is already concentrated in the South which precludes huge chunks of the traditional rust belt.
We don't. We need only take a look at Detroit, holdout of American manufacturing. They have been automating and robotizing everything they can. ["... However, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis notes that motor vehicle manufacturing employment declined 17% from 1994 to 2018, while motor vehicle productivity increased by about 13% over the same period..."] If manufacturing does come back to the US, it won't create very many jobs. Mostly just the people to maintain and fix the machinery.
Given the improvements in cameras and computer vision and AI and robotics, there is no reason to think this won't accelerate. A long long time ago, labor was cheap and resources were expensive. Today, the opposite is true. Keynes predicted in the 50s that we would be working 15 hour work weeks. The reason he was "wrong" was that he underestimated our insatiable human greed. We all want more. Average house size in the 50s was < 1200 sq ft. Today it is 2400+. Each kid must have their own room that is 12x12!! (I grew up with 4 boys in a 10x10, lol). Each kid must get a new $200 bat each year for little league, etc. We want a higher standard of living for ourselves and our kids. This is understandable but we forget our role in the never ending chase.
> How we get that level of prosperity back?
It’s so simple it hurts. Stop the ruling class hoarding all the wealth.
Top tax bracket used to be 94%.
Have a VERY steep wealth tax, an inheritance tax and whatever else is needed. The fact individuals exist with many hundreds of millions of dollars while so many in the same society are struggling so bad is a disgrace.
oh that can be done in 3 easy steps.
1. win a world war that destroys the economy of every other country in the world for a decade.
2. destroy about the past 50 years of technology and all knowledge of how manufacture it.
3. Kill 90% of people over retirement age to lower demand for housing, healthcare costs, and retirement benefits.
In the modern world with modern technology there's a lot less productive work out there for people without specialized education. We could do a better job of training more people for trades jobs (e.g. plumbers, electricians etc), and removing college requirements from some professions (e.g. med school and law school could probably be college level education rather than post college) but anyone saying that we're going back is just lying.
> But a person used to be able to graduate high school and get a job that could support a house with a yard, a car, a non-working spouse and children.
> How do we get that level of prosperity back?
The issue is that this is a false premise. The house sucked. Only 1/3rd of American families had a single car at the time, and the cars sucked. We can go on and on about everything else. Not to mention the social environment at the time sucked.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to do something about the issues Americans face. But tariffs with a shifting set of sanewashed justifications are just Not It.
Why will a factory job will pay enough for one person to raise a family and buy a house on a single income?
Like what is unique about factory work that allows for this? I’ve heard stuff like this so much and I just do not believe it. Is anyone working in a factory in the USA today able to buy a home and have a stay at home spouse on a single income?
When I was studying economics, my macro professor used to belabor the point that post-WW2 US socioeconomics was a highly unique (and special) time-and-place; and, it is a mistake to generalize economic theory from that time-and-place.
So... here goes: rather than proclaiming a "housing crisis", maybe we're seeing the end of an exceptional period of "housing affordability". (A similar analysis of Europe and Asia applies, piecemeal.)
As such, if we want to re-enter into a new period of housing affordability, we need to ask ourselves what we plan to give up and/or trade for that?
For WW2, it was millions of lives and worldwide devastation. It seems like we'd need a complete re-evaluation of the way wealth, family structures, and social safety nets work in order to vastly expand housing. (In the US.)
Maybe if we stopped viewing housing as an investment vehicle, with the expectation that house prices are going to rise forever then you would see affordable housing.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-much-will-home-equity-level...
The last time that I know of housing losing values was 2008 before that, it was 1991
This is my gut reaction; but, then I've been looking at Barcelona — which has analogs in New Jersey and Chicago. In these three cities there used to be significant housing stock that could be affordably purchased by low income families. (These are row-houses and 2x3s, etc.) In Barcelona, for instance, a unit could be purchased by a single family earner in about 5–8 years. What happened, over time, was that a neighbor would move out, and so a tenant would buy the neighboring unit to "expand" (remember: the units are cheap). Over a period of 25–30 years a relatively modest income could be used to gradually buy up an entire unit. Then, at the end of that period the whole unit would be sold as a single family dwelling. The problem is that what was once 6 modest (affordable) units, is now a single fantastically expensive unit. The economic model that covers this is a deflationary zero-sum market. (Pretty much all real estate is going to fall into this trap without very careful consideration.)
I think this problem is much, much, much harder than most people think. Almost every single society — except for Japan, AFAICT — is getting hit by this issue, but each in their own, novel way, that covers every possible "obvious" solution.
I think it's a complicated equation and there may be room for some strategic tariffs, de-regulation, anti-dumping, competing more on manufacturing etc. But the time you're talking about? Almost the entire world's industrial capacity was decimated other than the US.
>How we get that level of prosperity back?
By making everyone poorer. Seriously.
You are competing with your fellow citizens for those things. This was true even back then.
Right now, today, it has never been easier to make a lot of money working. So you need to compete with people in that environment. You need to be able to outbid those people for that beautiful home you want. In an environment of lots of educated and skilled workers getting skilled salaries for doing vary valuable work. That's where the bar is.
We can lower the bar back to blue-collar-high-school-diploma, but then we need to also sacrifice all those high earning college degree jobs.
Not going to happen.
> How we get that level of prosperity back? That's the people really want.
And something they're not going to get. Manufacturing is going to be heavily automated. The money is going to continue to funnel into a small portion of the population.
> used to be able to graduate high school and get a job that could support a house with a yard, a car, a non-working spouse and children.
When was that last really true? 1971?
People literally do just that today in the midwest. The coastal housing imbalance is just that a housing imbalance and not reflective of a lack of buying power today. Also consider that americans back then outside of the car and home had no other large purchases. No computer, no $1k phone on a $1k/yr plan, no big tv. People weren’t even eating out or flying back then when they could afford a family vacation.
> americans back then outside of the car and home had no other large purchases. No computer, no $1k phone on a $1k/yr plan, no big tv. People weren’t even eating out or flying back then when they could afford a family vacation.
Back then cars and homes and essentials were relatively cheap and TVs and flying were expensive. Today it's flipped. TVs are cheap, phones are cheap. Essentials, like housing, are expensive.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/en_VpZtUFcE
How much do you think a house costs, vs how much do you think a TV costs?
And perhaps more importantly, do you have any idea what rent currently is costing? As a fraction of median income?
This is an avocado toast argument.
What if I told you that you can buy a 3br turnkey house for maybe $100k all over the midwest. Now consider living at your parents for four years after highschool rent free while working literally any job full time. You’d probably be able to throw down 50% on that house at least.
America is not a country, it's a continent. I know, Canada will be a province, and soon Panama of course, but in the meanwhile, it's a continent, not a country.
If you search a dictionary for "America", the first result will likely be "The United States of America".
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/america
It doesn't make you wrong, but you're also not right.
But famous American themselves call their country "America".
Extremely well written!
I agree with just about everything in the blog post, except, the underlying Michael Jordan baseball analogy example. Does the analogy hold if we swap Michael Jordan for let's say... Bo Jackson? He really was very good at a number of sports before his hip injury.
I loved his writing style. Everything is simple, understandable, and to the point for the people like me who don;t know much about this topic.
This is a case of taking away existing artificial barriers and let what people do their thing in the market. 5 and 10 year plans are only for economies run into the ground by an elite intelligentsia.
I had to stop reading at the Michael Jordan baseball part. Everything after that wasn't believable anymore. He wasn't that bad at baseball[1].
1. https://vendettasportsmedia.com/michael-jordan-wasnt-that-ba...
He wasn't that bad at baseball compared to a random person or a minor league player.
He was that bad at baseball compared how good he was a basketball.
The article seemed correct IMHO,
> What happened when he switched from basketball to baseball? He went from being an MVP champion to being a middling player in the minor leagues. 2 years later, he was back to playing basketball.
He was a mediocre AA player... compared to his basketball skill, he did absolutely suck at baseball.
This is an interesting read though I’m not an economist but even pick up that the author is wrong about some of these points. Still, I don’t think the author is an economist either. And a little harsh on US workers - but I know there are people really struggling in the US who need work and bring their problems with them.
What a mess this country is in.
Even if you guys did rebuild e.g. textile factories down there in crazy land you're not going to pay workers $300/month to be able to compete globally. Nobody wants to pay $1,000 for a pair of underwear.
Tariffs don't help you compete globally -- they're about disadvantaging the global in favor of the local.
Someone may be able to pay workers $300/month and make them work the "996 working hour system"[1], but if they then have to mark up the end product by 100%, the disparity between local and global price to consumers narrows.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system
"America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufacturing Back"
"America" doesn't underestimate or overestimate things. People do. So which American people underestimate the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back? Name names, or it didn't happen.
It is just a point of pragmatism. Countries that wish to bring manufacturing back to their country just have to use people to do that just like they used people to put the production outside. Which by the way will produce lot of business :)
Given what’s likely to happen with with AI and robotics over the next 10 years, all this debate about bringing back manufacturing jobs is pretty silly
There is no technological path to AGI, much less intelligent robots, in the next 10 years. Everyone underestimates the massive amount of parallel processing going on in a single human brain. That doesn't even consider how massive the sensor array is. The doublings required for our artificial technology to catch up is about 25-35 years, maybe more depending on how much Moore's Law slows down.
> The doublings required for our artificial technology to catch up is about 25-35 years, maybe more depending on how much Moore's Law slows down.
"A technology that is '20 years away' will be 20 years away indefinitely."
https://m.xkcd.com/678/
America is the wealthiest nation in the world. You just need more equality! Not MORE wealth! Where is that supposed wealth going to go to? Look where it has gone!
"In other words, unlike many who have voiced an opinion on this topic, I know what I am talking about."
"I'm a first generation American..."
Difficult sure, but the economic incentives and national security implications will make the difficult task possible
It depends what you mean by "America" and it depends what you mean by "bringing manufacturing back."
And for those who want a video, watch Scott Galloway on Anderson Cooper https://youtu.be/qg3JOR44r6M?si=Ggwfuuy-_lXjFUxq. Galloway notes that the US is only second to China in manufacturing and the Cato survey that found 80% of Americans want more manufacturing but 1-in-4 or 1-in-5 have any interest in going to work in manufacturing. And he quotes Dave Chappelle, "we want to wear Nikes, not make Nikes." (https://youtu.be/LAg1bDvuarc?si=-aLApcSdAk75d7Vr)
Back to the article, I'm no expert on tariffs, but explaining things to people and trying to understand where they "are" (I'm a social worker, so this is SW-speak) are two things I've spent my policy career doing. If I hear one more quilter (I make and sell one-of-a-kind quilts) say that the solution to the high price of quilting fabric (because of tariffs) is returning manufacturing to the US and Trump is our savior for recognizing this, well, I don't know what I'm going to do other than share the link to this blog.
meta observation; It is amusing to me that the comments on this site are majority "No, we are not smart enough to run a drill press. That takes years of training!" but back in 2020, every commenter was pretending they were doctors.
Our economy was designed to NOT have citizens work at factories. We pay thousands of dollars a year in our public schools to teach each of our citizens calculus, literature, world history, and physics, so that they DON'T have to work at a factory, or perform manual labor like picking strawberries or driving trucks or cleaning toilets.
Why would anyone want to go back to an economy that can be run by a third worlders? What is our competitive advantage then?
Economics works when the people do the things they are most efficient at. If a person in China can make iPhones for cheaper than an American, LET THEM. Our citizens should be designing them instead, because that's what we train our citizens to do.
Trump and the Republicans really do think of our citizens as third worlders performing manual labor like we were oxen.
Americans fantasize about factory work because, at that time in America, you could afford a home without a two-income family. Life was "easier" for many people.
Personally, I think we need to focus on making things like homes more affordable. This would go a long way toward alleviating people's feeling of being trapped.
> Life was "easier" for many people.
It's definitely less of a factor compared to money, but I can't help wonder if in addition to being able to afford stuff, it's the idea that there used to be a "default" path that carried some sort of dignity. Dirty jobs have never been outright glamorous, but there's still a kind of respect that American society confers upon "traditional" industrial work - think the classic image of the humble American coal miner, factory worker, or farmer. "It ain't much, but it's honest work." I think the thought is that however you did in school and in the upper-class-employment rat race, anyone could find a stable, respectable, long-term job - probably even get trained on the job - in an industry that really matters, that does useful stuff for the country.
Now? If you fail to jump through all the office-job hoops of picking a fancy field, getting a degree, finding internships, dressing up nice, keeping a clean record, acing job interviews, etc. Or if those fancy jobs just aren't hiring near you. What are the "default" job options most people are left with? Working retail at Walmart? Putting fries in the bag at McDonalds? Janitorial? Driving a truck? Doordashing burritos?
Obviously the main thing the lack of stability and decent pay in these jobs, but when it comes to public perception and fantasizing, like you said, I wonder if a part of it is just that these service sector jobs feel... shittier. Less important for society.
Because you cannot hide the imbalance of disconnecting yourself from the material reality that's involved with making your lifestyle possible by outsourcing to other human beings, over multiple decades, without it coming back to bite you in one form or another.
See the hundreds of thousands of people in US that have died from opioid overdoses. 50% of the US population, specifically those living outside major metro areas, experienced a slow collapse (over decades) that was not unlike the fall of the Soviet Union.
A country should have _some_ semblance of what it is to truly source, manufacture, and produce the lifestyle that's made possible in the country. When the top 15-20% become completely disconnected from the other 80% working menial service jobs because the core manufacturing has been outsourced to outside the country, it will come back to bite you.
"Man must feel the sweat on his own brow" or at least have an appreciation for what makes this possible. Your comment essentially implies that you feel that you are above or should be disconnected from this reality, which is dangerous.
You didn't explain exactly why we need that physical connection. You just broadly complained. Every one of your statements could be refuted by globalists saying its perfectly fine for foreigners to perform our manual labor for us instead.
Because in the absence of that physical connection you begin to accumulate a social and economic debt that will eventually come due, because sooner or later that 80% working in the service economy will come for the remaining 15-20%. Domestic manufacturing made possible by some degree of anti-dumping/tariffs would at least create a more balanced distribution of this wealth.
Globalist trade promoters are just short-term wishful / magical thinkers. It's magical thinking that you can create this social and economic imbalance via outsourcing it to the other side of the globe, without consequences over the long run. It's wishful thinking that there are enough upper middle class jobs / lifestyle for everyone that took Calculus.
I think its more complicated than this. People don't want to work in factories per se, but what a world where labor has actual power. The big thing that offshoring did was strip the power of local labor to enforce certain reasonable conditions on employers and this allowed normal people to live stable, even comfortable lives.
Offshoring has produced a world where we can buy cheap trinkets but where many, many, americans live precariously, have little to no stability, and work more than one job to make ends meet. What Americans really want is more control over their lives and "bringing back manufacturing" is a sort of short-hand for that ideal.
I think bringing back some manufacturing may help, but in the end Americans need to learn that what they really want is more power to shape their lives and that they will need to wrest that power back from a system which has leaned ever more towards market control of the allocation of time, energy, and labor.
But how many citizens know calculus, literature and physics? Certainly not enough know history - or US democracy wouldn't be facing the threat it does now.
The poorly educated need a livelihood too. If the economy is healthier for global trade (I think it is), then some way must be found of destributing its benefits to the demographics who got hit. Otherwise you get revolution or populism.
Telling an unemployed factory worker to send their kids to college doesn't help. Doesn't help the factory worker, and doesn't help kids who see education and middle class jobs as about as unreal as the idea of becoming a famous influencer or kingpin drug dealer.
But aren't China's learning outcomes higher in calculus, physics, etc?
Also the US is already the 2nd largest manufacturer in the world.
There's a lot more to our education than that. Additionally, our REAL competitive advantage are our universities. We have the best universities in the world, by far, and that's what drives our economy over all others as we create the most valuable intellectual property.
That doesnt really address how the leading manufacturer is also leading in the metrics you said are opposed to leading in manufacturing.
At its root I think this is driven by anxiety over how America would perform in a hot war, rose colored glasses culturally regarding the post WW2 era, and acknowledging that there's no real economic growth opportunity in America for unskilled labor, it's merely a way to tread water now.
going to have to give you kudos and steal that last part of "unskilled factory labour being a way to just tread water"
i didn't understand it myself until I developed a hardware system and computed the margins, hassle, etc - manual labor/assembly/mfg is not what a developed economy relies on and its asinine to pretend it is.
I don't know how the current American dynamism movement has picked up the steam it has
The problem with an exclusively intellectual economy is that it easily loses touch with reality entirely. You end up with generations of people who have no idea how anything works or how to actually make anything or do things in the real world.
Why does it cost us 10X more to build half as much? It's not all wage differences. It's that we don't have a large talent pool of builders. When you make things -- physical things in the real world -- you learn things about the nature of reality that cannot be learned from books or computers.
this is what i've been saying - critical manufacturing should of course be brought on shore but I don't understand the idea of bringing back "the assembly of hyper niche part that country Y can produce extremely cheaply but America can't even reasonably produce in quality" to American shores.
It literally harms industry because anyone relying on that hyper niche part now has to pay more (because American mfg, let's face it - is not efficient) and deal with subpar quality as opposed to higher quality foreign parts.
I hate it say it, but come on man - people aren't buying American cars globally because the Japanese and even Germans can do it better. That's free market economics, either get better at making cars or focus on making things that we can do better like iPhones and Macbooks - not try to artificially defend an industry we suck at by forcing people to deal with shittier subpar products.
Maybe I'm being unreasonable, I don't know.
The idea that everyone can just do knowledge work is pretty unrealistic, to put it mildly.
Manufacturing doesn't have to involve large amounts of low-skill manual labor. It can be highly automated and serve as a source of jobs for engineers.
Yet, 40% of our students can't read at a basic level.
To the contrary, they think of manual and “low-skill” labor as an essential undertaking that no person or society is above.
You are the one who thinks of the work as below you, that it should be moved out of sight so we can stop caring and make it someone else’s problem.
Everyone wants to think they're the most valuable thing in the world, but economics doesn't care about how much people value themselves. It only cares about when both buyer and seller agrees to the value of their work.
You may think a farm worker deserves $500,000,000 a year, but that won't matter until someone else decides to pay them that.
Ultimately, it's OK to say some things are more valuable than others, including the value of your labor.
>Economics works when the people do the things they are most efficient at.
If you believe this statement, then you must be supportive of open borders.
People in China might be more efficient at doing local US service jobs. Whose to say we dont let them do it?
Yes. Now people understand why open borders are a good thing.
Imagine how bad the US economy would be if we had tariffs and border controls between states.
> our citizens as third worlders performing manual labor like we were oxen.
Lord man... there's a whole mass of humanity who don't want to fart in an office chair all day, or lay around collecting the dole.
Typical coastalist ivory tower thinking. No wonder we're in a pickle...
And that is not working out…
What we have instead is a nation straddled with debt and useless degrees. While the counties like China do “theirs world” work produce smarter and more capable workforce all while doing the mundane work too.
I think your view also vastly underestimates the number of not so smart people that exist in America. This is no knock on them, but people in tech bubbles get to walk around in a society where the average person they interact with has a far above average IQ. So for those who don’t balance red/black trees and find shortest paths with dijkstra's algorithm need jobs too.
On top of that you forgot something I am sure you have yelled many times, diversity. Remember when it was a strength? It’s not good for any nation to be completely void of entire industries. Having factories next to the tech will germinate the thinking minds with new problems to solve.
But even more to the point. China is doing amazing things, and they were we let do the manufacturing. So we always have a strong evidence that letting others might not be the best idea.
And yet A&W campaign for 1/3 pounder failed against MacDonald quarter pounder because Americans believed 1/4 > 1/3.
The Quarter Pounder plus
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I don't think it's realistic to bring manufacturing back, so to speak. Are the words being taken literally here? Does this truly mean Orange Man wants to bring all manufacturing back to the United States, or do we want to weaken our largest competitor and buy those cheap products in other countries who are less of a threat, speaking in terms of their technological advancement and economical trajectory?
China has been moving cheap product production to SEA for awhile now, what the USA wants is countries like Vietnam to make cheap products without Chinese involvement in the manufacturing tech and supply chains…which is pretty much impossible.
> China has been moving cheap product production to SEA for awhile now, what the USA wants is countries like Vietnam to make cheap products without Chinese involvement in the manufacturing tech and supply chains…which is pretty much impossible.
Not too long ago it was "common knowledge" that the Chinese couldn't do advanced stuff, now it's "common knowledge" you can't do advanced stuff without the Chinese.
Nothing is impossible (at least in this area). If someone says it's impossible, they're really saying "I don't wanna do it."
That’s complete BS. China has been building out this advantage for a couple of decades now, and anyone paying attention knows this. The common knowledge presented by Trump isn’t very useful.
Yes, America too could build out this capability by aggressively investing in it for a couple of decades.
I think there are many people in the United States that would rather have manufacturing jobs than to have fast food or retail jobs.
Kirk
yea its difficult lets not do it
False dichotomy. An alternate position is to do it in a measured, planned way, not under duress as the economy tanks and international relations are soured.
Let's approach it from the other direction: why should we? What are we getting by trying to "bring it back"?
High paying factory jobs that will allow an individual to purchase a home and start a family!
How much do you have to raise the prices of manufactured goods to get there?
People were going bananas about 10% inflation and the price of eggs before the election. They're not ready to 2X all consumer goods prices.
Factory jobs aren’t high paying and even if you brought all manufacturing home it would barely impact manufacturing employment.
Automation is what took the jobs away.
To fix housing all you need to do is build more homes. America has plenty of land for that.
Ok. Those jobs don't exist. Now what?
Building a new factory needs a few years from idea to start of planning to production. 2 years if you are really really quick maybe, 4 to 6 years might be more realistic. The term for the current administration ends in 3.5 years and the next one probably won't be lead by Trump, so things will change.
This means that nobody will even start moving production back yet, they will pay lip-service, do the minimum to get along for this term, and hope for the best for the next one.
Politicians have been running on platforms of about undoing the damage of offshoring since Obama's first term at least, now here we are in 2025 and someone just won an election and it played a key role so clearly it's a big important thing and it's reasonable to expect it to stick around as an issue on the official party platforms. There is a non-negligible chance that in 2029 there will be someone in the white house who continues to push in that direction, even if the specific policy is very different from the current tariff policy.
The wise thing to do is to at least make steps in the direction of on-shoring or at least make your plans and investments compatible with it.
One American did the underestimating.
This article was a really interesting take on this too: https://semianalysis.com/2025/03/11/america-is-missing-the-n...
The tldr of that post is: - To be really good at making robots, you need to iterate fast
- To iterate fast, you need all component manufacturers nearby (or you’ll be wasting weeks shipping parts from somewhere else)
- To be really competitive at manufacturing, you need to be good at robotics.
- If you’re missing all of these pieces, it will be hard to catch up with (say) China, which has been exponentially growing in every possible aspect of manufacturing for decades. Not only do we not have strong manufacturing, but we don’t have strong robotics companies, don’t have many of our own robotics components companies, and don’t even have much in terms of raw materials. Whereas China has been investing heavily in every single one of these areas.
Bringing manufacturing back means investing in all aspects of the supply chains which lead to technical innovation in manufacturing, which is really hard to do when the supply chain is set up to pull from our current competitor.
The most fundamental problem in the U.S. is this: Infinite Growth Capitalism
The VAST majority of what is wrong with our society (political and obviously economic) can be traced to this. It's the expectation that every economic endeavor must show a return on investment - forever. That every entity must strive to optimize the bottom line every day of its existence. Optimizing for growth above all else crushes and consumes everything.
Increasing local manufacturing will only create more opportunities for people to be indentured to a company that literally hates their existence.
A company is forced to build here in the U.S. and people are supposed to rejoice they now have another option for their lives to simply be tolerated and disposable?
Nonsense. Bringing manufacturing back to the US will be easy. Economists will probably call it "Miracle on the hudson river".
Economists are full of bs. They keep framing everything as impossible and when something good happens later, going against all their predictions, they call it a miracle... Maybe these economists are just projecting by assuming everyone else is just as incompetent as they are.
Of course if society was made up only of economists, we'd still be living in caves, worrying about the difficulty of bringing firewood back to the cave.
if manufacturing were brought back, the skies would be filled with coal soot. better that the u.s innovates in other ways, but the u.s seems to largely reject renewable energy to power those plants.
Written when the tariff on Chinese phones was only 54% and later 10%.
Ah, those were the days.
Regardless of what is believed about how well implemented or necessary these reforms are I believe there is an ironclad law of reality that real wealth can only be expressed in terms of material things - houses, phones, computers.
The era of making up tall tales about the supposed value of money via all sorts of futures and stocks and financial instruments the feeble mind can scarely understand cannot be over soon enough.
The value of money manifests when its exchange for physical goods.
If the Communist fairy waved her magic wand about and distributedall the wealth of the rich to every american equally, half of the people would decide to buy a new car with their newfound wealth next day, only to find out the supply of cars hasn't increased.
There'd be like 10% more cars sold, with people bidding over each other to actually get access to that supply, which would trigger massive inflation in practical terms, revealing the emperor had no clothes all along.
This article seems to be full of propaganda and downright lies. For instance, there are plenty of tool and die makers left in the USA, plenty of injection molding machines. I have personally seen them and met the tool and die makers as well as the machines making the molds.
It's difficult to address the giant article full of misrepresentations point by point. It's tough to see it up at the top of HN. Wish that I could do something to correct the misinformation that is being disseminated.
This person has a vested interest. They manufacture cheap crap in China (or Vietnam, I don't care) for American kids to suck on. What more do you need to know?
If you feel there are misrepresentations, then just pick one point and discuss that. I've worked in manufacturing-dependent companies and industries, and lived in China for years. His observations don't feel entirely off-base to me and fit much of what I've observed. So if there is something wrong here, help us clarify one part of it.
"To make Brain Flakes, you melt plastic and force it into shaped metal molds. Were we to import the machines and molds needed to do this, it would work for a little while, but as soon as one of those molds broke, we’d be in trouble, because there are almost no moldmakers left in the United States. The people who knew how to build and repair molds have either passed away or are long retired. In the event of a problem, we’d have to order a new mold from China or send ours back, shutting down production for months."
This is what I have the most problem with. As I said above:
"For instance, there are plenty of tool and die makers left in the USA, plenty of injection molding machines. I have personally seen them and met the tool and die makers as well as the machines making the molds.".
The reality is that there are many injection molding machines in the USA making weapons, medical devices, electronics enclosures and connectors, car and airplane parts, and other high margin products, not kids toys. And it's a lie to say that tooling, molds, and tool and die makers and shops aren't widely available in the States. They just don't want to pay more for them, and are therefore disseminating propaganda to the contrary.
And, I have also spent time in China, I have toured the factories there, I know what I am talking about as well.
A personal anecdote from someone close to me. A food plant in Canada (so not heavy/high tech manufacturing), was importing raw materials from US, processing it and exporting it to US. After Trump tariffs, they bought some small plant in the middle of nowhere USA. Moving most of the equipment to that US plant, increased the salaries of Americans that worked there before (very low salaries compared to Canada). So yes, it's unskilled labour but an example of production moving quickly back to US.
earth doesn’t need more factories, consumer shit needs to be printed out of some sort of organic material that is able to decompose quickly.
or change the consumer habit to consume less, and/or change how things are produce in order to them last longer (reduce planned obsolescence) or even better we rebuild the system to serve human needs instead of feeding capitalism's endless growth.
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> And to sew, we must first repair the social fabric.
This.
There are some interesting things in this but there are also some deeply cynical anti-working class stereotypes:
>You don’t have people who insist on being paid in cash so that they can keep their disability payments, while they do acrobatics on the factory floor that the non-disabled workers cannot do.
>Chinese workers much less likely to physically attack each other and their manager. They don’t take 30 minute bathroom breaks on company time. They don’t often quit because their out-of-state mother of their children discovered their new job and now receives 60% of their wages as child support. They don’t disappear because they’ve gone on meth benders. And they don’t fall asleep on a box midshift because their pay from yesterday got converted into pills.
>Sadly, what I describe above are not theoretical situations. These are things that I have experienced or seen with my own eyes.
Really? How does he know if someone is on disability? How he know many of these are not seen in China? If they aren't then why aren't they? I don't think it is as simple as work ethic.
The mainstream assessment is deindustrialization is inevitable in the western world because all kinds of legitimate reasons: the cost is too high. The talent pool is too small. We are left behind and lack critical IPs and infrastructures. People are too lazy/stupid/uneducated/self righteous/<your favorite derogatory phrases>. We can hang on to our high-value service industry.
What I don't understand is, why would people even want the US dollar and its service industry if we can't produce sufficiently any more? And what about future conflicts in the world? The US can't even produce enough saline solution or disinfectant wipes, let along active pharmaceutical ingredients? Did people see what China goods we tariff on? We tariff China for advanced materials, electronics, machineries, and etc, yet China tariffs on our raw materials and agricultural goods. And we think the US can maintain its wealth by behaving like a colony of China? When there's a conflict between us and China, what do we do? Beg them for the life essentials? And we keep yelling to punish Russia and help Ukraine to win the war and we should, but with what? We can't even out produce artillery shells faster and cheaper than Russia, or drones faster and cheaper than China. Admiral Yamamoto used to say that he saw so many factories and chimneys in Philadelphia that he knew that those industries could turn into efficient war machines if Japan ever declared war on the US. Would he be able to say the same today?
As for what we can, wasn't the US a manufacturing powerhouse until early 2000s? BTW, the US is still a manufacturing powerhouse in some sectors, but we just can't make things cheap enough with good quality because we pretty much destroyed our light industry. Didn't China have nothing and it was heavy investment from the western world that helped China grow so fast and so rapidly? Then, why can't we shift investment back to the US and bring our key industries back? We kept talking about technical difficulties, yet we ignore the necessity of the matter.
It's really only one guy that underestimates it
Yeah sorry but the Apple math is so weird that it cmake me doubt the rest of the article. An increase of 54$ in taxes doesn't explain the 216$ increase in price. Of course to keep the same profit, the price would increase more than 54$ to handle some externalities and the decrease of sales, but it would be paid only once and do not need to increase at each step
The part that blows my mind is timing. It's going to take years to get anything up and running. Yet tariffs are cutting supply immediately.
wtf is the plan for the 5-10 years in between?
oligarch buy up of failed industries. Then we all live as renters.
America does not underestimate that difficulty. Donald Trump does.
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTj8VBsTQ/
All of these points are overstated or just flat out wrong. For example the price of cheap manufacturing labor in America isn't higher than it looks, it's much lower, because there are an extremely large number of NEET men.
The iphone, while impressive, is not the end all be all of American manufacturing. The major goal is to bring back tool makers and increase industrial density.
>Chinese manufacturing labor isn’t just cheaper. It’s better.
>In China, there are no people who are too fat to work.
This is obviously just dumb anti-american propaganda. Since this article isn't written in good faith it's not worth my time to debunk point by point.
The world is an interdependent eco- system these days. The idea that a country can isolate itself an reproduce expertise that has flourished elsewhere is a bit silly and tilting at windmills.
Globalization is a fact of the world today and the best path to better lives for everyone is through mutual cooperation and policies that lift all boats.
Trump's goals and attempts to change this are foolhardy.
> Let’s focus on America’s strengths in high end manufacturing, agriculture, and innovation instead of applying tariffs to all countries and products blindly. We should be taxing automated drones for agriculture at 300% to encourage their manufacture here, instead of applying the same blanket tariff of 54% to that that we apply to t-shirts.
Everything wrong and right with the author's thesis. Our present day high-end manufacturing, agriculture, and innovation are already facing the steepest tariffs from a broad range of countries. The uneven playing field extends to IP theft, heavily subsidised and protected industries abroad and other forms of unfair competition like port traffic manipulation or burdensome legislation.
The author think that "targeted tariffs" would have a different effect from what we see now with trade war and retaliatory threats, market instability and uncertainty. This is false, but also ultimately harmful to our "agricultural drone industry". It's hard to have a niche industry without the larger picture, and it's hard to have "drones" without knowing how to manufacture constituent parts and having a reliable domestic supply chain for such. A domestically sourced supply chain encourages innovation and adaptation to immediate customer demands and goods can arrive in days or hours instead of weeks or months. Innovative requests to parts makers aren't immediately harvested by Chinese industrial spies and knowledge and technological advantage can remain local for longer, allowing for time to progress again before others can catch up.
Encouraging lazy and unoriginal drone manufacture in moated "made in USA" assembly lines is precisely the low-end type of job that "no one wants to do" and will inevitably produce the least capable drones the least efficiently or profitably. Our manufacturing and industrial capacity needs to be the world's best and most cost competitive because nothing else will do.
Only automation can save American industry. There will be "fewer" jobs but they will require skill and training. Robot management and supervision and repair and update and retooling will all require a large labor force. Creating robots and the software they run on will continue to be an important and large sector of the software industry. But manufacturing is only about jobs in the way that having a healthy agriculture industry is "about jobs", hardly at all.
Manufacturing real goods is the difference between servility and freedom given that modern war in the nuclear age also entails producing billions of tonnes of metal and blowing it up in distant countries, and could require replacing percentages of the global shipping tonnage that would be destroyed in a major conflict. It requires manufacturing thousands of substation transformers and the aa systems to defend them.
If we had invested strategically into a variety of heavy and light industries over the past 30 years, we almost certainly would have invented better processes and formulae for making things than we currently possess. We could have more globally competitive steel, even more advanced finished products and the knowledge and experience to "make anything better and more profitably than anyone". Industrial production and manufacturing make up roughly 15% of US GDP today. "Bringing back manufacturing" might increase that number significantly but it's hard to see how or why it would need to be more than 30% outside of wartime. That wouldn't even require a doubling of the jobs involved because much of this would have to be automated.
I agree with the author's emphasis on education and "fixing" things being critical in the execution of any kind of industrial renaissance. If the tariff fight lowers tariffs globally, that is a small move in the right direction of leveling the playing field and rewarding domestic producers who are globally competitive.
Robot drones probably are something the US should do. Access to US farms is useful for anyone making agriculture products. Remembers these drones are part of the supply chain for food, and so doing them in the US makes the supply chain closer. You want the ag drones made in small city, not Silicone valley. However your might write the software in Silicone valley - that is where you will find a supply of people who can do that - some of those people will then be making regular trips to the factory though to learn how it works.
to return production to the United States, it is necessary to reduce the level of wages and consumption to Chinese level
The US should look into other countries efforts to replicate Silicon Valley, you just can't. You will get some niche good, you will waste some money there, but you won't get the same level. '
This, without even considering for a moment that China is 4+ times the US.
This article is very goofy. America manufactures very complicated things. Building an iPhone at scale is not complicated in the grand scheme. Building it as low cost per unit is a complicated socioeconomic question- ive seen and read enough about working conditions at Foxconn to know that the complexity rests with the government control of the laborers' lives, and the laborers' lack of relief from what Americans would decidedly call slavery.
1- Tariffs will bring some manufacturing back to the US. The before/after tariff pricing presented in the article is fiction- price points cannot simply be doubled, consumers will reject it, pricing is extremely complicated and sensitive, Apple would have already had the iPhone set at $616 if they believed that was an attainable price for the volume. Apple is among the most profitable companies in the world, in part thanks to their mastery of labor exploitation.
2- Weak industrial supply chain- we have an incredible supply chain and industry can hop right on. Trains, planes, and automobiles galore. Extremely adaptive and we have plenty of room to expand. Auto manufacturers dont seem to mind building in the US, slightly more complicated than the toys that Molson sells.
3- We dont know how to make it: some things sure, most things: yes we do. We do have some additional capacity building required but this is not some crazy challenge. The beautiful thing about it is that, for the stuff we cant make easily, we can just pay the tax and keep in motion. It becomes a simple optimization calculation.
4- effective cost of labor- this is a challenge for sure but it has significant upside implications for American labor and the American lower and middle class. Again, this is a simple optimization. He points to all the fraud in the American system and the slave-like conditions of the Chinese system as if those are things things that shouldn't be addressed / barriers to entry for US? US needs lots of improvements that should be addressed not matter what.
5- Infrastructure- I seriously doubt the electricity stats but accepting it at face value, we have endless gas and sunlight in the west, US can adapt here as well. China notably does NOT have endless gas supplies.
6- Made in America will take time- OK? I am here for it!
7- Uncertainty- I would love to see them permanent. But locking in some wins from 4 years of America-first, modernized manufacturing base will go a long way.
8- Most Americans are going to hate manufacturing- why is that something you get to declare and presume? I think Americans will love job opportunities.
9- The labor does exist, we are just paying them to not work. it's an epidemic and circular problem. A bigger current issue is that we also dont have enough jobs to put low skilled workers to work. We need more low-ish complexity but reliable jobs.
And so on...
The true and sad truth is that manufacturing can be moved anywhere but the people that keep parroting about it's importance are in complete denial about the primary issue: costs. These costs have very little to do with infrastructure and building factories or logistics. Those are a contributor, sure, but that only scratches the surface. While China has seen insane growth in the last 20 years, that growth is at the expense of workers. No doubt they have a lot of value in terms of skills(which take a long time to acquire) but you also need to remember that there is a difference between the significance of working in Asia and Europe/north America. To us Europeans (and North Americans) work brings stability and security. In Asia, work is the difference between life and death, regardless of how skilled you are-you are legally expandable. Does anyone seriously believe that iPhones will be made in the US? The basic salary at foxconn is just under 320$/month or $1.81/hour. That is around 10x less than the US. This is ignoring the atrocious working conditions and far above the 40 hour work week. If we do factor in that as well, the difference is likely in the 25-30x range. I come from a country with a minimum hourly wage of around $3.6, let me tell you, as soon as the clock hits 18:00, people will drop everything where they stand and go home. The only way to compete with China is to automate everything and let machines do all the work, which is not a terrible idea but also nearly impossible to achieve. And even if you spend two decades doing all that, there are costs to all the R&D to get there. No one is going to buy a $15k iPhone, nor will they buy a $20K laptop. A logo that says "Made in X" won't justify the price. This comes from someone that uses a dual-xeon workstation as a personal computer.
Here's another example: a market that has been completely dominated by China: consumer drones. Believe me when I say this, I hate DJI and while I have one, I refuse to use it because of all the security implications. How many European and US companies are competing with them? Quite a few actually but the big names off the top of my head are Parrot and Skydio. I own both a Parrot and a Skydio and the quality of both is amazing. Yet they are still barely keeping up with DJI and at 5x the cost despite the demand - DJI still holds 90% of the market share. I can justify the price because of my privacy concerns but that's 1/1000 people. For most people it's always going to be a trade-off between price and quality+privacy.
If you want to enforce all that through tariffs, just put 5000% tariffs so that the local manufacturing cost will be the same as the cheap import and you solved the problem. How many people will be willing to spend 100 bucks for a pair of socks? That's a different story. The soviet union attempted something similar for several decades while trying to copy western technology. Anyone that knows a bit of history can tell you how that ended. Spoilers: not a success story.
Fine, we underestimate the difficulty. But we can make a detailed plan like other countries do. The US has massive advantages. Just no longer so massive that we can expect to win on sheer awesomeness.
I feel like we in the US have a horrible split evaluation of ourselves: either we're supreme or we're doomed. Both sides of that split are emotional states, not useful facts.
> But we can make a detailed plan like other countries do
The problem isn’t that we don’t know this: it’s that the person making the decisions rejects the idea of needing to make a detailed plan, or even understand the situation well enough to recognize the problems a plan would need to address.
Administrations come and go. Voters need to calm down and ask for something rational.
Not America, Trump
There's an argument that America is fundamentally broken at this point. By fundamentally, I mean value wise the country is splitting apart. Trump is the saviour for half the country and the devil for the other half. It's basically taken less than a hundred years, even after riding on the back of world war 2 and hegemony, to bring the country back to the great depression. The trade wars for me are just another desperate attempt by the country to point blame elsewhere.
House prices are at an all time high. Cost of living is becoming unbearable. So, $25 dollar menial jobs are scoffed at, because of inflation. Inflation is due to out of control printing/spending and government debt. Debt is due to big government, capitalist greed and oligarchy. Capitalist greed is due to economies of scale when offshoring. Oligarchy and big government is due to an entrenched lobby system. Lobby system is due to the cost of electioneering and bad decisions by successive governments.
It goes on and on.
Root cause: Systemic rot. Diagnosis: Failing empire Prognosis: UK (if the fall is managed)
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You're right: it's a bit racist. It's also faulty reasoning: you went to a high school in Cupertino with a markedly higher population of second-generation Asian-Americans, and went to a high school in an extraordinarily wealthy area; in fact, I think you might be attempting to generalize from the zip code with the highest density of immigrant professionals in the United States. If you want to generalize from China, that by itself is 1.4 billion people; they're as varied as any large population.
But I’m also Asian myself and all my relatives and everyone I know from China is the is way.
It’s a stereotype. Asian tiger moms. Asians are good at math. Math competitions, test scores. Quantitative metrics everywhere point to a worth ethic that is viciously high.
My conclusion of course is derived from quantitative evidence from general populations and iq scores by country. When I mentioned Cupertino I did it only to say that all the quantitative evidence happens to align with my anecdotal experience.
There are no such things as "IQ scores by country". If you're thinking about the data behind "IQ and the Wealth of Nations", the Richard Lynn stuff, it's basically fraudulent.
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I didn't say anything about the validity of IQ. I said that Richard Lynn's numbers, which this site cites, are fraudulent. "IIT 2024" appears to be results from a website survey.
Respectfully, I think it's you that needs to do a bit more reading. I might be wrong about any of this stuff; I'm not an expert. But I'm pretty sure the first Google search result you find for "IQ by country" isn't going to rebut me effectively.
>I didn't say anything about the validity of IQ. I said that Richard Lynn's numbers, which this site cites, are fraudulent. "IIT 2024" appears to be results from a website survey.
You said IQ by country doesn't exist. And i said, IQ is so pervasive it fucking does. You also referenced something completely off topic. Some random book claiming that because that random book is invalid the whole concept of IQ by country doesn't exist which is absolutely wrong.
>Respectfully, I think it's you that needs to do a bit more reading. I might be wrong about any of this stuff; I'm not an expert. But I'm pretty sure the first Google search result you find for "IQ by country" isn't going to rebut me effectively.
I'm well versed enough in IQ to know that even the first link on google is good enough to refute you. You don't have to believe me, but you can always do your own research to find out I'm right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSo5v5t4OQM&list=PL_K7XH1AIG... this can help
You cited a ranking of countries that was based on Lynn and his colleagues collecting data from childrens hospitals, because IQ is a diagnostic and not a ranking mechanism, and outside of wealthy western countries nobody has done latitudinal studies. If that was the worst thing Lynn had done to generate his data, it would already be fraudulent, but it isn't. Unfortunately, I don't think you actually understand the statistics you're citing.
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I don't know what you're talking about. You cited a source upthread that included the Richard Lynn data --- very prominently! --- alongside an online survey site where people sign up, claim a country of origin, and fill out an online survey.
And no, your logic about how any diagnostic can be "ranked" obviously does not hold; it doesn't even make sense. But we've reached the point on the thread where you're trying to axiomatically derive your own psychometrics, so we can probably wrap it up here.
The amount of pooh-poohing of this idea is even more than I would have expected from HN, despite tech’s love of belittling others ideas.
The reason we need manufacturing is because the middle class is decimated. None of us tech workers feel it because we don’t live in neighborhoods that have been decimated by it. We have all benefitted from globalization immensely but we don’t have neighbors, families or friends that have been destroyed by it.
Too many people say it will take “years” to get factories operational. That’s why Elon is there. He knows and has done this, to point out which regulations need to be axed in order to improve the time to market for new factories. Trump will listen to him and get rid of any regulation that doesn’t make sense, or even regulations that do make sense but take too much time. For better or worse factory building will be faster over the next 3 years.
Now that we have these greenfields for new manufacturing opportunities, instead of standing there with your arms crossed, shaking your head why the idea won’t work, how can you take advantage of this new opportunity to get rich?
> We have all benefitted from globalization immensely but we don’t have neighbors, families or friends that have been destroyed by it.
Blue collar workers were the first to push for globalization, because they suddenly could afford a lifestyle that used to require the salary corresponding to a couple of steps upper in the corporate ladder. A blue collar salary suddenly could provide for many more amenities... til the salary was no more!
Everyone wants manufacturing back, but only for the products they can produce, because everyone still wants to buy at Chinese prices.
Furthermore, the regulations that most stand in the way of cheap manufacturing are environmental regulations, and good luck with that! We have got used to breathe clean air, and I feel most people still love clean air more than they hate globalization.
Blue collar workers never pushed for globalization because they knew exactly what would happen, they would lose their jobs and they did.
The irony now about Chinese goods is that those of us that can afford it avoid them as much as possible. I check every product that I buy on Amazon to make sure they aren’t made in China because they could be sending me poisoned goods.
> Blue collar workers never pushed for globalization
Maybe they didn't with their words, but they surely did with their money!
Yep! Those stupid blue collar workers buying cheap shit from Walmart because they couldn't afford to shop anywhere else, it's their fault their jobs were outsourced.
The jobs left first, then the blue collar workers bought stuff from Walmart.
Now you have the middle class who used to deride that cheap shit hooked on it, talking about how they can get next day from Amazon, Temu and Ali.
> Those stupid blue collar...
This is your opinion. I have not judged anybody.
My point is that cheap imports were welcome by everyone, especially by those who had the least purchasing power.
Doesn't mean we shouldn't do it.
Well, sure, but perhaps some kind of plan is warranted?
IIRC correctly, the previous administration did try to do some of the slow, steady imperfect work of planning to gradually bring back key industries.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIPS_and_Science_Act and https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/11/24195811/biden-ev-factory...
Of course, the voters wanted something else.
Who is going to commit the resources to make serious money losing plans vs manufacturing overseas?
Isn't the point of capitalism to not have a plan and let the market figure it out?
How are markets going to figure anything out with tariffs changing every day, depending on the mood of dear leader?
That's a problem for the markets to suss out.
They've sussed out that if you suck up to him he'll give you an exemption. Of course if you are a medium sized business you are screwed and have to wait in line, but you'll get your chance as long as you can hold on through the summer.
In two years of course it won't matter.
> They've sussed out that if you suck up to him he'll give you an exemption
It's a very thinly veiled protection racket. People do tend to repeat the plays that they know.
sounds about right.
Countries that believe that are dominated by those who plan.
Citation needed. How did those five year plans go?
Seem to be doing OK, actually
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-year_plans_of_China
It's a principle of capitalism, but taken to the extreme, it's just a strawman. At this point, I think we are pretty sure that some interventions make capitalism better.
This post is specifically about Industrial Policy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_policy
But other effective interventions are anti-trust and demand-inducing regulation (e.g. people want to fly because they know it's safe).
No, of course not. That's oversimplifying to the point of idiocy.
Markets do not mean that an Industrial strategy / Industrial policy is not needed.
Markets respond to incentives created by such a strategy.
The free market (which I think people also include in capitalism) would correctly predict labour intensive jobs would be outsourced. This is very much a feature (comparative advantage), not a bug. I realized a lot of supposedly free market people don't even know the basics of it. Politically the free market has become an identity associated with national greatness and a sense of control of ones destiny. The dominant feeling seems to be if you have a free market, you will win everything (which is actually opposite from the truth).
That's what we did, and it moved everything to China.
China, who do have an industrial strategy. It worked for them.
The point of Capitalism is Marx needed a straw man to tear down. The world has never seen what he envisioned.
What you might call capitalists very much plan. They don't believe in central planning where one "guy" makes a plans and everyone else implements them, but they do plan.
Marx never said that capitalists didn't plan. In fact, the possibility of the transition from late stage capitalism/imperialism to socialism is based on that very fact, capital got concentrated in very big companies with internal planification. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_People%27s_Republic_of_Wal...
> they do plan.
I've just sat through a long meeting with lots of Jiras and Q2 objectives. Trust me, there's planning. Lots of planning.
I'm sure that the capitalists would disagree in this instance.
Capitalism as such went out the window with tariffs.
No, purely free markets (which weren't free to start off with) went out the window.
Which is why things that bring back manufacturing to the US is something we were doing. It's just unfortunate that instead of continuing that, the current administration is trying undermine the effective efforts of the previous administration's actions that helped bring manufacturing back into the US.
No, it doesn't. There is a presumption that manufacturing is Better, a more ideal way of organizing the economy, based on a false nostalgia of America past.
sure, but it will take longer than 4 or 8 years and everyone in power wants their own thing, not continuity. it cannot happen without a long term plan and long term plans cannot happen if have, maybe, a year to do things and the rest is election time.
Molson has a Chinese spouse, directly benefitted from Chinese manufacturing for a long time, and often spouts direct propaganda from his X account so while he's likely to be right about a lot of things he had/has a strong incentive to not imagine alternatives to the status quo.
Try attacking the points he made in the article instead of him.
What attacks? Fwiw: "he's likely to be right about a lot of things". Perhaps I should have been more specific: I think his analyses are mostly correct, his predictions are not.
Subscribe to ground news so that you know what historically a news sources biases are.
For example: "you can't imagine the cheap Chinese robots coming online"... Then what's stopping an American manufacturer from buying a Chinese robot, taking the tariff hit once, then manufacturing domestically with no tariff?
I don't really see what he said as an attack. It's good to have some "small print" sprinkles with the meal.
Where are those AI experts on this one? Why isn't AI commanding our manufacturing boom? Isn't manufacturing all just software and logistics?
/s He is right, we should just crawl under a rock and die instead.
Remember the JFK "We choose to go to the moon" speech?
(I wonder how many of this defeatist articles are financed by China somehow).
Trump is doing his version of the JFK vision. We choose to dismantle the country and strip it for parts.
I think Molson Hart should add a panda to their line of stuffed animals.