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The US is building factories at a fast rate

businessinsider.com

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Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#71

Post by libraryatnight »

balls187 wrote: post #18
obblekk wrote: post #2

> The US has added around 800,000 jobs in manufacturing employment over the last two years, employing around 13 million workers It's too early to know, but if it turns out the solution to decades of economic misery for middle class blue collar workers was 1. 50% tariffs on China, and 2. $100B of subsidies to chip makers and green tech... The reversal of Reaganomics we're living through will become permanent for at le…

3. Global pandemic making it nearly impossible for the #1 Consumer Economy to fulfill demand. And recall Globalization was championed by Bill Clinton. Donald Trump pumped up Tariff’s against China. Joe Biden pushed for chip and green subsidies.

Do we think globalization failed? because it seems to me it's just getting rebooted from the business side. The cultural impact seems too out of the bag, railing against globalization in a Clinton context just seems like bad lens to be looking through

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#72

Post by lotsofpulp »

mwbajor wrote: post #38
nimish wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad free trade deals likely did more than Reaganomics here. NAFTA + China-WTO accession really did not help American manufacturing.

Boomers saying: "I don't want my kid to go to machineshop in HS, he'll turn out to be a plumber" is what did it too. Building things has been looked down upon for 40 years because boomers thought it was a step backwards since their parents worked on the assembly line.

> Building things has been looked down upon for 40 years because boomers thought it was a step backwards since their parents worked on the assembly line.

No, it was looked down upon because the pay to quality of life ratio was much better in white collar careers. It probably still is for the most part. Wake me up when the same people are deciding between becoming plumbers or electricians rather than lawyers or doctors or engineers.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#73

Post by edgyquant »

FpUser wrote: post #43
api wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of why the US working class has been so angry isn't just the economic misery but the decades of being gaslit by politicians pretending that outsourcing to countries with no OSHA, no EPA, no concerns about carbon emissions, no workers rights, no unions, and radically lower wages is going to create jobs in America. It's a clearly absurd proposition on its face. Of course that's going to depress wages and destroy j…

Problem with this policy is that it will prevent poor countries from ever getting up the ladder. It also ignores the fact that many advanced human right respecting countries got there not without plundering less fortunate for generations.

The plundering argument doesn’t hold up. The empires of Europe were a net economic loss for their metropoles.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#74

Post by kelipso »

ako wrote: post #65
api wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of why the US working class has been so angry isn't just the economic misery but the decades of being gaslit by politicians pretending that outsourcing to countries with no OSHA, no EPA, no concerns about carbon emissions, no workers rights, no unions, and radically lower wages is going to create jobs in America. It's a clearly absurd proposition on its face. Of course that's going to depress wages and destroy j…

These agreements are not the only cause, if everyone would have kept on buying locally produced products, the jobs would have remained. Problem is that we bought the cheaper products, making it impossible for companies producing locally to stay profitable. We want our cake and eat it too.

That doesn't really make sense. In no universe can you expect people to buy more expensive products. Government intervention (tarrifs, taxes, regulations, whatever) or some other measure is needed to protect local companies.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#76

Post by nickff »

deeg wrote: post #60
obblekk wrote: post #2

> The US has added around 800,000 jobs in manufacturing employment over the last two years, employing around 13 million workers It's too early to know, but if it turns out the solution to decades of economic misery for middle class blue collar workers was 1. 50% tariffs on China, and 2. $100B of subsidies to chip makers and green tech... The reversal of Reaganomics we're living through will become permanent for at le…

My guess is that the increase in tariffs had little, if anything, to do with it; the article doesn't mention it but does cite CHIPS and the IRA. If anything the tariffs were one of the causes of our recent spike of inflation. My own opinion is that 40 years of globalization have lifted a billion people out of poverty and now the global pay scales aren't so vastly different. It is becoming more economically viable to…

Has any manufacturing facility supported by the CHIPS and Science Act been completed or made operational? The parent commenter is citing manufacturing employment numbers, which are unlikely to be impacted by prospective factories.

Has the Inflation Reduction Act had any positive impact on manufacturing either? Its main provisions seem to be related to economic redistribution, climate change, and infrastructure, all of which may have long-term impacts on industry and employment, but don't seem to have done much in those areas yet.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#77

Post by standardUser »

ch4s3 wrote: post #46
standardUser wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charity is when you get nothing in return. This is called industrial policy and this country was a lot better off when it had one.

That's a bold claim. Coming out of WWII the US had virtually the only operational factories in the world. Arguably protectionism caused incumbents to become moribund and fall behind foreign firms. The steel industry is a great example. By the time tariffs came down US steel plants were half a century out of date and producing steel that was either too expensive or too low in quality compared to competition. For anoth…

Underlying your perspective is the idea that economic activity is only about growth or efficiency or "winning". Governments have very different interests, such as maintaining social order, protecting vital industries and spurring innovation. A government doesn't care if their industrial policy is sub-optimal from a growth-uber-alles perceptive. Only a tiny sliver of libertarian-types think that way and those people rarely if ever hold significant political power.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#78

Post by wizofaus »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #57
alexose wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another important factor is that China's workers make more money than they used to, especially relative to the West. There's not as much of a cheap-labor-arbitrage opportunity as there was in the early 2000s. Here's a chart illustrating this point: https://i.insider.com/532ccb18eab8eadc39f33da6

Exactly. The factories follow the Cheap Labor. From US to China, then it was China to Thailand/SKorea, then from Thailand to India. Probably don't have chain correct, and it is different for different industries. But there was definitely a progression of 'local salary goes up', 'time to move to next cheapest country'.

Surely though there's still plenty of places in the world that, on the basis of labour costs, it would be vastly cheaper to operate than in the US. On that basis I'm not convinced wage growth in SE Asia is the primary reason the US manufacturing industry is deciding to reshore. Is the same phenomenon occurring in other wealthy countries that haven't put in place taxpayer funded incentives to do so?

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#79

Post by lesuorac »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #49
enraged_camel wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, neither do any of the words in 'NATO' but the alliance has been immensely beneficial for the US.

I suspect it has been way more beneficial to Europe than the US. The US could already defend itself, the smaller countries in Europe not as much.

I mean if the US can keep the front lines of the hypothetical Warsaw Pact vs NATO fight in Europe it's really good the US since they won't get bombed.

A lot of American Exceptionalism comes from the fact that EU got absolutely destroyed by world wars while the US got to keep chugging along.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#80

Post by wefarrell »

obblekk wrote: post #2

> The US has added around 800,000 jobs in manufacturing employment over the last two years, employing around 13 million workers It's too early to know, but if it turns out the solution to decades of economic misery for middle class blue collar workers was 1. 50% tariffs on China, and 2. $100B of subsidies to chip makers and green tech... The reversal of Reaganomics we're living through will become permanent for at le…

I doubt these are the stable union jobs with decent benefits from 50 years ago. If we really want to reverse Reaganomics we need to increase taxes on corporate profits, capital gains, and inheritance.
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