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What happened to the US machine tool industry?

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Re: What happened to the US machine tool industry?

#161

Post by mandeepj »

drmpeg wrote: post #38
mauvehaus wrote: post #14

If you're into machining, the American Precision Museum[0] in Windsor, VT is highly worth a visit. I had the good fortune to tour the Starrett factory some years back. They were still running pre-NC screw machines to make parts. It really is true that old machines, well cared for, will last just about forever. Apparently it's something of an axiom in the machining industry that tools that are no longer economically v…

I worked at my fathers machine shop (which was a subsidiary of New Britain Machine Company) a couple of summers when I was in high school in the mid 70's. It was quite an experience and the employees were some of the crustiest characters I've ever met. The second summer, I worked with this guy named Ray on a huge machine that made the heads to ratchet wrenches (the square part with the little ball). He was one of the…

> But the thing I remember most about him was that he could swear for a minute straight and never use the same word twice.

Legend! I’d have enjoyed working with him. The smell of cigarettes could be a turn-off. Only perfectionists (in their craft) can use that level of swearing.

Re: What happened to the US machine tool industry?

#163

Post by psychlops »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #117
psychlops wrote: post #21

> A strong dollar made imports even cheaper by comparison I think that summarizes the article. It has been cheaper to import, so we do. The strong dollar policy supports some industries at the expense of others.

To quote economist Brad Delong: "... tax cuts created a half decade of deficit, boosting need for government debt which attracted foreign capital and helping to send a false signal to Midwest manufacturers to shrink starting the hollowing out of what became Rust Belt." I think in the long term (and maybe short term) we will live to regret this error.

I don't understand this quote without more context. Five years of tax cut cycles does not seem abnormal, nor does it explain why only Midwest manufacturers received a (false) signal.

Re: What happened to the US machine tool industry?

#164

Post by chii »

roenxi wrote: post #148
psychlops wrote: post #21

> A strong dollar made imports even cheaper by comparison I think that summarizes the article. It has been cheaper to import, so we do. The strong dollar policy supports some industries at the expense of others.

There are three aspects to this - cost of manufacturing in the US, cost of manufacturing + shipping in China and exchange rates. I do think the relative dollar strength is a factor, but Chinese labour was effectively free vs US labour. If someone is willing to do work for free, then the economy will give them work. The issue that the free marketeers have been railing about for approximately the last 50 years it seems…

> It is plain why US manufacturing isn't the global top dog.

i do believe the US still does high-end (but low volume) manufacturing. It's just mass manufacturing that went away.

Re: What happened to the US machine tool industry?

#165

Post by chii »

rr808 wrote: post #159
nostrademons wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're on the right track. In a normal, non-reserve-currency situation, the demand for a country's currency is proportional to the demand for its products. After all, that's what you use a currency for: to buy the products that are sold in that currency. This has a well-behaved equilibrium, because if a country produces a lot of good products, that means the value of its currency will rise, which makes goods develope…

> For example, oil is priced in dollars; if India wants to buy oil from Saudi Arabia, it needs dollars to make the transaction, and then Saudi Arabia has an excess of dollars. Frequently it uses these to buy U.S. T-bills or invest in American If it priced the oil in Euros or Yen or Riyals or Rupees or US Dollars it has to pay its costs. Sure it may end up with a profit its then free to invest those where it likes, th…

> Clearly this is not true. The largest companies in the USA are not financial.

i believe the parent post meant tech and financials (but is lumping them together into one).

Re: What happened to the US machine tool industry?

#166

Post by dpe82 »

kuschku wrote: post #137
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Without the ability to quickly tool up, you'll end up defeated in any war of attrition. Why is this a risk? The biggest tool makers in the world are Germany and Japan which are in the US sphere of influence whether they want to or not and are therefore incentivized to sell to the US as many machines it would need to fight a war. The risk for Japan or Germany not wanting to sell tools to the US feels insignificant, a…

Japan and Germany are entirely metric. Pretty much the entire US manufacturing industry, or rather the zombie the pentagon keeps on life support, is in US standard. That means everything needs to be adjusted or replaced. That's not viable in peace times, it's even less so in times of war. Obviously this applies primarily to tanks and ships, not planes nor guns.

Part of the beauty of eg. CNC mills is they don't necessarily care what the units are.

Re: What happened to the US machine tool industry?

#167

Post by nostrademons »

pylua wrote: post #140
nostrademons wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, exactly. The challenge - alluded to in the article - is that having a functional military requires a domestic manufacturing base and machine tool industry . The U.S. generally tries to keep its arms manufacturing in-house, for obvious national security reasons. But even if you've kept the existing defense contractors alive, you lose out on the ability to repurpose the country's civilian manufacturing base if it…

That’s interesting . Sounds like it will end badly. I do think the next major war will be nuclear and not one of attrition. America is not going to fight a traditional war it can’t win.

I'm not sure, honestly. I certainly think it's a risk that the next big war starts, it goes poorly for America, and then we resort to nuclear weapons to squeeze out "victory" (i.e. everybody dies) if we're all going to die anyway.

But I think there's another possibility that most people aren't considering: disintegration. It's very common for countries to cease to exist as countries when they start losing a war, particularly a war that happens because they're moribund and falling apart internally anyway. Witness the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian Empires in WW1; the end of the Roman empire; England during the War of the Roses in the aftermath of the Hundred Years War; Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in the wake of the Cold War; etc. This also doesn't have to wait until the end of the conflict: most of the big disintegrations in WW1 happened in 1917, before the armistice, and sometimes even to "victorious" parties.

Modern nuclear weapons are very tightly controlled with PALs, so that you physically can't arm them without correct codes produced by the Pentagon/NSA bureaucracy. If that bureaucracy falls apart, it's likely they will just rot in their silos, while humanity dukes it out with relatively primitive technology because nobody wants to work together anymore.

Re: What happened to the US machine tool industry?

#170

Post by bmitc »

roenxi wrote: post #148
psychlops wrote: post #21

> A strong dollar made imports even cheaper by comparison I think that summarizes the article. It has been cheaper to import, so we do. The strong dollar policy supports some industries at the expense of others.

There are three aspects to this - cost of manufacturing in the US, cost of manufacturing + shipping in China and exchange rates. I do think the relative dollar strength is a factor, but Chinese labour was effectively free vs US labour. If someone is willing to do work for free, then the economy will give them work. The issue that the free marketeers have been railing about for approximately the last 50 years it seems…

> The real question is whether it is a bad outcome or not.

It's definitely bad. The U.S. won't even have the world's biggest navy pretty soon because of that. And there are tons of scenarios where the U.S. is economically hosed because of some international conflict. Not only does the U.S. not make things, it doesn't know how to.

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