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America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

molsonhart.com

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Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#141

Post by bavell »

rkozik1989 wrote: post #63
vishnugupta wrote: post #19

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.

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 automa…

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.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#142

Post by toomuchtodo »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #84
pjc50 wrote: post #35

> 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 a…

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…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_(psychology)#Burst

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#143

Post by kelseyfrog »

asdajksah2123 wrote: post #109

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 s…

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.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#144

Post by looseyesterday »

pjc50 wrote: post #35

> 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 a…

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.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#145

Post by toomuchtodo »

jghn wrote: post #117

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-…

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-...

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#146

Post by smcl »

npiano wrote: post #91
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #38

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.

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?

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

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#147

Post by Teever »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #84
pjc50 wrote: post #35

> 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 a…

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…

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...

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#148

Post by ks2048 »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #124

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.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#149

Post by pjc50 »

npiano wrote: post #91
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #38

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.

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?

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.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#150

Post by wormlord »

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.

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