331–340 of 672 posts
https://www.youtube.com/@wgowshipping
He pointed out that these stats are week on week so tend to understate how big the drop really is on a more long term scale
[not affiliated, just like the channel]
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I disagree: I think it's a decent summary and it's convenient to be able to read it inline with the rest of the discussion without having to go fiddle with some LLM. And I don't think everyone has an LLM just sitting around that can summarize a video from a link. Having wasted 10 minutes of my life watching the video, it's also an accurate summary - "no, shipping has not stopped completely". I would not be happy if t…
Better yet, let’s just add LLM summaries of all articles and links on Hacker News directly. Now I never have to read the linked article.
With a written article I can read a bit at the beginning, skim the contents and still get an idea of what it's about and decide whether I want to read more.
Videos are much more difficult to skim or glance over and the beginning is often some boring intro or music or some dudes asking each other how they've been or something equally wasteful of my time.
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> I am very much on the fence on this one. I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, based on having been in manufacturing across various industries for over thirty years, that the US and Europe have been on a path to loose nearly all manufacturing capacity within ten years, maybe twenty at best. I've now been around long enough to remember people saying this 10-20 years ago. Seems to be plenty of manufacturing st…
> I've now been around long enough to remember people saying this 10-20 years ago. Seems to be plenty of manufacturing still happening. “Plenty” but still less overall than 10-20 years ago, 30, 40, 50 years ago. There’s a quite clear trend to zero here.
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Empty shelves are just one of the symptoms. The real pain will come from companies having to deal with increased taxes (that's what tariffs are) for Chinese components, decreased exports (counter tariffs, anti US sentiments), etc. and then their follow up to that would be using tools like layoffs, price increases, etc. Some of those companies might have to close doors and go bankrupt. If that happens a lot you get th…
I am very much on the fence on this one. I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, based on having been in manufacturing across various industries for over thirty years, that the US and Europe have been on a path to loose nearly all manufacturing capacity within ten years, maybe twenty at best. How do we compare the pain (and yes, some destruction) that we have to endure today against the devastation that is clear…
Let's look at what an actual domestic manufacturer has to say about tariffs[1]?
Oh, looks bad! Turns out, manufacturers import stuff, add value to it, and sell it for more money!
Hopefully we'll get more cast iron plants in Cape Cod. I'm off to the mill!
[1]https://www.vcstar.com/story/news/local/2025/04/09/trump-tar...
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I both agree and have been worried that this is overly reductive. As far as I can tell, literally nothing that I buy regularly is directly sourced from China. Or anywhere other than the US & neighboring countries. The vast majority of my groceries are locally sourced. And the vast majority of the rest come from expected regions, for instance San Marzano tomatoes from Italy. I do not regularly buy clothes, children's…
Where do the farmers that grow your food get their fertilizer and fuel from? Or the electronics and hydraulics in their tractors?
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Is there a sense of what products are actually at risk of not being in stock?
A lot of packaging is sourced from China. Things that wouldn't otherwise be a problem will become a problem. Potentially that includes bottles, tins, plastic food packaging, niche carboard boxes. Imports from China are ~40% of all US imports. Even a 10% drop would be difficult, and at current levels it's going to be more than that.
You mean 14%?
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/imports-by-countr...
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> I've now been around long enough to remember people saying this 10-20 years ago. Seems to be plenty of manufacturing still happening. “Plenty” but still less overall than 10-20 years ago, 30, 40, 50 years ago. There’s a quite clear trend to zero here.
This graph of US manufacturing output in gross dollars suggests otherwise: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/uni... If you could explain why it’s trending to zero when the dollar value of American manufacturing outputs keeps rising, I’d appreciate it. There are plenty of other charts that contradict you on the St Louis Fed FRED website.
So, not inflation adjusted. Also doesn't capture the mix of what's being produced, i.e., a shift towards only manufacturing high value items versus being more broadly diversified and manufacturing things along a range of price points. In other words, a complete hollowing out of our manufacturing base.
Your same link shows $1.38T in 1997. Which is $2.77T today. In other words, DOWN in inflation adjusted terms from nearly 30 years ago.
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Which takes guns. And back at square 1.
I don’t know that it takes guns. If we moved to, say, ranked-choice voting and a multi-party system, the more extreme elements of our country would probably be sidelined.
H.R.3040 - To prohibit the use of ranked choice voting in elections for Federal office.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/3040
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> I've now been around long enough to remember people saying this 10-20 years ago. Seems to be plenty of manufacturing still happening. “Plenty” but still less overall than 10-20 years ago, 30, 40, 50 years ago. There’s a quite clear trend to zero here.
Declining absolutely does not mean “clear trend to zero”. There are a great many things which decline for a long time, but have a lower limit.
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Everyone here is worried about it from the American side, but China has motivation to settle this too, so they can continue to sell their enshitified plastic crap. It's not like most other wealthy countries want it, at least not any more than they are already buying.
No, China doesn’t need us at all. They are going to come out of this without a scratch. Everyone is getting this equation wrong.