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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

#161

Post by xnorswap »

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…

> 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.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#162

Post by FirmwareBurner »

MisterTea wrote: post #96
PaulKeeble wrote: post #9

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 pipe…

> 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.

It wasn't just the USA, the entire west collectively.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#163

Post by like_any_other »

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…

> 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.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#164

Post by throwawaymaths »

cbg0 wrote: post #55
throwawaymaths wrote: post #16

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.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#165

Post by esafak »

Teever wrote: post #147
tokioyoyo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Ta…

That is not an existential issue; many former hegemons, such as the United Kingdom, continue to exist. Coalitions exist to ward off hegemons.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#166

Post by kjkjadksj »

csense wrote: post #46

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 arti…

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.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#167

Post by pjc50 »

tmpz22 wrote: post #100
knowaveragejoe wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#168

Post by tonyedgecombe »

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?

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.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#169

Post by seanmcdirmid »

pjc50 wrote: post #159
margorczynski wrote: post #133

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.

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.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#170

Post by bparsons »

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…

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.

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