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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

#191

Post by cogman10 »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #70

It's difficult but necessary to bring manufacturing back due to defense logistical reasons. We build about 100 SM-6 missiles a year. How long does this last against a peer? 12 hours? I don't know if tariffs are the best way to do this but some manufacturing must come back one way or another.

Tariffs work against the goal.

The only sane way to bring back manufacturing is investments like the chips act.

Think about it this way, you are a widget manufacturer trying to place a new factory. You could put it in say Canada and enjoy cheap imports and exports of your product globally. It's cheap to produce and easy to sell.

Or you could place it in the US, but now you are looking at a minimum 10% tax on importing the resources you need. On top of that, a significant portion of the world (especially the richest nations) are tacking on an addition 10% or more tax on your product because it came from the US.

Would you build a factory in the US? Maybe if you can source everything in the US and you are fine with your primary market being only the US. Otherwise, it's a bad business move.

When talking about something like semiconductors, global access is really important to be profitable. Low or no tariffs and the proximity to China and other raw resources powerhouses is a major reason why so much of the semiconductor industry is in Asia.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#192

Post by throwawaymaths »

fullshark wrote: post #56
throwawaymaths wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a problem for the markets to suss out.

They've sussed out that if you suck up to him he'll give you an exemption. Of course if you are a medium sized business you are screwed and have to wait in line, but you'll get your chance as long as you can hold on through the summer. In two years of course it won't matter.

sounds about right.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#193

Post by charamis »

pokot0 wrote: post #176
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…

Can someone explain to me why EU VAT is considered a tariff, while US sales taxes are not? They both seem a sale tax to me.

Really wondering about the same, since VAT is applied to everything too, not only imported products and services.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#194

Post by mantas »

franktankbank wrote: post #128
mantas wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on how evaluate what is valuable. E.g. here in europe a lot of people think subsidising local agriculture is not valuable and we should just import cheaper food. On the other hand, a lot of people agree that food security is kinda valuable by itself. And want similar security in more fields. In that sense yes, doing „low tech“ is valuable in the long run.

I've been thinking lately that we don't properly account for things like security. I've also been thinking lately that a lot of people have terrible ethics and are more than happy to engage in nepotism and or fraud. Don't know what to do about it personally, I just try to keep my needs small and be happy with what I've got while trying to prepare my own children to have some level of a good life.

More like common man does not think long term (and I'd say rightfully so). While democratic regime embraces populist hedonistic solutions.

Who cares about defense capabilities 10 or 50 years down the line? Lots of people in West had a good run outsourcing everything. But once there's nothing else to outsource and IP to sell... It's not gonna be pretty.

Next generations in West will have to work very hard to recover from this mess.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#195

Post by pcdoodle »

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.

I don't really see what he said as an attack. It's good to have some "small print" sprinkles with the meal.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#196

Post by ks2048 »

nomdep wrote: post #94

/s He is right, we should just crawl under a rock and die instead. Remember the JFK "We choose to go to the moon" speech? (I wonder how many of this defeatist articles are financed by China somehow).

Trump is doing his version of the JFK vision. We choose to dismantle the country and strip it for parts.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#197

Post by jccalhoun »

There are some interesting things in this but there are also some deeply cynical anti-working class stereotypes:

>You don’t have people who insist on being paid in cash so that they can keep their disability payments, while they do acrobatics on the factory floor that the non-disabled workers cannot do.

>Chinese workers much less likely to physically attack each other and their manager. They don’t take 30 minute bathroom breaks on company time. They don’t often quit because their out-of-state mother of their children discovered their new job and now receives 60% of their wages as child support. They don’t disappear because they’ve gone on meth benders. And they don’t fall asleep on a box midshift because their pay from yesterday got converted into pills.

>Sadly, what I describe above are not theoretical situations. These are things that I have experienced or seen with my own eyes.

Really? How does he know if someone is on disability? How he know many of these are not seen in China? If they aren't then why aren't they? I don't think it is as simple as work ethic.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#198

Post by seanmcdirmid »

looseyesterday wrote: post #144
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.

Police in cities will beat homeless people and get them back on buses to where their hukou is, so the homeless that remain are very good at hiding. Hostile architecture is also very common in China. But there is a lot of sub quality housing (eg in sub-basements that lack windows or good ventilation) that allow much of the working poor to at least be technically housed even in expensive cities (many restaurants also provide housing for their staff in the dining area after closing, or did at least 20 years ago). The outskirts used to have more slums than they had today in Beijing, most of the slums have moved into sub-basements as far as I can tell (called the “ant tribe”).

Crime really is much lower than it was a decade ago. People have more money, societal trust is higher. Drug use in clubs has always been a thing, but China differs from the USA in that their is no social support at all for addicts (so they either get clean with help from their family or they die).

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#199

Post by apwell23 »

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-…

just like management class in any typical corporation

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#200

Post by fellowniusmonk »

itake wrote: post #81
imbusy111 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the important question is - is it worth it? Should we be doing something more valuable instead?

IMHO, with the Big Tech boom winding down, what is more valuable for us to do? Manufacturing could prepare us for the next wave, whatever that might be.

The big tech boom is winding down?

Just because we ended the era of cheap money to try and stop runaway inflation doesn't mean the tech boom is winding down.

Look at everything that's happening with gene editing, in physics, with the jwst, with LLMs and robotics and computer vision, with alt energy sources, batteries, in material sciences, etc.

I mean this is such a myopic take. We are in just now in an era where people are now capable of finding needles in needlestacks.

You are confusing easily manipulated economic vibes that feel bad right now with the rapid approach of a complete overhaul of the human experience.

The U.S. has basically supported the strip mining of our economy by value sucking predatory investment firms. There is a reason why China have more robotics per capita in their factories than we do and it has to do with a complete failure in strategic thinking, long term planning and ultimately a hatred for our youth.

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