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Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

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Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#241

Post by tanilama »

Scoundreller wrote: post #233
tanilama wrote: post #167

I used to be a globalist myself, which I still am, but I think globalization needs its urgent refactoring. Not all industries need to be fully globalized, and it is better every country keep some share of production to itself to account for emergency situation like this virus. Globalization had trade off robustness for efficiency, it is time to scale that back.

“Centralize production/operations in China” is the opposite of globalization.

I think globalization doesn't mean equally distribution.

Globalization as how it operates, it means to assign the job to whichever country that is most cost-efficient for that part of the production.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#242

Post by beaunative »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #224
tanilama wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We never expected China to be able to manage domestic risk well Well, they have seemingly largely recovered and move their way back to normalcy, as other countries started catching fire. I think a lot of people's takeways will be different than yours: China's ability to control crisis like this scale is going to be valuable assets to global investors.

> China's ability to control crisis like this scale is going to be valuable assets to global investors. Their ability to control the crisis is useful from a public health perspective, but they're doing it by shutting down production. Look at how the markets have responded. Are you claiming investors wouldn't have been better off if these companies had invested in a more diversified supply chain? For that matter, havi…

Is there really a point towards economic production when a massive number (2~4%) of people would die?

I can see how the Wall Street would respond, it's understandable, but whoever says that somehow makes it a bad governmental response has already missed the point about what's really the end goal for the development of our society.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#243

Post by beaunative »

philtable wrote: post #185
_bxg1 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, they seem to be handling this crisis better than we are so far.

They created this crisis by silencing whistleblowers and hiding case numbers. Don't forget they banned wildlife markets during SARS, but allowed them again a year after. This is going to happen again.

I'm pretty sure when those officials decided to silence the whistleblowers, they are thinking exactly what some of the US officials are thinking right now: "Just another flu."

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#244

Post by handedness »

tanilama wrote: post #211
howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #102

"It's better to be in a bad deal with good people, then a good deal with bad people" China MFG was/is not a deal with the Chinese people. It's a deal with the CCP. Those of us who always understood this aren't surprised by any of this. We never expected China to be able to manage domestic risk well and we watched helplessly as they exported that risk abroad in the form of pollution, SARS, contaminated products and mo…

> We never expected China to be able to manage domestic risk well Well, they have seemingly largely recovered and move their way back to normalcy, as other countries started catching fire. I think a lot of people's takeways will be different than yours: China's ability to control crisis like this scale is going to be valuable assets to global investors.

If one completely ignores their dangerous obsession with secrecy and its major role in the spread of said fire to the rest of the globe, yes.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#245

Post by triceratops »

powowowow wrote: post #240
triceratops wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of now-developed countries had 100% domestic textile production 60-70 years ago and yet nobody went naked (OK not 0% obviously but very few). People owned fewer pieces of clothing overall, but everyone could still afford to be clothed. If textile manufacturing became 100% local again, local wages would also rise by a similar amount. $400 wouldn't seem unaffordable for a sweater. Or the sweater would cost corres…

Americans used to spend 15% of household income on clothing, and they got fewer items of clothing in return. I understand that you think it best if the government force me to support my inefficient local textile manufacturer, my local cotton mill, and my local cotton grower. However I don't think that's best.

I don't have an opinion on the subject frankly. There are plus and minus sides to both approaches. I was just pointing out the fallacy of the unaffordable "$400 sweater".

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#246

Post by beaunative »

allovernow wrote: post #228
beaunative wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The virus can still kill you no matter how 'free' you feel you are. I'm pretty sure dead people are much more freer than us as they don't have to think about any of these non-sense.

You're missing the point. The freedom may make the virus less likely to spread as information about it is easier to come by. The more people know and the sooner, the better off we all are.

I know where you're coming from, but we don't live in a world where everyone CAN make seasoned decisions based on all these information available, they mostly just listen to auhtories of their choice maybe it's because of education, time or intelligence I don't know. And in this case your neighbor's choice hurt you regardless what your choice is. Just think about how many parents still refuse vacination for kids. Maybe on a college campus this could be true, but outside of it? I don't think so.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#247

Post by barbecue_sauce »

neaden wrote: post #48
barbecue_sauce wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I guess they import the beans, manufacture the tofu, then ship it back to us? Sounds inefficient, though I'm not sure how much demand there is for a large-scale domestic tofu manufacturing industry in the US.

US Tofu is by and large for animal feed or oil, not tofu.

Soy, you mean?

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#248

Post by dumbfoundded »

oarabbus_ wrote: post #206
dumbfoundded wrote: post #18

This has happened to my company and a few others I know. We have about $15K of packaging stuck in China. If this is doing anything (to me personally), it's making me reconsider shifting more of the supply-chain to the US. In many cases, the prices aren't really that different.

> In many cases, the prices aren't really that different. What industry are you in? If you mean China isn't that different than [Vietnam/India/Mexico/etc] then I can see it. I used to work in Medical Devices for 5 years, and the cost of manufacturing something abroad (one company had several plans in Mexico) was astronomically lower than manufacturing in the USA.

I buy mostly paper and plastic packaging. When factoring in tariffs and shipping costs, it's generally cheaper in China like 70% of the time and there are more suppliers in China (so it's easier to find them on Alibaba). It's generally harder to find the American suppliers and there's a wider variance in price. It could be there are two American options and 25 Chinese options. One American company could be the cheapest and the other could be the most expensive. The Chinese companies tend to have lower variance in pricing.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#249

Post by unityByFreedom »

mullingitover wrote: post #220
tanilama wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We never expected China to be able to manage domestic risk well Well, they have seemingly largely recovered and move their way back to normalcy, as other countries started catching fire. I think a lot of people's takeways will be different than yours: China's ability to control crisis like this scale is going to be valuable assets to global investors.

> Well, they have seemingly largely recovered and move their way back to normalcy, as other countries started catching fire. It's not time to start popping champagne bottles in China quite yet. They have a tiger by the tail. The country is shut down, and as they start rolling back travel restrictions it could easily blow up again. They still have well over a billion people who are vulnerable. They just tried rolling…

Plus who knows if the current numbers from China are accurate. They could still be underreporting as the world focuses elsewhere, we only have the CCP to go by.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#250

Post by unityByFreedom »

_bxg1 wrote: post #189
philtable wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They created this crisis by silencing whistleblowers and hiding case numbers. Don't forget they banned wildlife markets during SARS, but allowed them again a year after. This is going to happen again.

Sure, but the U.S. is actively discouraging/thwarting testing efforts, because ~the economy~. And our chief executive is disseminating misinformation (whether out of ignorance or ulterior motives is unclear). I'm not saying China did a great job. But they seem to have gotten a handle on things at least, meanwhile we've yet to even really start preparing. And we have the advantage of hindsight, which they didn't have.

> they seem to have gotten a handle on things at least

According to the Chinese communist party.

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