Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

molsonhart.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 1001 posts

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#311

Post by 42772827 »

pjc50 wrote: post #307
42772827 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American Empire never existed, because it never could. The US made the explicit decision not to occupy the defeated forces after WWII, save for strategic forces in place to protect the interests of the host countries. The US opened its market (the only market of size left and still the largest consumer bases in the world, by far) with no tariffs. What the US got in return was cheap goods and a whole lot of debt.…

> The American Empire never existed, because it never could This theory doesn't really explain what was going on at tremendous expense in Iraq, Afghanistan or even all those years ago in Vietnam. If there is a decline, I expect it to be in internal security and the transition from high-trust to low-trust society.

It explains it precisely. The United States is a maritime power. It has never had the capability to maintain longterm occupation the way the Soviets or Ottomans did.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#312

Post by bluGill »

bilbo0s wrote: post #234
bluGill wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would act against China - because China is making political moves that I do not like. (they are supporting Russia in Ukraine, they are building up to invade Taiwan, they are supporting terror in the middle east...) By acting against China that means I applaud moving manufacturing to Vietnam. I want to help Botswana grow - and I wish there were more countries in Africa I could name that seem to be on a good path (I…

By acting against China that means I applaud moving manufacturing to Vietnam and last time I brought up Africa someone from there said their country was an exception Making what are essentially strategic decisions in this "shoot from the hip" fashion is what lands us repeatedly in these situations. By way of illustration, let me try one from the 1980's out on you: "By acting against Iran that means I applaud men like…

It probably was the best option available at the time.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#313

Post by dv_dt »

Teever wrote: post #271
esafak wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The UK continues to exist because it was replaced by a democratic American hegemony. If an authoritarian country like China achieves hegemony the continued existence of democracy is at risk. I want to live in a democratic world, not an authoritarian one. America's democracy is a flawed one but of the two choices -- American hegemony or Chinese hegemony it is the best path to a flourishing global liberal democracy. Ca…

France and Spain continue to exist and they were former hegemons. China has stably existed with long periods of turning inwards after more regional hedgemony.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#314

Post by ben_w »

krapp wrote: post #153
franktankbank wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada and the US are long time allies and should be able to benefit from eachother without much hesitation. China is an adversary, big difference in posture.

Canada and the US are no longer allies.

Unfortunately it's impossible to tell if they are de facto allies, because on the one hand they very much still are de jure still allies, and on the other all the stuff Trump is saying and doing.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#315

Post by rickdeckard »

digikata wrote: post #283
rickdeckard wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weird part for me is this: While the economy was evolving, Production was offshored from US for cost-reasons, but also in part to focus on higher-skill labor in US, delegating the low-skill mass-production to China. Over time, China also developed mid/high level skills, complemented their low-skill production offering with it and now competes in new industries, new tech, etc. So...to compete with China, the count…

I think the mistake here is the model of low-skill/high-skill labor is not a useful distinction. Manufacturing is high skill period, however there are low-infrastructure and high-infrastructure products and factories. The labor wages themselves are a factor, but an increasingly minor factor in product costs. By bypassing investment in US manufacturing skills and infra, the US sat itself on the sidelines for the abili…

Not disagreeing with you, but isn't the issue that the US stopped investing in the skills and infra which made mass-production low-skill in the first place?

Instead, the offshore-destinations kept offering more and more services in the value-chain, until the entire skillset to actually create the low-skill labor processes to offshore was replaced with "let the offshore company manage".

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#316

Post by red_admiral »

_bin_ wrote: post #306
taylodl wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, manufacturing in America is up. The 2008 crises dealt a blow, but manufacturing has been building-back. I don't think people realize how many high-value items are made in the United States. Let the East Asians make our mass-consumer junk while we focus on the high-value stuff. Just goes to show the administration isn't working with facts and doing the hard-nosed analysis required to drive effective policy.…

The administration is probably aware of this and doesn't care. A huge portion of his base were rust belt voters who want what are essentially handouts, which trump intends to achieve by forcing the American consumer to pay $30/hour for el cheapo goods that could be made elsewhere and have no tangible security impact. You're mistaking the rhetoric he uses to sell this idiocy to the rest of the country for a good-faith…

> and have no tangible security impact

I would not object to a tariff on shitty IoT devices, with the level determined by things like if the default password is "admin".

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#317

Post by sightbroke »

I am by no means an export on manufacturing, nor international trade, economics, or virtually anything relevant to manufacturing. Just a layman here.

Observationally I fear there is a lack of nuance in discussing "bringing back manufacturing" (really re-expanding) to the U.S.

I fear the lack of nuance is due to bias based on not liking the guy in the red tie or the other guy that's in a blue tie so there's just blinders about whether or not a particular policy will achieve a particular stated goal.

The next thing I see is it just lumping manufacturing all into one bucket.

Take manufacturing smartphones. Because the U.S. doesn't assemble iPhones the U.S. appears to be bad at manufacturing? No, I think it's just not good at assembling iPhones.

Just looking at numbers, sure the U.S. steel production is dwarfed by China but globally it's still a major producer. And there's no discussion of quality.

Look at oil & gas. I'm pretty sure the U.S. both produces the raw material and refined product at a significant amount globally.

Plastic manufacturing. I toured a bottle manufacturing plant last summer. It's primary a customer was Limited Brands (Victoria Secret)

It built molds. It upgraded factory equipment roughly every 8 years (increasing production & reducing labor costs). Why was it able to manufacturer bottles in the U.S. even it's selling at a higher price? Because it's primary customer was essentially down the street. That is, apparently the cost to not import across the globe more than offset the cost to manufacture here.

I understand that's just an example and I'm trusting the information from that company was reliable.

But first I think we need to be honest about how much manufacturing is here and what type. Then discuss which policies are likely to achieve goals we may have in mind.

I think there's merit to manufacturing semiconductors and batteries here. But we need to also be aware that while manufacturing may bring jobs, an increasing amount of labor will be automated.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#318

Post by wormlord »

42772827 wrote: post #311
pjc50 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The American Empire never existed, because it never could This theory doesn't really explain what was going on at tremendous expense in Iraq, Afghanistan or even all those years ago in Vietnam. If there is a decline, I expect it to be in internal security and the transition from high-trust to low-trust society.

It explains it precisely. The United States is a maritime power. It has never had the capability to maintain longterm occupation the way the Soviets or Ottomans did.

You realize that an Empire does not need to be configured the exact same way as the Roman Empire, right? A combination of soft power, clandestine operations, and targeted military intervention is more resource-effective than a constant occupation, and should still be considered an empire.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#319

Post by PaulKeeble »

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.

They saw extra profit $ and didn't consider the consequences. I suspect there was a bit of racism involved where they thought the Chinese would never learn to go from manufacturer to designing products nor master the entire pipeline and end up competing with them in the domestic market. China obviously did because they funded engineering education heavily and learnt all they needed to and surpassed the companies they built for some time ago.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#320

Post by like_any_other »

taylodl wrote: post #289
like_any_other wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Thing is, manufacturing in America is up. The 2008 crises dealt a blow, but manufacturing has been building-back. I don't think people realize how many high-value items are made in the United States. Let the East Asians make our mass-consumer junk while we focus on the high-value stuff. Just goes to show the administration isn't working with facts and doing the hard-nosed analysis required to drive effective policy.…

> Thing is, manufacturing in America is up.

I'm looking at the first chart, "Manufacturing Sector: Real Sectoral Output for All Workers" [1]. It grew until Q2 2000, when it was at 97.2. In Q4 2024 it was at 98.6. And let's not ignore how almost all leading semiconductor manufacturing (which are in and required for nearly everything) has moved to East Asia.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS

Post reply on HN