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

Microsoft Closes US Surface Factory, Moves Production to China

extremetech.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–45 of 45 posts

Re: Microsoft Closes US Surface Factory, Moves Production to China

#41

Post by vvanders »

throwaway9870 wrote: post #39
vvanders wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you're talking about RLE and Gators as I was only talking about compact tractors. You could say the same think about Kubota as the assemble their B/BX models in the US(they however don't outsource the engine). There's nothing wrong with sourcing an engine/design from another company, however if you do that's definitely not something made completely in America. JD likes to play this up heavily in their ma…

A Deere X700, which is made in Horicon, is a Deere engineers in Augusta design their current CUTS, they are built there and tested there. Yes, they use parts from many suppliers.

Ah, I see we're going to argue semantics here.

You can get a PTO and 3-point on a telehandler, doesn't make it a tractor. What you're talking about there is a riding lawn mower.

I also didn't say that there's any company that makes all their parts in-house. Just that you can't find one made in America despite a fair bit of advertising that leans that way.

I have a fair idea of what I'm talking about. On our property we have a Ferguson TE-20(a tractor that was all made in one country), Ford 1500(which is a joint venture between New Holland, Shibaru and licensed by Ford) and a Kubota L4760(in-house engine development).

Re: Microsoft Closes US Surface Factory, Moves Production to China

#42

Post by sct202 »

jjoonathan wrote: post #5
rayiner wrote: post #2

> Microsoft’s decision to shift Surface Hub manufacturing to China highlights the difficulty in bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States. It’s not just a question of opening a factory and hiring employees. There are supply line considerations, source costs, and the simple fact that American companies now produce many more products with far fewer employees than they used to require in the 1970s, thanks to…

Yep. Also, > American companies now produce many more products with far fewer employees PSA: You may have heard that American manufacturing is stronger than ever, it has just become automated. This story is largely result of funny accounting. https://qz.com/1269172/the-epic-mistake-about-manufacturing-...

It's not really funny accounting when dollars is a relatively normal unit of measure. It's that if you choose to measure in dollars output is high, but if you were to measure in terms of pounds or cubic volume it's dropped.

Re: Microsoft Closes US Surface Factory, Moves Production to China

#43

Post by jjoonathan »

sct202 wrote: post #42
jjoonathan wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Also, > American companies now produce many more products with far fewer employees PSA: You may have heard that American manufacturing is stronger than ever, it has just become automated. This story is largely result of funny accounting. https://qz.com/1269172/the-epic-mistake-about-manufacturing-...

It's not really funny accounting when dollars is a relatively normal unit of measure. It's that if you choose to measure in dollars output is high, but if you were to measure in terms of pounds or cubic volume it's dropped.

No, that's not at all the objection in the link.

The "strong USA manufacturing" narrative took Intel's profits, multiplied them up by Moore's law, and used the result to hide the fact that everything else has imploded.

Re: Microsoft Closes US Surface Factory, Moves Production to China

#44

Post by nailer »

nailer wrote: post #35

The documentary The Thirteenth mentions Microsoft (among many other companies) US uses prison labour - which allows the company to pay workers a pittance which is viewed as being a type of exploitation. After this was exposed, a few similar companies (Victoria's Secret) stopped doing this. Has Microsoft?

Reference: https://www.gamespot.com/forums/offtopic-discussion-31415927...

Re: Microsoft Closes US Surface Factory, Moves Production to China

#45

Post by greglindahl »

pfranz wrote: post #37
ahartmetz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which ones? Screen, flash memory, CPU, DRAM, battery come to mind. All of these product types are also manufactured in the US, but not the majority of the output.

I think they're referring to a graph similar to this I've seen over the years (bottom of the page) https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2014/05/22/china-a... The ones I've seen never show the US as the biggest slice, but China is always a sliver and the chart is usually dominated by Germany, South Korea, and Japan.

Exactly. And that analysis is of components, so it leaves out the value of ecosystem, software, and Apple’s cpu and SoC design groups, which is bigger than all of the components combined.
Post reply on HN