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Suspension of inbound parcels from China and Hong Kong

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Re: Suspension of inbound parcels from China and Hong Kong

#411

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

elfbargpt wrote: post #342
vaccineai wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is weak, its current economic engines of real estate and internal consumption has failed. It is currently heavily dependent on export, of which, sanctions and tariffs on China would wreck their economy.

They account for 30% of global manufacturing, have the second largest GDP (largest GDP PPP), and are rapidly developing in the tech sector. Not weak by any means

China would have a hard time economically without being able to sell to the US. But it's been developing markets and economies in Rest of World, especially Africa. And its internal market is huge.

Meanwhile this is a thread about the US tech and retail sectors being unable to survive at all without imports from China.

Turns out offshoring was one of the most self-harmingly stupid decisions in US economic history.

Still - at least it prevented worker unionisation. So that was such a win for corporate America.

Re: Suspension of inbound parcels from China and Hong Kong

#412

Post by mschuster91 »

dtquad wrote: post #120
reaperman wrote: post #72

This is going to utterly fuck so many R&D projects at my company. We actually do large-scale manufacturing of industrial valves in the USA. But a lot of our prototyping involves working with Chinese suppliers and getting small batches of samples / prototypes / revisions sent in packages on airplanes. I literally do not know how the electrical and firmware engineers will do their jobs now if we cannot receive packages…

>I literally do not know how the electrical and firmware engineers will do their jobs now if we cannot receive packages from China As a software engineer who works closely with electrical and firmware engineers I know what you are saying is completely true. The question is how did we let it go this far? Why has there never been serious Western alternatives to JLCPCB, PCBWay, JLCCNC etc.? Has anyone asked themselves h…

> Why has there never been serious Western alternatives to JLCPCB, PCBWay, JLCCNC etc.?

We have our own PCB shops but they are like double or quadruple the price of Chinese shops because of labor costs and a lack of investment capital to introduce automation.

> Has anyone asked themselves how these Chinese firms are so cheap?

As said, extremely low labor costs plus ecosystem efficiencies. When the shop making capacitors by the container load is one block away there's barely any handling effort or stockpiling required, whereas domestic Western shops have to keep much more stockpiles.

Re: Suspension of inbound parcels from China and Hong Kong

#413

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

anavat wrote: post #406
forgetfreeman wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great for who's economic growth? As in, when staring at the graph of GDP vs wages plotted over the last 50 years, that big-ass pie slice that everyone's excited about? That appears to have ended up in roughly 800 people's pockets. Meanwhile even mention domestic manufacturing in the country that basically invented consumer electronics and kazoo music starts playing in the background. grits teeth We knew NAFTA was bul…

For humanity? It is the same reason most of us don't grow our food or make our shoes. Specialization makes a lot of sense. Western tech wouldn't have been able to grow as fast if electronics manufacturing were not concentrated in China. It is (was?) a win-win.

One of those "wins" was based entirely on toxic wealth hoarding by financial elites, which is why we are we are, with the flailing remains of a US government taking a hatchet to science and education while infrastructure crumbles around it, and climate change alternately floods and burns prime real estate.

So in reality, not so much.

Re: Suspension of inbound parcels from China and Hong Kong

#414

Post by HPsquared »

eru wrote: post #404
grumpy-de-sre wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression, having visited the place, is that the Chinese laborers just work ridiculously hard. Part of this is due to culture and very heavy handed management, part of this due to the working class seeing huge returns on their labor (wealth has grown exponentially in their own lifetimes).

Going a bit on a tangent: I grew up in Europe, but am now living in Singapore. It's interesting: despite all the PRC's advances and progress in the last few decades, they are still the poorest Chinese-majority country. You can go even wider, and look at countries with sizeable Chinese minorities, like Malaysia or Thailand, and I think you will find that the average ethnic Chinese person there also makes more than the…

Similarly the UK is pretty much the poorest Anglo country. It seems to be a pattern where the most ambitious/productive types "boil off" to where there is more opportunity. I suspect this pattern is reflected with most diaspora groups.

Re: Suspension of inbound parcels from China and Hong Kong

#415

Post by amarcheschi »

catherd wrote: post #307
reaperman wrote: post #72

This is going to utterly fuck so many R&D projects at my company. We actually do large-scale manufacturing of industrial valves in the USA. But a lot of our prototyping involves working with Chinese suppliers and getting small batches of samples / prototypes / revisions sent in packages on airplanes. I literally do not know how the electrical and firmware engineers will do their jobs now if we cannot receive packages…

Only if "utterly fucked" somehow means you can still pay a bit more to DHL and get packages even faster than USPS. Your fast prototypes coming by air freight likely aren't routed through USPS at all unless it's the last leg of a consolidated shipment that's broken apart once it reaches the US. Those would be using some other carrier to get them from China to the US and then USPS only inside the US. USPS all the way f…

DHL hk announced they stopped shipping to us, except for letters

Re: Suspension of inbound parcels from China and Hong Kong

#416

Post by mschuster91 »

ZaoLahma wrote: post #367
stonogo wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only team you need in the EU is someone to peel shipping labels off inbound parcels and ship them on to the US.

That's a fantastic way to get the attention of and end up getting the stick from the US, so I think (hope) the EU would have mechanisms in place to quickly shut down tariff evasion strategies that would involve just relabeling goods.

We don't even have that in place for illegal Russian oil exports or imports of stuff they use to make rockets to shoot at Ukraine with.

Re: Suspension of inbound parcels from China and Hong Kong

#417

Post by tristor »

reaperman wrote: post #235
nico wrote: post #93

The speed at which all of this is happening is astounding Is this all improvised or was there a big list of stuff to do ahead of time? If the latter, does anyone have a copy of that list? Alternatively, is anyone keeping track of what's already been done so far?

This is (probably?) related to the de minimis exemption, so here is the section of Project 2025 which provides bullet points for dealing with that: - Stop Communist China’s abuse of the so-called de minimis exemption, which allows it to evade the tariffs for products valued at less than $800. - Reinvigorate and expand the DHS crackdown on the CCP’s use of e-sellers (including third-party sellers) and the shippers and…

Honestly, most of this doesn't sound like a bad idea from a strategic perspective, although there will be a lot of pain along the way. Once we get down towards the bottom of the list, there are some items which are almost guaranteed to be unconstitutional, or are a bit ridiculous, but in general the US and the West in general is very over-reliant on Chinese manufactured goods and this puts at a strategic disadvantage as China becomes a more serious geopolitical adversary, reducing or eliminating that reliance is just good sense.

Re: Suspension of inbound parcels from China and Hong Kong

#418

Post by numpad0 »

grumpy-de-sre wrote: post #381
eru wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese labour isn't that cheap anymore. Chinese wages are higher than those in Mexico for example.

My impression, having visited the place, is that the Chinese laborers just work ridiculously hard. Part of this is due to culture and very heavy handed management, part of this due to the working class seeing huge returns on their labor (wealth has grown exponentially in their own lifetimes).

Don't know about China specifically, but "working ridiculously hard" is just "working" if everyone around is doing the same and you had no points of comparison.

If you've seen enough people graduating into non-working class, or you have had yourself, that changes your perspective.

Re: Suspension of inbound parcels from China and Hong Kong

#420

Post by ben_w »

HPsquared wrote: post #408
ben_w wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You left out the part about dormitories full of modern-day slaves, complete with nets so they don't leap to their deaths. Generally this is frowned upon in the West. Frowned upon, but you (the US) do have them: https://www.goldengate.org/district/district-projects/suicid... Seen them here in Germany, too: https://maps.app.goo.gl/vDSL4HeQrLLfYU2m7

I don't get all the hubbub about the nets. Classic example of trying to do something good (save lives) and getting attacked for it. Compare to barriers around train/subway platforms, nets or high barriers on bridges. All sorts of things. It's pretty much a "large number of people living around tall structures" thing.

When I'm feeling positive about humanity, I think it's a failure of comprehension of the scale of Foxconn. The company is about the size (both population and economic output) of a small country all by itself, and people are bad at imagining things on that scale.

When I'm feeling negative, a Tom Gauld cartoon comes to mind: https://old.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/2xljaz/us_vs_them/

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