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Comment by tus88 | Hacker News Reader

> This is widely seen as an unlikely scenario because of the serious consequences.

Which are what exactly?

The token 12-18 month international boycott and sanctions that came after Tiananmen. America was most reluctant and one of the first to cave back to business as usual.

Now that we're seeing some of the downsides of globalisation, perhaps the world community could hold its nerve longer. Or perhaps not as that's not a profit making stance.

It could provide the motive to begin a(an even more?) massive automation push within the U.S. That could have long-term negative consequences for China.

I don’t know how it is in the US. But Kuka is at least owned by China, iirc.

Kuka is owned by the Chinese company Midea Group according to wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KUKA

A total trade war between the US/Europe and China could mean China being dropped out of the WTO and then some of its Western-owned entities to be nationalized by the countries involved. I know that pretty much nothing like this has happened on such a great scale, but there’s always a first.

These robots are commodities. The value in automation is not in the robotic systems themselves but the tooling, processes and fixtures of the factory. These are usually locally (or nationally) sourced. With a bit of work you could pretty much take out any Kuka robot, install a comparable ABB robot or Fanuc and go on with production.

(source - I designed a robotic manufacturing plant for consumer electronics and bought dozens of Kuka robots)

I still hate the german government for allowing that to happen

It's no fun seeing your country's best companies being snatched up by Chinese companies, which your country's companies can't even consider buying. Same with Supercell although it went with Softbank as intermediary buyer. Oh well. At least they don't funnel their profits with tax schemes. But I guess it's hard to resist temptation of selling when they come with truckloads of money. We are all humans after all.

> Now that we're seeing some of the downsides of globalisation, perhaps the world community could hold its nerve longer.

The problem is that decades of globalization have all but wrecked domestic manufacture of many goods that China provides - not just cheap plastic toys but basically anything that requires lots of human assembly. A part of electronics manufacture could probably be picked up by Vietnam, Japan and South Korea but that's it, the world has shifted to China too much.

In the long term it might be a sane option for the Western world to see Africa as more than just a dumping ground for excess food/clothing "donations" or a source for stealing fish, but that would require politicians with more long term vision than "how do I get reelected"...

Even if limited to a 1 to 1.5 year(s) sanctions that would be far more damaging now than it was in 1989 due to fixed costs and dependencies.

The most damaging aspect of the sanctions would be giving time for a competition to establish itself again while the outsourcing destination was unavailable - even if it takes the form of going to India instead of China.

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