The US has become engineering/design while manufacturing is overseas. Broad stereotype, but I hope this is an opportunity for the US to recognize that manufacturing may actually be an issue of national sovereignty.
The flip-side of globalization is there are unlikely to be any more large-scale conventional or NBC wars (only proxy, cyber and economic wars) because of extreme economic interdependency.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_...
[2] https://www.industryweek.com/the-economy/competitiveness/med...
- For products containing electronics: short of the electrical components themselves, there is a healthy amount of US electronics+mechanical manufacturing, but it's more geared for lower-volume higher-margin type stuff (think for energy / agriculture / etc.)
- IIRC having spoken to someone at Jabil a few years ago, vague recollection of being told that the US is the largest manufacturer of high volume plastic goods (as well as other products using automated processes). Not so much enclosures for consumer electronics, but rather stuff like shampoo bottles, and that sort of tooling is done here in the US.
- Just keep in mind that manufacturing has a broader scope than what it seems you're implying. Not all manufactured goods involve electronics or injection molding.
And lots of the tooling for this high volume plastic bottles, lids, etc is made in Germany. Consensus is Germans make best tools for this volume (100’s of millions of parts per year)
Yeah, here's one: protectionist tariffs. I once looked into what it would cost to make a pair of pants in the US instead of China. The difference isn't that large; something like an extra dollar goes to shareholders instead of workers. You can see it in the actual list prices of jeans made in China[1] versus USA[2]. They're .... about the same. This same calculation is done in lots of different places: MBA types want that extra dollar to go to shareholders. Well, if they're not allowed to do so, everything works just fine.
[1]https://www.levi.com/US/en_US/sale/c/levi_clothing_sale_us
[2] https://www.allamericanclothing.com/made-in-usa/jeans.html
So basically work smarter than harder or cheaper. The way to compete with the Chinese is through better ideas.
The idea that automation means people can't or don't work is a fallicy.
When Woodrow Wilson talked about making the world safe for democracy, the flip side of that is that democracy requires safety and security. We liberal democratic nations are capable of playing nice with one another. We will have normal rivalries. But China cannot play nice.
We need to transition away from trade with China, under MFN status.
After this pandemics is over I think we'll know better what "no other solutions that wouldn't sink the US economy" actually means. I suspect that behind the typical talk about sinking "the US economy" is not what it appears to be, especially if one talks about "capitalism" versus others.
Namely, since a some decades ago both China and Russia are technically capitalistic societies. Therefore I interpret the statements only as "will our empire continue to be the empire." The empire is kept primarily with the arms, and they aren't going away, whatever changes.