Comment by coolso | Hacker News Reader

Comment by coolso | Hacker News Reader

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It feels like everyone is trying real hard to come up with solutions that just continue the status quo of having all of our goods produced in China.

Just 20-25 years ago we were still making a lot of things in the US. But the American worker, and economy, was sold out to cheap, high-polluting, IP-stealing, yes-lets-ship-it-2000-miles-instead-of-making-it-in-the-US Chinese labor and manufacturing at the benefit of the CCP but everyone else’s expense.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. This wasn’t even a direct supply chain disruption and it’s hitting us hard. Imagine if we ever had one, and there’s no evidence to suggest we won’t again. We’re dependent on… China of all places for everything?

Why can’t we focus our brainstorming sessions on bringing manufacturing back to the USA? Why is this not a major talking point? Americans have been polled and across the aisle people prefer made in the USA.

Let the CCP take care of its own people. It certainly thinks it’s system is the right way.

It’s madness and it’s sad. Every corporation and politician that had a hand in this ought to be ashamed. Every media outlet that ignores it ought to be ashamed too.

>across the aisle people prefer made in the USA.

They may say this, but when push comes to shove, people simply don't buy a lot of consumer goods that are made here.

That’s because right now, it’s significantly more expensive. But given more equal pricing, most people would of course buy USA-made goods.

Right now the system is destroyed so of course made in the USA is going to be significantly more expensive until the system can be resurrected.

But I assure you a supply chain disruption will be significantly more costly to society and not just financially.

Well, right now, "expensive but I can get it" beats "cheaper but sitting on a boat outside Long Beach". Problem is, nobody thinks this is going to last long enough for everyone to invest in US manufacturing.

People will act to maximize their short term benefits vs costs. They’ll buy American made, Union made, imported, whatever is cheapest. Of course at the margins some people will choose (place value on) one source or another, but one cannot expect the larger part of the population to act against their immediate incentives to achieve a desirable social outcome.

> Why is this not a major talking point?

because we live in a globalised world. your phone would cost 10x what it costs now if you moved production to the US. that would mean lots of people without phones, so a much smaller economy. no one wants that.

> Americans have been polled

ah, polls :)

> across the aisle people prefer made in the USA

as a European, i have always associated American made with low quality, cheaply made, bad taste and expensive. American products are to be avoided at all times. this has been the case for decades and decades, before the move to China. at least now even American companies realised this and moved production to far superior Chinese manufacturers.

>at least now even American companies realised this and moved production to far superior Chinese manufacturers.

This sounds like it needs a /s.

For one thing, the transfer of American manufacturing to China happened a long time ago for many common items. The quality of the items that we received here in the US from these Chinese producers has never reached the previous level for some products.

I have bought and used products from all over the world too. Steel and iron tools from China and India frequently are not tempered correctly so they fail, sometimes on the first use. I learned a long time ago that the best tools for serious, everyday usage and longevity - those things you buy once and use forever - are old American-made tools. Once the brands sold out and moved production to China, quality dropped significantly and has not recovered.

What you may be seeing is the case where China ships its highest quality tools, parts, etc to your country, whatever that is, because after doing market research to understand how to accomplish market penetration, they found that people in your country would not compromise on quality/price/whatever and so they know that their cheap-ass junk and production seconds need to go to a less-sensitive market like the US, where items with the same functionality can be found at widely variable prices and no matter the price - there will be a buyer. That condition may not exist in your country.

The operative phrase in any company's financials is "for the (your country name here) market" which indicates that someone at that company had the responsibility of researching buyer habits and expectations in that country so that any product launches would be more likely to succeed.

> as a European, i have always associated American made with low quality, cheaply made, bad taste and expensive. American products are to be avoided at all times.

What informs that viewpoint? It’s really foreign to any perception I’ve ever heard from anyone or experienced myself.

weird. i don’t know anyone who has had a good experience, or who prefers american made products. cars, food, fashion etc. they represent bad taste and poor quality. i thought this was known globally. like how germans are technical. one of those things that are part truth, part myth.

where i come from if someone wants great quality we buy european, japanese or chinese products.

whenever i travel to different continents for work, no one i talk to wants or buys american made anything. it’s again, european, japanese or chinese.

of course software is different, due to its globalised nature.

and of course sometimes you buy american branded products. if you can’t find anything else, you kind of have to settle with the american product.

I have had exposure to industrial equipment sales in Asia, Latin America and the Mideast. American-made equipment generally has an excellent reputation. Cost, however, is often an issue.

It would be helpful if you were more specific. Where do you come from? What types of products are you talking about?

I share same sentiment on consumer goods, especially cars.

Your experience with industrial equipment is irrelevant here since it's still being done in US.

This sounds totally foreign to me. In the industrial world, American equipment is pretty good quality. Japanese also. And German, Italian, and French.

Chinese is cheap but their machinery is generally not very good. They screw up all sorts of stuff: wrong bearings, designs are copied but not always thoroughly thought out, weld issues, poorly programmed PLCs, incorrect wiring, poor metals quality control, dangerous safety implementations, the list goes on and on. Some bigger manufacturers are getting better there.

But places like Turkey and Korea have a nice balance of technically "good enough" and cheaper than the Euro/American products, though Korean machines have gotten more expensive and are technically very sophisticated.

The idea that anyone building a factory would turn to China for technically sophisticated machinery is interesting and would be a quick way to get fired in industry. China has gotten a lot better over the years, but I think a lot of people forget that a lot of what happens in China is assembly, not necessarily manufacturing of the subcomponents, which is where much of the actual value add is. If you do get machinery made in China, you look for those who use as much European, Japanese, Korean, or American parts as possible.

> of course software is different, due to its globalised nature

Sure, not American, all the American software companies. They are global, unlike every other giant enterprise.

> one of those things that are part truth, part myth

Yeah perhaps true. But then I’d say that it’s essentially a meaningless conclusion to hold as some universal truth.

Be careful of European Exceptionalism that reverberates same uninformed thinking American Exceptionalism was known for. Usually, full of prejudice, glib pride and delirious nationalism.

i am very careful. i prefer any other nations products. japan, china, almost any country in europe, lots in south america. but the US has constantly disappointed. and not only recently, but throughout the decades.

Can you name Chinese products (made in China by and for Chinese companies -- not American or European companies) that you consider to be of high quality? Same for South America.

And what American products have "constantly" disappointed you?

This. There are different levels of Chinese manufacturing. One made for top Europe and American brands that are good quality while others is the utter junk that floods the Asia Pacific.

Indeed. I live in Asia and one of the first things I learned when I moved is that Some American Brand's clothing in Asia is frequently not of the same quality as Some American Brand's clothing in the US, even when it's actually more expensive.

Yujiintl's LEDs. They are not cheap (~1$/W for 97 CRI (typ) strip-suitable SMD LEDs on tape), but their color accuracy, especially with the 50-100% more-expensive triple-phosphor VTC series, is hard to match, especially for what are still "affordable" prices.

Huawei and Xiaomi comes to mind. Build is not Apple quality, but technically superior (I say that as I own pretty much every Apple product)

It's so superior that even their CFO prefers to use Apple instead.

I expect this is highly product and Industry specific. In healthcare, medical devices and drugs, the US, and Japan are the gold standard. Most companies won't even Source raw plastic materials or chemical precursors from China and India due to Quality Control issues.

I would pay 10x more for something made in America, because right now the defacto price is infinity.

We still make things in the US. Manufacturing revenue has been consistently increasing. However manufacturing as a share of GDP has fallen as other sectors grew faster. And employment has fallen due to automation and process improvements.

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/manu...

You have to be really careful when citing numbers like these.

A typical American "manufacturing" firm primarily does design and supply chain management, with the actual physical task of production and assembly outsourced. So if they can get the foreign production for $100 and they sell the product for $300, then their design and supply chain management is worth $200 and we say that the US has a strong manufacturing base because of that $200 contribution to GDP.

Thus Boeing and Maytag are considered US manufacturers, because they are American companies that produce physical products. But both of these companies outsource most production. But as long as they earn a big spread between their costs of outsourcing and what they sell the finished products for, it will appear as though US manufacturing is strong.

Therefore the US is at incredible risk in its manufacturing base, with the contributions to GDP held together primarily by preventing IP theft. The moment the suppliers can set up their own shop or sell enough IP to local rivals, they will be able to sell the identical good for $150, undercutting the US manufacturer and then they have to either exit the market to some other product line where IP protections are stronger or just go out of business.

>The moment the suppliers can set up their own shop or sell enough IP to local rivals, they will be able to sell the identical good for $150...

That's what I am looking forward to!

What is so special about manufacturing? What would be wrong with assembly-line workers going the way of farm workers?

14 million farm workers in 1910. 3 million today. Tragedy?

https://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Farm_Labor/fl_frmw...

> What is so special about manufacturing?

That's a good question. The answer is that it drives productivity growth. Most of the economy does not increase in productivity at all. Your haircutter or waiter is not more productive than a haircutter or waiter in the 1800s. But they make much more per hour because of cost-disease as they attach themselves to industries where one hour of labor can produce exponentially more output. So you have 20% of the economy driving basically all of the economic growth and productivity gains, and the wage growth of everyone else is dependent on this 20% doing really well. Therefore some nations, like China, are willing to fight for those manufacturing industries, even as other nations, like the US, think they can maintain advanced status if their workforce consists of marketing executives and baristas. They think IP protections will keep those marketing executives earning huge bonuses and then that will support spending more on each espresso. Long term, this is not a viable plan, even if it works well in the short term.

> 14 million farm workers in 1910. 3 million today. Tragedy?

No, that's productivity gains. But we are still farming and producing that food. The equivalent would be if the US got out of the farming business and turned to designing genetically engineered seeds. Let all those other nations grow food, we will do the high value stuff and outsource the actual growing-of-things. Well, OK, until other nations decide to stop paying licensing fees or switch to their own designs. Then not being able to grow things would really hurt us. Same for not being able to make things and turning to just designing stuff.

When a nation loses their increasing returns to scale industries is when economic growth stops.

Farm workers went from 14m to 3m because farms became much more productive (even more than 14/3, since we produce more agricultural goods too).

Surely you see that having fewer workers because the work is being done someplace far away is not equivalent having fewer workers because we can do more work with fewer.

And what would you suggest those workers learn to do that could substitute for manufacturing job wages?

I think there has been more a winding-down of manufacturing jobs, not an abrupt cutoff.

The winding down consists of a large number of independent abrupt cutoffs.

Agree. Almost all the discourse I see on this topic is really just a band-aid for what are actually much deeper and systemic problems with global supply chains that are just too damn optimized for JIT and cost-reduction. You can find lots of ink spilled over "MBAs" and "shareholder" or "managerial" capitalism, but functionally in order to fix this we actually have to reorder how industry is situated in the United States.

If there ever was a direct supply chain disruption (intentional or not), the US would be in a much worse spot than we are right now. Everything from semiconductors to nuts and bolts would be a problem (some more than others). There isn't a single issue more important to national security right now.

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