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Comment by smhenderson | Hacker News Reader

It's also become increasingly difficult, and in some cases nigh impossible, to avoid items from China.

I'm older and don't need a lot beyond the food and shelter I work for, I have plenty of "stuff".

But buying clothing, gifts, electronics, well, the list is long and I won't try to cover everything here, that doesn't have at least part of it's assembly provided by China is not easy to avoid. It's not just people's wallets, it's time, it's lack of knowledge and one's ability to figure out how to get what they need without involving China in the acquisition.

I agree with you, but let's not pretend that we don't stop "buying from China" because we're all too lazy and greedy to do so. We could use some legislative and corporate support and I think a lot more people would get on board.

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> It's also become increasingly difficult, and in some cases nigh impossible, to avoid items from China.

I have the opposite experience. I find it's becoming increasingly easy. I'm finding myself surprised that most things aren't made in china. So far the only thing I haven't been able to get was a waffle maker -- I can do without! Or I should just actually get a $300 waffle maker instead of something stupid that will probably break after a few runs

The hardest to find was a power drill.

I suspect that much of this is labor costs in china going up and manufacturing moving to India, Pakistan, Thailand, vietnam

Also -- I don't buy much from Amazon anymore, so this is going to b&m establishments

I picked up USA made waffle iron from C. Palmer Manufacturing. It's super basic and almost 2-3x more expensive than the first few results on Amazon, but it's great! (https://cpalmermfg.com/waffle-irons.html) Hope that helps with your waffle making.

At first I suspected made in USA could mean assembled in USA from Chinese castings and other parts. But man is it so freaking satisfying to see at the top of the page next to "About us" is a link to their tool and die shop. They're a freaking casting shop that decided to make waffle makers. Fantastic.

Some random niche waffle iron company just saw a spike in online sales. They have got to be wondering what just happened. You’ve been “hacker news hugged” would probably just confuse them.

Super basic? What more do you need!? It makes waffles!

Also I just saw that they actually sell the individual parts should you need to replace something. This company seems like a real gem.

It's two days before Christmas! Why couldn't I have seen that link three weeks ago?

perfect! But I will be making chaffles =D

"Or I should just actually get a $300 waffle maker instead of something stupid that will probably break after a few runs"

I did this for a while but a lot of US manufacturers seem to like producing low quality items for a high price under the label "Made in USA".

"Made in USA" is often code for "made with prison labor". Louisiana is said to make a point of incarcerating particularly black citizens on made-up charges and excessive sentencing to maintain a ready prison labor pool.

So, it is probably important to verify that such products are not from prison labor.

China has is rightly criticized for unjustified incarceration, particularly in Xinjiang, but the US incarcerates many more on largely similar pretexts, which amounts to a much larger fraction of its population. Reducing US incarceration rate is a moral imperative.

That’s an incredibly serious claim to make, do you have evidence to support your claims?

It's not particularly controversial. Here's the NY version, for example. https://corcraft.ny.gov/

There's an explicit carve out in the 13th amendment's slavery prohibition for people convicted of crimes.

They make signs and license plates for the state. As far as prison labor goes, that seems relatively benign.

They do a very great deal more than that. Places with strong unions restrict what they do just so they don't compete with union labor. But that leaves enormous leeway, which is reliably exploited.

Many private prisons have contracts with states guaranteeing them a quota of prisoners, on pain of monetary penalties. It becomes the job of police and courts to deliver that quota, regardless of behavior, because there is no money budgeted for penalties.

Everybody can be found guilty of something, if you want to.

Even if something doesn't say "Made in China", the chances are that many or most of it's components were made in China.

You have a bit better chances if you instead whitelist countries with stricter rules of origin (for example, Made in USA requires 50% of the components to be made here) but even then much of the supply chain for that item will probably trace back to China.

> but even then much of the supply chain for that item will probably trace back to China.

You're still doing one stage better; but also you'd be surprised how much of that supply chain doesn't come from china, especially now, with supply chain issues and manufacturers using it as opportunity to re-tool their sourcing.

> The hardest to find was a power drill.

Depending on where you live and what you like....DeWalt and high end Craftsman make drills in the USA. Makita makes some in Japan. I believe Bosch does some in Germany, but don't quote me on that.

The Bosch Professional 18V drills (blue) are made in Malaysia.

Sadly the battery packs are still made in china though.

Battery tech seems to be a big problem in general.

I suspect in the next few years that will be less of an issue. There are companies currently ramping up in Japan, Germany and the UK that are making 3D printed solid state batteries that will be lighter, higher capacity, higher C rating than the current batteries. The tech exists, is safety certified but not yet in mass production.

What's interesting there is that internally, all of them use Samsung, made in Korea batteries.

They just assemble the case and circuitry in China.

I bought a Samsung power bank recently and was surprised that it was made in china and not Korea.

If that’s just assembly that would make sense considering Samsung’s expertese.

DeWalt, Craftsman and Makita all had "made in china". Bosch was not (I think it's thailand). Maybe i was too low-end.

Yeah, on the low end you're out of luck. It's the top end stuff that's made in USA. About 120ish for a drill, vs say, 30 for some Ryobi.

Model to Google for Craftsman is CMCD720

Fairphone have an analysis on their complete supply chain, of every component. Lots come from China, but more interesting: components of components have a source too, raw materials too, as does travel.

An example of the latter, Fairphone used trains to move the assembled smartphones to EU. Those trains moved from China through Russia, dven during and after Crimea conflict and MH17 disaster.

Its a shame I don't have a link handy to their supply chain infographic. It is so detailed, includes all corporations and locations, that it would warrant a HN submission within its own. OTOH, they yet have to make it for their recent product, FP4.

Clothing isn’t to bad, most is made in other countries, who are terrible in their own way.

For stuff like electronics is impossible, it’s almost all made in China. The only solution I see it keeping stuff for longer or buying used.

On a positive note, most modern electronics have a bunch of "bent metal", screws, and memory + microprocessors. The first two are very low value and frequently produced directly in China. The last two are high value and most frequently produced in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States, and various parts of Europe. When you look at the "value added" by assembly of an iPhone in China, it is astonishingly low. The vast majority of value (for hardware) is added outside of China.

Chinese companies also make low-middle-end microcontrollers (gigadevice etc.), passive components, switches and connectors (clones of Japanese designs mostly) that are much lower cost and 'ok'. There's also PCB manufacturing and stuffing, tooling, injection molding (using Chinese or German machines), final assembly. For things like Bluetooth speakers, it's all local.. a wifi router might me be all local appart from the SOC.. iPhones yeah different story.

For electronics in general and CPUs in particular, "Made in China" is becoming the Clipper Chip for the 2010's/2020's. So yeah, this thing with intel is very disturbing. They're paying for the rope that'll be used to hang all of us with this.

Not all made per se, but assembled in China at least. china is not yet a powerhouse when it comes to manufacture top of the line SoCs for example.

It is hard if you want to say "Buy American" or something like that

But I find it easy to avoid chinese products, for example I just recently was in the market for some cookware, I thought my choices were expensive American made pans, or cheap China, but in reality I found some very good cookware coming out of South America for very good price

Hence why I took care to hint as much as possible, definitely there are goods impossible to get elsewhere, others are relatively easy to find if one cares enough.

there is an app where you can scan beauty products and it will tell you what is in them, it gives you warnings about dangerous chemicals in certain products. it's called think dirty. there is another app for food that does the same thing called yuka.

i wonder if there is an app where it will tell you the origin of a product or a rating on the company based on ethics. like ethically sourced rating or something along those lines.

I agree that legislative and corporate support would be helpful, however in my experience the only pretending is that more than a small number of people care. Look at your own post - on the one hand, you would be financially supporting genocide, on the other hand you want to buy gifts. That this is even a question is sign of where things really stand and I think you are putting more effort into it than most people. See also how many people aren't willing to take minor precautions to avoid killing their own family members.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendigo

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