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Comment by encryptluks2 | Hacker News Reader

Part of the issue is that American businesses are not always better. So a requirement of purchasing subpar overpriced products just because they're American-made doesn't help anyone. They need to find ways to create innovative manufacturing in America.

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At a minimum it is a jobs program, and so can be viewed as part of the welfare state (a lot of government spending falls, at least partially, into this category).

Perhaps more importantly, it provides a national strategic interest that is not easily captured through economic analysis. When times are good and international trade happens smoothly this is not important, but when the international market breaks down for some reason, having domestic production gives our government more options in how to respond.

We saw this with covid, when every nation was scrambling critical resources to deal with the public health emergency. We see this now with Russia, who is regretting how dependent they on foreign trade; and in Europe who are regretting how dependent they are on Russian energy.

Simple naive economics suggests otherwise. If a 10% domestic requirement keeps demand artificially high, competition will enter the market. New factories, etc. will spring up to get a piece of the fat. They will compete on price, quality, etc.--all the usual points of competition. People will get creative to get their piece of that pie. (Of course some of the creativity will be figuring out ways to subcontract it to China and still count as American.)

I mean you got the naive economics part right. These kinds of contracts are selected based on relationships, not product quality or even business acumen. In your mind the government conducts regular technical product evaluations of every small business that attempts to make masks at scale? That isn’t reality.

They are saying each individual hospital would have to choose a domestic manufacturer for atleast part of their supply. This would cause more domestic manufacturers to start up and compete for each hospitals business. The rule would affect the hospitals directly, not the mask makers.

The USA (and UK) seem to have entirely lost sight of the fact that there are strategic industries, capabilities and products as a result of a blind devotion to the ideology of the "free" market and a belief that globalisation is forever and always and that you'll always be able to buy whatever you need from whomever you want. The requirement to purchase some domestically made products is a hedge against such events as a global pandemic or large scale war. Innovative, high tech, high skill manufacturing is important, but so is boring, non innovative, low margin manufacturing that provides resiliance.

One reason the software industry in America is so successful is because there is no government license required to write software, and software can be shipped without needing approval from the government, and the government doesn't regulate how the software is written.

Yes, I know if you write software for a medical device, the FDA will have to approve it.

Perhaps because software on its own is unlikely to hurt people, while we have seen plenty of physical products causing deaths and mutilation: Failing car breaks, cellphone batteries catching fire, strollers cutting off fingers, playground structures collapsing and so on. It only takes a few shitty products in a category for regulations to be set up

This ignores the massive levels of subsidies that the Chinese govt provides to their companies.

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3167588/c...

Bud, if you think only China is playing the subsidy game, you are sadly mistaken: https://www.forbes.com/sites/taxnotes/2020/11/20/boeings-tax...

Bud, please understand that this is a spectrum and not a binary situation.

Also, Chinese restrictions on companies restrictions on foreign companies pale in comparison to the freedom they enjoy in the US.

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/12/28/bbchina-unveils...

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/28/enticing-china-market-tricki...

Google, Facebook and Twitter are all banned in mainland China.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/12/chinese-app-that-let-users-a...

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

Meanwhile, TikTok and the likes are freely allowed to shape our minds.

Blocking foreign companies is a form of massive subsidy.

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