Now maybe these companies are likely just mismanaged and the cost of North American engineering is too high? That said, it still seems like there is a structural problem here that very few hybrid software-hardware companies succeed.
(Okay we do, see CHIPS Act, but too little too late?)
Your call out to BYD is a good one, because it is conceivable that even western-made cars will be made non competitive in 10 years and it seems that we are sleeping through the news (or even encouraging it). I hope I'm wrong, but the road ahead is filled with challenge because the direction is fundamentally wrong, and it will take a lot of effort to reverse course, if that is even possible.
So I think protectioism is fine as long as we properly setup an environment that allows for and encourages competition and innovation. However, that doesn't seem to be a path we are used to taking .
Can you give some specific examples? I couldn't find anything. I'm pretty sure that US and Canada have nearly free trade, due to NAFTA.
Basically a lot of established manufacturers are IBMs of this era.
I wonder how much money is burned in the economy just paying people to write EULAs, laws and service agreements to more effectively avoid liability and screw over customers vs. how many is actualy going into improving products and services?
The purpose of subsiding what are zombie companies is to maximize employment to ensure internal stability. The wins these companies show are propaganda wins only and don’t make the country more competitive. Foreign manufacturing is also migrating out of China at an alarming rate as shown by falling exports and GDP growth.
None of the development in the Chinese technology sector is sustainable. These companies would never survive on their own without subsidies and are dependent on them. It’s a cascading failure waiting to happen in the Chinese economy and will likely be a global shock. At least the Americans may appear to take longer to develop winning companies but once they do they tend to be sustainable and long lasting as organic enterprises.
Edit: The American free market is working as intended because it rightly values robotic vacuums as useless devices.
This seems like a big statement, can other experts comment?
I believe the biggest hurdle to any changes to current battery tech is that it costs so much to develop an entirely new process and build factories. Most innovation is in the form of small adjustments. For hydrogen to overcome this hurdle it would have to either be extremely cheap or have some unique property. For cars I don’t see hydrogen having that much of an advantage, but maybe electric planes would be feasibly powered by hydrogen due to the much improved weight to energy ratio.
> electric engines that use liquid fuels become mainstream (fuel-cells)
That is surely hydrogen. Do they understand the conditions that are required to stored hydrogen as liquid, let alone natural gas?
Think what goes into a hair dryer? Exterior design, looks good and functional. How you make the plastic cover, do the plastic injection molding? How you design all the internal parts, fan, motor housing, heating wire, power circuits, micro-controllers etc, and make sure everything fits. Some companies even do individual components themselves, like the brushless motor, or there is a Chinese supplier that makes them, which provides much faster time to response. Then do the testing for each component, electric, heat, water, moisture testing. Then design a mass manufacturing system with automation and human labor that achieves really high yield and low wasted materials. This is the hardest part, its easy to make a hair dryer by hand taking 100 human hours and make sure it works. It's much harder to make 1M hair dryers per month, that is going to be used in all sorts of environments and with all kind of abuse, make sure they work well for a number of years so customers don't return them, or you go bankrupt from recalls and warranty, and make sure you only have to throw out the absolute smallest number of manufacturing defects, and really control your cost structure so you still make a profit when importers are squeezing your price. Then the supply chain and logistics, shipping from suppliers and shipping to customers. Then create a number of products for different markets. China can manufacture for cheap, but people don't realize manufacture for cheap and at massive quantities is a technology itself. It's also management, business process, even company and worker culture. China doesn't have the cheapest labor cost. It's the combination of everything that produces a physical product with the level of quality, fit and finish at the price point.
This is an American company I believe considering they are taking privacy seriously
As someone who doesn’t care at all about stack ranking or any nation’s “national security”, as a consumer, more competition, and more and cheaper products is a simple and uncomplicated win.
Almost all of my favorite companies are in Shenzhen presently. I would move there if I could do so easily.
All my favorite devices were designed/engineered either in Japan or in the USA. I'd take good engineering over cheap manufacturing every time. And we could do with lower number of devices. While they are probably made in the same factory, I'd love a focus on quality instead of price.
countries compete, albeit on different rules - having a monopoly on violence and a centrally controlled money printer tends to do that - so your dream of 'just pure free market competition' can only ever be that - a dream.