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Comment by msy | Hacker News Reader

Near term inflation but more broadly increasing paralysis of business investment of all stripes in the fact of a wildly unpredictable political landscape.

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The general path of the country is fairly clear at this point - business that manufacture closer to consumers will have fewer issues with the government. Even Biden kept a bunch of Trump1 anti-China policies in place.

If I was directing investment at a large business, onshoring manufacturing would be a no brainer in many businesses. Mexico might be the happy medium, but I’d really push for US manufacturing facilities with high automation levels to hedge against labor cost.

Most of the post 2016 China exit investment was to other cheaper southeast Asia countries. My phone was made in Vietnam.

Your phone was made in the US. They’re all black rectangles. The reason you picked the phone you use is because of the software, written here. All the LTV is tied up in software and services. Almost all made by Americans. To me, the status quo is very good - there can be unlimited valuable software written but people only need one phone. A policy of pro manufacturing doesn’t necessarily make sense in each specific.

The value of software without the hardware to run it on is 0. It's like starting an AI company with no GPUs.

People definitely pick phones for hardware too.

>the reason you picked the phone you use is because of the software, written here

No, I picked it because of hardware too. You can't just say "your sandwich was made in america because the bread was made here". I didn't order bread, I ordered a whole sandwich.

And honestly, the sentiment of the software being American made is also more suspect by the day.

Yup. My wife's company moved production lines from China to Thailand.

which is a win! less concentration in a single country, particularly a hostile one, is a positive outcome

This isn't going to end with more companies building domestically. Trump disrupting the CHIPS act shows that isn't his goal.

If it is half the cost to produce it over seas, 25% more is still much less than on shoring. On shoring is more than just the CoG, it requires capital investment which may no longer be needed in a year or four. It's not a simple or no brainer decision for most of the tariff targets with them being so broad

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