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Comment by blueyes | Hacker News Reader

Some authors of this piece are deeply involved themselves in building robots and other hardware technology. They should be taken seriously. The US is moving into a trade war, however unwise, with the country that supplies components for everything we make and need. That country has expansionist ambitions and a superior manufacturing base, which is typically what wins wars.

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China has been methodically preparing for trade war and decoupling for the better part of the decade. US went in full throttle with zero preparation. This is not going to end well.

It’s the only way the US will learn.

Politics and propaganda tend to dominate national "learning", and those forces tend to escalate to prevent awareness. So not a lot of learning happens, historically ("history tends to repeat itself"; "history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes", etc)

If facts don’t work, intelligent, rational discourse and compromise don’t work, and economic pain don’t work, well, you’re out of options (at least options that can be discussed here).

By denying all other avenues of learning, the USA has chosen to revert to the oldest, which can't be disabled: natural selection.

Propaganda works. But it works better if the creator(s) are unethical and strongly committed. Usually the most unethical cooperate somewhat for their own gain, rather than compete.

I wonder if this is a consequence of the political systems of China vs the US. China tends to think and plan longer term, where as the US seems much more transactional; what will win me the next election / midterm etc.

In other words: the lack of long term planning is US’s well-known strategic weakness.

> China tends to think and plan longer term...

Pull the other one, we saw how they went in the 20th century. Large centralised governments have never managed to systemically outplan democracies.

The issue is US culture has been giving priority to anti-industrialists. As a result they aren't the leader of the industrial world. This has been planned for a long time and a bunch of people were celebrating it the entire way along. You try standing up and saying "we should prioritise industry!" anywhere in the west - it is a bruising experience as soon as it gets to the specific policies that are likely to be successful.

Huge chunks of what China did are illegal. Running a successful industrial economy seems to violate a host of western employment & environmental laws as well as many regulations. That isn't bad planning, that was an explicit rejection of the outcomes China achieved.

I'm most of the way through reading Moral Mazes which covers this part of American culture in-depth as it relates to chemical and textile manufacturing. Specifically, it discusses psychological attitudes to perception of chemical manufacturing as being dirty, and the rationalizations employed by middle managers towards their work.

What Moral Mazes lays out is the idea of the tension between the perception of manufacturing ethics as matters of practicality (as seen by manufacturers), and the perception of manufacturing ethics as matters of purity (as seen by activists and lawyers).

It is a great book I would recommend to anyone, although being primarily an observation of the psychological processes at play, there are of course no solutions offered.

Feels like Chip Wars more aptly lays out the material reality of why and how we historically ended up here if you prefer that to what shape the propaganda took. "We want even bigger profit margins. We sought the globally cheapest labor pool we could. Whoopsie, they got better at it than us and started competing. Let's catch up with government subsidy to compete or get SotA at a different piece of the market. Ok we caught up with state money, time to offshore a different piece of the puzzle to an even cheaper labor pool for even bigger profits." repeated until: "Whoopsie, an island off the coast of our 'rival' makes 90+% of one of the most vital products in the world."

> The issue is US culture has been giving priority to anti-industrialists.

Perhaps "anti-industrialist" and more the forces of "fictionalization"? That can distort companies that aren't industrial too.

* financialization, perhaps phone autocorrect?

> The issue is US culture has been giving priority to anti-industrialists

> Huge chunks of what China did are illegal. Running a successful industrial economy seems to violate a host of western employment & environmental laws as well as many regulations.

Come on. For the west to combat the “anti-industrialists”, you would have to suppress the choices and decisions of normal people, who don’t want to see others die for the sake of factory owners.

Just outright say that democracy doesn’t work, and that Chinese style autocracy does.

Get to the actual heart of the debate. Trying to replicate the Chinese economic model, while dodging the moral and philosophical choices that supports it, results only in deception and prevarication.

Anti-industrialists is arguing via classification and nouns; it just grants a short term win which fails to live up to its pomp when it hits an obvious counter point.

Seize the major question, have people accept and acknowledge the tradeoffs in all their misery and glory.

> Just outright say that democracy doesn’t work, and that Chinese style autocracy does.

There is no evidence of that to date. Western liberal democracies are much nicer places to live than China and at some point the Chinese autocrats will probably collapse internally - they're gambling on the CCP being competent which isn't a winning strategy long term. The problems are a bit more subtle - things like security implications and rates of progress.

"Decoupling" was started in the US by the Obama administration.

> China has been methodically preparing for trade war

Mostly because it was prompted by decoupling from the last three administrations before going full-bore in this latest Trump admin.

It's not even about China. Asia as a whole has seen massive economic growth in the last 40 years. Countries like Indonesia and Vietnam are self confident enough to no longer kow tow to America.

>The US once had a solid base to spin up heavy industry factories, but this withered away as cheaper overseas manufacturing cut US producers out and the American economy shifted toward leading edge technology and services.

The Americans in charge of the "economy" settled for "leading edge" technology and services.

What exactly are China's expansionist ambitions beyond obvious Taiwan and beef with India over the border in Tibet?

Have you heard of the South China Sea?

Is it a rhetorical question? In my opinion this dispute is closely tied with Taiwan claim. When China gets Taiwan - it gets most of the critical area containing shipping lines and oil/gas fields.

What about it? It's called South China Sea for a reason. BTW, many countries are disputing over parts of it, not just China.

By contrast, US has been occupying parts of Syria and Cuba. It overtly seeks to take control of Greenland. It has 800 military bases around the globe; in most cases, de facto occupying a country.

We can eventually automate our economy by buying software and hardware from China. By electing Trump, we basically missed the chance to lead on anything, and instead decided to engage full time in trade and culture wars that aren't really going to yield anything. But as long as the work gets done, even if in China, we should be able to enjoy it.

Indeed, no one sane will invest in building factory systems on US soil under a Kakistocracy.

Robot platforms are already a difficult business model in the private sector. With the exception of robot vacuums the market just isn't viable in the US yet. Best of luck =3

It seems Honda just decided to produce the next Civic in Indiana. See [1].

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/honda-...

"Just decided" =/= decided today. They decided months if not years ago, after months of negotiations with local authorities. Don't look at plants opening now to judge the current administration. Look at it 2 years from now.

I don't know - the article specifically said Honda will produce the cars "to avoid potential tariffs". I don't think the Trump tariffs were in place "years ago"...

Of course, a marketing line to fit the current situation (and curry favor with the current vindictive administration) is easily added/updated at press time.

This does not mean the making of the deals and building the factory had anything to do with it at the time, but stating that those past decisions also have benefit in today's situation is not surprising.

It also does not mean that this has anything to do with the actual reason the deals and investments were made years ago. As you point out, those deals & investments years ago couldn't have anything to do with this week's tariffs.

Its not a new plant. I drove by it several months ago on I-74. Its been there awhile.

Indeed, products for domestic markets may have some incentives to avoid international supply chains.

The policies likely will just lead to multiple heavily coupled regional factories producing identical products at higher COGS. Controlling supply and demand in theory also makes communism more efficient, but in practice eventually has unintended economic consequences.

We shall see how this evolves... May our popcorn be plentiful =3

You're pointing out one plant making one model in one city. Chinese EV manufacturers are rolling out new models every week.

Does the number of new models mean a good thing?

It I had a watch company and I rolled out new models of watches every week;

1. Either there would be so little variation that people would have choice paralysis. 2. People would wonder why I couldn't keep a consistent product line with concerns of product quality. 3. People would have major concerns about repairs and service parts availability since the next new things was not a couple years ago but quite literally, last week.

Quick peek on Wikipedia tells me that they've been producing Civic there since 2008.

Yeah I didn't understand how this was news. Civics and Accords for the US market have been produced in the US for decades. This isn't anything new to my eyes, maybe I missed something though.

>how this was news I'll explain. It's a 'news' article from an arm of a multinational conglomerate trying to massage the economic harm the isolationist fascists currently in charge of the us govt are doing for (hopefully) obvious material reasons. see also: literally any of wapo's recent journalistic history, the nyt on gaza, social media like twitter's political shift, the tech ceo's in the front row of trump's inauguration, or if you prefer books, manufacturing consent, technofuedalism (yanis), surveillance capitalism, etc, etc, etc. capitalists stick together.

Consumer robotics, maybe - but commercial robotics has been a critical component of (for instance) Amazon’s fulfillment infrastructure.

Amazon acquired that facet of its business, and should not be considered a B2B product.

Most general purpose robot firms just don't do well domestically, and rarely make it past a business cycle. I would partner with Festo Germany before touching US markets. =3

Most general purpose robot firms don't do well at all, because until very recently, general purpose robotics have fallen short of being useful in general purpose scenarios. Amazon acquired Kiva 13 years ago. Kiva was itself founded and headquartered in the U.S.

My point was robotics startups don't typically survive with generic products very long. They are acquired or go under even after they reach TRL launch stage.

Best of luck =3

Acquisition is a common result for sucsessful deep tech startups. It's because scaling in these markets is hard and better done at large companies.

Perhaps, but a few competitors were left with EOL hardware after the Amazon acquisition... pushed out of that automated inventory transfer system.

Things scaled up at Amazon for sure, and no place else...

Best of luck =3

The Romans used to think that way. Their subjects thought otherwise.

It's funny you invoke some trad/conservative appeal to tradition, and meanwhile China's imperial history of bureaucratic machinery is never pointed to as an example of "look, technocratic meritocracy works".

I think it's well documented that modern bureaucracy is at least inspired by China's bureaucratic machinery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Service_(United_Kingdom)

> Under Charles Grant, the East India Company established the East India Company College at Haileybury near London, to train administrators, in 1806. The college was established on recommendation of officials in China who had seen the imperial examination system. In government, a civil service, replacing patronage with examination, similar to the Chinese system, was advocated a number of times over the next several decades.[10]

> William Ewart Gladstone, in 1850, an opposition member, sought a more efficient system based on expertise rather than favouritism. The East India Company provided a model for Stafford Northcote, private Secretary to Gladstone who, with Charles Trevelyan, drafted the key report in 1854.[11]

And western countries accepted it as part of the base assumption how government should work, then nobody points to its origin since now it's so obvious (from modern perspective).

I didn't know this and have always wondered why in the UK we didn't have something like the Chinese system for civil service.

Ironically the civil service is full of intelligent people and it's a competitive grad programme, but it's also wholly undesirable as a career path for many.

I know plenty of smart driven people who want to make a difference who won't go anywhere near the civil service for fear or bureaucracy or salary sacrifice or both. I also know plenty of people who left the civil service jaded by the whole experience.

I don't know what the solution is but I'm always a bit saddened that people end up moving money around or optimising clicks because there's no alternative if you don't want to get left behind

In ancient China, power and social status were gained through official positions, and merchants were considered the lowest of respectable occupations. This led to the exams attracting many of the "best and brightest" to government service. In modern western countries, being wealthy is the best way to get respect and adulation. The "best and brightest" spend their education learning how to extract value from the rest.

China isn't really that different these days. Everyone is thinking about being wealthy, but especially the Chinese. Hopefully the official class evolves to something like what Singapore has, or its going to be a constant brain drain on the government as smart kids continue to prefer the private sector.

Although it is worth recognizing that although the Imperial Chinese did have an examination-based civil service, it wasn't examinations on anything actually relevant to their jobs as in modern merit-based civil services. Instead, people wanting to enter the Imperial Chinese Civil Service were tested on their ability to recall trivia from classic Chinese literature. Great if the job was Jeopardy! contestant, less so for anything practical.

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

Given how many obscure characters are there in Chinese, this exam would easily filter out lazy and dumb people.

Parkinson's Law contains a nice (tongue in cheek) summary of the influence of the Chinese system on the British Civil Service:

> The Chinese system was studied by Europeans between 1815 and i830 and adopted by the English East India Company in 1832. The effectiveness of this method was investigated by a committee in 1854, with Macaulay as chairman. The result was that the system of competitive examination was introduced into the British Civil Service in 1855. An essential feature of the Chinese examinations had been their literary character. The test was in a knowledge of the classics, in an ability to write elegantly (both prose and verse) and in the stamina necessary to complete the course. All these features were faithfully incorporated in the Trevelyan-Northcote Report, and thereafter in the system it did so much to create. It was assumed that classical learning and literary ability would fit any candidate for any administrative post. It was assumed (no doubt rightly) that a scientific education would fit a candidate for nothing - except, possibly, science. It was known, finally, that it is virtually impossible to find an order of merit among people who have been examined in different subjects. Since it is impracticable to decide whether one man is better in geology than another man in physics, it is at least convenient to be able to rule them both out as useless. When all candidates alike have to write Greek or Latin verse, it is relatively easy to decide which verse is the best. Men thus selected on their classical performance were then sent forth to govern India. Those with lower marks were retained to govern England. Those with still lower marks were rejected altogether or sent to the colonies. While it would be totally wrong to describe this system as a failure, no one could claim for it the success that had attended the systems hitherto in use. There was no guarantee, to begin with, that the man with the highest marks might not tum out to be off his head; as was sometimes found to be the case. Then again the writing of Greek verse might prove to be the sole accomplishment that some candidates had or would ever have. On occasion, a successful applicant may even have been impersonated at the examination by some- one else, subsequently proving unable to write Greek verse when the occasion arose. Selection by competitive examination was never therefore more than a moderate success.

Damn, thanks for plainly stating why we need manufacturing back to the states.

Yes, and I think this is the core motivation behind the Trump messaging - bring it back to the US if possible. In fact, he wants to bring back commercial and maritime ship building back[1]. Pretty cool! Hopefully this will employ lots of people.

[1] https://news.usni.org/2025/03/05/trumps-make-shipbuilding-gr...

Well, no matter what he wants, there's a reason China has 5-10 year plans and not 2 week ones.

This is Chinas greatest strength and their greatest weakness. They can actually commit to policy positions when they're effective, but they also commit to policy positions when they're not effective.

Shame it's being bungled with flip flops for nothing in return. Nor any achievable commitments which business can plan for or count on.

At the same time, he's ripping up the CHIPS act. It's the duality of Trump: he wants to bring manufacturing back, except when he doesn't.

Words and desires are easy. Crafting, marketing and enacting policy to achieve the goals set by your words and desires is difficult. The world is complex and reacts in complex ways, but try to say that to a Trump voter and get called a disconnected elitist.

Talk is cheap, as they say. It's one thing to want something to happen, it's entirely another to actually make it so.

Generally disassembling the machinery of state and starting trade wars is not an effective way to achieve your policy objectives unless your policy objective is economic and social chaos.

Gonna build boats with steel and aluminium tariffs at 50% or more? Good luck with that.

This isn't something you turn around in a few years by adding tariffs, it's a long term strategy that requires high investments and tariffs. Like the chip act, but Biden did that so that cant happen either.

“Back” is in the mid 1800’s, you mean?

Or “back” as in when we built astonishingly expensive liberty ships for a large fraction of our GDP in WW2?

Because since the move to steel ships, there’s never been a time the US has been good at building ships.

Brian Potter goes into great detail on this [0], it’s a great read.

[0] https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-cant-the-us-build...

see also: his attacks on the "horrible" CHIPS act [0]. If anyone think he's doing anything good for anyone but billionaires, contact me. I've got some trump coin to sell you.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/technology/trump-wants-kill-527-bill...

"Back" as in undermining EV manufacturing? And non-fossil power generation?

"Back" as in massively increasing input costs?

"Back" as in alienating close allies who are a large part of our customer base?

"Back" as in repeatedly disrupting the supply chain by flip-flopping on tariffs without a clear plan?

"Back" as in undermining research across the board?

The current policy will not employ lots of people. It will have lots of people out of work fairly soon, if we continue on the current path. It will diminish our industrial base further, and reset our manufacturing skills to the 80s or earlier. But hey, at least toy manufacturers are hiring, that's a really important industry.

Setting aside any questions about intentions, the effects of the current policies are hugely deleterious.

He is gonna import raw materials from where ? Currently he started trade war with all of his allies ?

Ship building is non existent in this country because of the protectionist jones act. Protectionism backfires every time.

And is the effort to deport as many Mexican skilled tradesmen and manual laborers as possible the part of this grand plan?

The US makes 5 commercial ships per year. China makes 1,700.

https://www.seatrade-maritime.com/containers/us-wakes-up-to-...

Not gonna happen. On the 1% chance we have a fair election next time around and Dems get elected, they will be too busy cleaning up the Republican mess, and nobody will notice. Just like what happened under Biden.

China ironically can end US by simply providing easy immigration for qualified tech workers.

> simply providing easy immigration for qualified tech workers.

I dont believe those tech workers would wish to move, unless the political system in china changes to one that is more amenable to democracy; not to mention that having high salaries in the US, it will be impossible to achieve similar levels in china after migration (even if the PPP remains the same!).

Move to a democracy-amenable country that isn’t engaging in a trade with with China.

Err, a trade war. That typo really bungled my comment, haha.

I mean, you are going to see an exodus of tech workers regardless as US economy withers up and other countries (probably in EU) pick up the slack.

China won't even have to have high salaries, all they would need to do is basically set up immigrant neighborhoods that have all the familiar things that US people like, and through the nature of just being around people of similar status, whatever the salary everyone gets paid gets normalized - there isn't anything you would be able to buy to "flex" on your peers, and everyone would be in the same boat.

China isn't interested in immigration. In a relatively liberal and democratic country like the US, immigration is a boon because we don't care all that much about political or economic stability and are used to not having it. In an authoritarian oligarchy like China it's poison because an unstable environment will see the government in trouble quickly when people lose confidence in the party and leadership.

But if China starts importing immigrants, it will be just another shithole. Their quality and success come from their own population. Importing foreigners is just poisoning yourself your culture and future.

Because our so-called "democracy" is working so very well in contrast?

democracy was what decided the trump presidency. It is working. The problem is the voters are pretty dumb, or fell for propaganda.

Democracy isn't meant to give you the best outcome. It gives you, the voter, a way to push the gov't.

The "working" part refers to the fact that its making society better.

So far US has gotten measurably worse, while China has gotten measurably better.

You could also ... try not to make war. Just an idea. Pretty offputting actually to see someone supporting expansion being upvoted.

No one is trying to make war, but naturally China is looking at changing the order of things, at least regionally. To make that happen it needs USA to move out, and create its own coalition of countries around the area.

USA needs to move out and stop trying to start a war with China. Taiwan is China. Historically, legally, even according to the US's own policy. The KMT lost. This fantasy the US has of toppling or splitting up the PRC in a proxy war is extremely deranged.

China has exercised incredible restraint over the actions of a belligerent warmonger US.

Taiwan is a sovereign nation, and West Taiwan needs to accept that.

The Taiwan obsessed PRC loonies online always seem to think that the west spends way more time thinking about Taiwan then they actually do.

I don't agree with most of what you've written, however, if the US has only mineral-profits interest in defending Ukraine from Russia, then there's only slightly above zero chance that the US will be rushing to defend Taiwan from China. What seems more likely is that the US will agree to let China take Taiwan in return for allowing the trade of TSMC chips to continue.

TSMC is the majoity (only?) value proposition the US has in Taiwan, and, from memory and a cursory Wikipeding, it seems that TSMC has been 'de-centralising' into Japan, the US, and Europe of late.

America seems to be trying to make war, unexpectedly with Canada. Also, the only coalition America seems to be interested in is the one with Russia.

Also, multiple foreign countries like Russia are trying to make war right now.

America is nowhere close to going to war with Canada. Tariffs are import taxes, not weapons of war. Good lord.

Telling a sovereign nation, and the US’s closest ally, it should become the 51st US state isn’t making war, but it’s way more than imposing tariffs in contravention of treaties this president signed in his last term.

It's just a joke. A bad joke, but just a joke. Republicans are afraid to add Puerto Rico as a state for fear of it voting Democrat, they would never allow Canada to become a state even if you wanted to (or rather, 10 states), because they would never win an election again.

What's all this annexation talk then?

That sounds pretty disrespectfully inflammatory.

It's not annexation to invite a country to join the Union. It's quite the honor, to be honest.

Upvote for my literal laugh out loud.

If it is such an honor, why has the response of 90% of Canadians been "Go fuck yourself"?

Up here, we consider it a betrayal, certainly nothing honorable.

America repeatedly threatened annexation and wanted water. It demands registration of goverment citizens. They call premier governor. Tariffs seem ti be preparatory steps meant to weaken Canada as a preparation for further attacks.

In general, conservatives are nowhere near to do the awful thing they say loudly they will do - and then, each time, they do that exact thing. Again again and again. These are plans and ignoring them is a self delution.

Warren Buffet said it's a declaration of war.

I might be misreading it, but I don't think the comment you're replying to supports China's expansionist ambitions.

>That country has expansionist ambitions and a superior manufacturing base, which is typically what wins wars.

What country are you referring to. US with Greenland, and Canada?

CHINA!

By the time MAGA is finished, it’ll be Greenland.

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