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Comment by matheusmoreira | Hacker News Reader

There's no doubt that they could be. Just not as cheaply.

Once a skillset and supply chain is lost, manufacturing a specific item absolutely may not be possible "now". You'd need to rebuild a supply chain and import skilled workers to get it happening.

Goo luck importing external highly skilled immigrants into current super-hostile US environment to undermine their own countries. Proper patriots would even sabotage such effort.

Sure you can massively overpay them, exacerbating the effect of massively rising prices for US domestic product.

Access to raw materials may be a fundamental blocker there.

I had seen stats putting China's control of certain rare earth minerals as high as 80% and products like lithium batteries as high as 97%. I don't know the industry well enough to validate that, but I couldn't find anything refuting or disproving those numbers either. If true, we very well may not be able to make them here if China were to cut off those resources long term.

These all have potential mines in the US. They’re currently shuttered however, because of cost, because China is cheaper and has been for a long time.

That will be a rude awakening for a lot of people if we have to start mining that heavily here. We were able to have our cake and eat it too as long as we could talk green while outsourcing our environmental damage due to mining overseas.

Yup. It’s already going to be a rude awakening once tariffs work their way out to retail prices.

No one can do anything in the west because you can’t mine or process anything. Countries like China have no regulations preventing the processing of raw materials.

Oh, you can, generally, it's just not fine to poison the whole region's water supply doing it, which less rich countries care less about, and which makes it expensive.

Though to be clear, "not as cheaply" can mean a difference of several orders of magnitude and many years of effort.

It probably also means that companies will not do it: It seems impossible to keep the tariff this high for years, and Trump will only stay in office for a few years...

Trump has been replacing anyone who would realistically force him out with flunkies as his first order of business. No one is getting rid of him in a few years.

His term ends in a few years. At that point he’s either replaced, maybe with the same kind of person (the US people have showed their hand with these elections), or he stays in place somehow.

Are you hinting at the second scenario? Then we’ll get to see what US democracy is about, or if those people hoarding guns to fight an undemocratic or abusive government were just overcompensating, as it looks like today.

Trump’s term ends with a high probability of a Democrat being elected to clean up his mess, as happened in 2020 and 2008. He will almost certainly lose congress in the midterm unless he can somehow suspend the election (all bets are off if the constitution falls).

It’s like none of you saw Jan 6th, or his pardoning of folks at all. It’s seriously bizarre.

Or his exec order asserting that the 2020 election was stolen and targeting former CISA head Chris Krebs for not lying to that effect in his security evaluations of the voting systems.

Democrats will win by advocating no voter id and preventing anyone watching the vote counting. Again.

I really don't want MAGA people watching who I vote for. I'm sure you see logic in that? Also, I love vote by mail, I appreciate it as much as the residents of red state Utah who also appreciate that.

lol so you are ok with the party you oppose skipping votes for your party because it happened behind closed doors and poll watchers / challengers are not allowed in.

Voter fraud is something that (some) Republicans do to prove how easy it would be for Democrats to get away with it...and they always get caught.

And yet it democratic voting areas it’s democrats who are blocking poll watchers and challengers or are suspect of voter fraud when they don’t close voting or have suitcases randomly show up and quickly shuffled in.

It’s only democratic areas who don’t want voter id.

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