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None of this is by accident, of course, but it just seems predictably short-sighted, and I don't buy any of the 4d chess nonsense that some supporters are suggesting. And now the world has to bear the consequences of a misguided and overconfident policy.
Cyber City Circuits does small scale assembly in the US and seem like a cool company (ran into them from the Datasheet Digest podcast they put out). But yeah obviously they aren’t going to be able to match a $35 PCBA JLCPCB prototyping order.
Electronic manufacturing in the US definitely exists. It also is low quality and 5x to 10x the cost of China.
An assembled board that costed us $825/unit in the US (and frequently had errors) costs $130/unit from China and they nailed it every time (probably because they machine QC rather than human QC). It's really not even close. Same goes for machined parts - drastically cheaper and higher quality from China.
I was in Montana once and stopped in to see a small PCB line. They were doing F22 and F35 PCBs.
Small USA PCB is everywhere.
And that’s the ones I can think of within a couple hours of each other.
Not saying that is right or wrong but finish the sentence.
If you said -rely on Chinese products because MBAs and politicians spent decades shutting us out of manufacturing for the draw of cheap labor.
That would be correct.
It is an intentional lack of intention in their policies by the current administration causing this, not previous business decisions. You can agree with the current policy, but you can't disagree that it is the DIRECT cause of the situation (in an attempt to address the indirect issue that you mentioned).
We did the former a long time ago. You’re welcome to do the former.