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Comment by v5v3 | Hacker News Reader

Trying to make all your products domestically may be the wrong approach for many. Instead make specific lines domestically.

There are lots of companies who standard ranges are made in China, but they also have a Made in America/other for their premium range.

That way customers who are less price sensitive can choose to pay more. And those who can't still buy regardless.

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IIRC some companies have tried this. The problem is that the stuff made in China is as good, sometimes better, than the stuff that's made in America but costs 4x more. So, revealed preferences shocker: Nobody buys the so-called "Premium" line. You need a better reason to charge more money.

Many do succeed - All-Clad for example make their stuff in USA and China. I own the American made frying pan of theirs, as do many.

Just an anecdote but as someone who has gone out of their way to buy American as much as I possibly can for many years I’ve found that to be true either never or so rarely I can’t remember. Quality of American products has not been an issue whatsoever, usually quite the opposite.

It’s more about the price than quality. When you can make products that are just as good (outside of some niche areas) in China/etc. for a proportion of the cost there is very little reason not to do that unless you have no competition.

There are some premium brands that can (partially) pull it off like KitchenAid but that’s an exception.

My perspective is that consumers have come to feel that price is far more important than quality whereas I feel exactly the opposite. I take pride in the things I make for a living and I prefer to be surrounded by products of a similar ethos. I buy products to solve a problem and I want the problem optimally solved. In the cases when the quality is a toss up I don’t mind paying a premium to support our domestic economy.

My perspective is price is not an indication of quality and often I cannot figure out what is quality - reviews are garbage. China makes some junk and some good stuff.

The "Made in America" range is probably mostly made in China too, but with just enough assembly to be able to declare that it isn't, sold with a higher profit to collect the consumer surplus from less price sensitive customers.

True, I saw a bunch of fiber optic components assembled in America that bypassed tariffs (2016-2017 era) where obviously the hard part had been done somewhere overseas. Wasn't even about the Made in America branding.

Same for ie Switzerland. You have these Victorinox and Wengen knives which are proper tourist souvenirs (on top of being fine little knives). Most of them is done in neighboring countries, and only final assembly is done in the country to pass "Made in Switzerland".

Fine products but shady behavior to say the least.

Perhaps some people lie, but the "Made in America" designation is specifically regulated by the FTC (https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/complying-ma...), and unlike similar regulations in other countries it doesn't permit these kind of final assembly shenanigans. The entire thing has to be made end-to-end in the US with negligible foreign input. One specific example they list is a lamp with an imported base; even though the base is neither a functional component nor a large amount of the cost, the manufacturer may not claim that the lamp as a whole is American-made.

I've actually seen arguments that this is so strong it loops back around to discouraging American manufacturing. Is there any "Made in America" loving consumer who wouldn't be happy to buy that lamp?

> Is there any "Made in America" loving consumer who wouldn't be happy to buy that lamp?

Perhaps they need to have everyone agree on labeling that fairly describes the product but is still flattering enough to motivate consumer decisions.

Subsidize capability upkeep - as in if you need it, you still have trained machinists, specialists and retoolable machinery in storage, to copy and buildup a capability at scale.

The question is why do this though? This is basically a defense economics argument. If there's no adversarial conflict, then who cares where something is made?

> If there's no adversarial conflict, then who cares where something is made?

I think you just answered your question by yourself without realizing: the signs are that an adversarial conflict might come up - so be prepared for it.

That's presuming that such a conflict would be fought as the sort of industrial war that WW1 and WW2 were. But there's little evidence that's the case: the lead times on modern weapons systems are enormous, and the attrition rate of hardware is enormous too (i.e. consider that the Javelin can put a tank out of action permanently).

It is an unproven criteria that it is reasonable or possible to expect to produce the munitions and equipment for a conflict during the conflict if it's the sort of near-peer thing people usually cite for this - i.e. rather you go to war with what you have, and you're unlikely to rebuild that advantage in time if you don't win then.

Which is the point: localizing a bunch of industries on that basis may not make any sense, compared to simply stockpiling from the cheapest accreditable sources.

A tsunami once wiped out the entire world's production capacity for spinning hard drives. Efficiency is always the enemy of robustness, and war is only one kind of disaster. And the way the world is going, adversarial conflict seems to be the new normal.

I can't believe you mentioned the tsunami. It came right after the offshoring happened for unnamed company my father worked for, I'll never forget it, it couldn't have been worse timing. All the investment POOF.

If the latest review of the "end of history" shows one thing- there is always adversarial minds at work. The whole "free world" mindset has collapsed in on itself the moment the us withdrew into isolationism. The world out there, is run by the old landempires gobbling up neighbors again. No progress has been made and to defend against barbaric adversaries, one must keep dependency on them low.

There always is a bill - and business is helping the enemies of liberty to prepare. They are not interested in peaceful coexistence, quite contrary, the conflict is a carrying pillar to upkeep societal/tribal structural integrity. And war & peace is a defector game- only one needs to defect to put the others in the same position as the defector. So "business as usual" with non-free block aligned nations- will always be long-term collusion with the enemy.

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