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Comment by stavros | Hacker News Reader

> There are only a few plastic injection manufacturing companies left, and they are either fully booked or on the path to shutting down.

How does this work? How can a market have half its supply be fully booked and the other half not have enough work?

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Shops can shut down for more reasons than not having enough work, such as tariffs and regulations affecting CoGS, low hiring capability, CoGS changing (like energy), and especially tool and material shortages (also affected by the same issues). I remember one of my bosses closing his shop due to these issues, as well as the compounding factors of corporate buyouts of smaller outfits and job offshoring, too. America is an expensive place, and market makers do not like expensive places.

That makes sense, thanks.

If anyone is interested, I know someone in San Francisco who built a full injection molding shop in their basement and is happy to take orders.

Also I know a 3d printer that can print molds for injection molding, and I know a guy with a set of printers who'd be happy to take orders.

Because the other half are being undercut by china.

So am I going crazy or... Are tarrifs the answer here? It sure sounds like something needs to happen, are there better alternatives?

Tariffs 30 years ago possibly could have stopped the manufacturing base from being destroyed, but they're not sufficient to rebuild it. Taxing imports sufficiently that building locally is cheaper will keep your local companies in business, but it's still a very unappealing investment. There's no guarantee that the tariffs will stay in place long enough for you to make money, and even without foreign competition your prices are still limited by demand elasticity. Outright subsidies can work better as they effectively let you raise your price above what people are willing to pay, but there's still plenty of long-term problems.

> Tariffs 30 years ago possibly could have stopped the manufacturing base from being destroyed, but they're not sufficient to rebuild it. Taxing imports sufficiently that building locally is cheaper will keep your local companies in business

Tariffs are like sandbags. If you expect flood surges from an upcoming storm, or even an ongoing storm, sandbags and many hands might well keep your stuff dry for a day or two or even three.

If your shoreline property is going to be under-sealevel due to climate change, sandbags are a ridiculous "solution".

By example, the US car industry famously got fat, dumb, and lazy on a captive market... until the consumers did something unthinkable and bought something that was both cheaper and better made from abroad.

Not every change to US production can legitimately be blamed on politics.

Subsidies, lot of subsidies. And probably a lot of monitoring and adjusting by lawmakers to ensure that industries continues to improve their capabilities.

There's more to that but rebuilding our industrial capacity is a work of a generation.

I think the problem with subsidies just as the problem with tarrifs is that they need to be given in a selective process which can benefit them truly.

Like maybe this industry is already very concentrated and those subsidies benefit more to the concentrated rather than general public just as the farmer bailout of sorts...

Its a tough line and bottom line, you expect some true competency in the govt. to achieve it and be knowledgable about it but I guess in the meanwhile people might discuss such stuff.

Very specific, strategically applies tariffs. Not blanket tariffs on whole countries.

Here's one: different (lower) tax rates for different industries and different careers.

If you want smart people to enter and stay in manufacturing you have to make them * as attractive as bankers and west coast software engineers.

* careers or individuals - deliberately ambiguous :)

Tariffs could help if they were strategically applied, but that's not happening.

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