The area where I live, Greenville, SC used to be the textile capital of the world and then became essentially destitute when the entire industry offshored.
BMW and Michelin locating their US HQ here essentially rebuilt this entire corner of the state with jobs and associated supply chains. Now, Greenville is booming with a more diverse economy but all that manufacturing is the root system of prosperity here.
Not really... Manufacturing today is a global process and the entire supply chain is usually spread around the world.
One example for a cotton shirt (https://apps.npr.org/tshirt/): the cotton is grown in Mississippi. It's then shipped to Indonesia to spin the cotton into yarn. The yarn is shipped to Bangladesh for rough cut and sewing. The shirt is shipped to Colombia for final assembly. And finally it's shipped to the USA for purchase. Move any one of those steps to the USA, and the other steps may still be located elsewhere.
Same is true of other items, like cars. Ford may "manufacture" in the US, but the parts and tooling are sourced from elsewhere. It can't manufacture the chips here, because the tooling and process are exclusive to Taiwan. Even if you bought the plant and moved it here, the making of the tools and the processes are still specific to Taiwan. And some steps may be impossible to "bring home", either because some other country has all the raw materials, or all the expertise, or local laws prohibit some part of the process being done here.
Offshoring happened for the simple, dumb reason that it's cheaper and more profitable.
For all the rarara about "America", shareholder patriotism extends exactly as far as quarterly returns. If that means selling out ordinary US workers - do it. Give me the bag.
What offshoring revealed is that the US is not a culturally integrated country. The culture of the top 5% or so considers itself completely separate to the rest.
It's a political fault line that was always latent, was somewhat suppressed from the New Deal to Carter, and then came roaring back with Reagan.
Now it's operating at pathological, self-harming levels. The marrow of the country has been chewed out, and a few dysfunctional shell oligopolies, propped up by a bubble, are keeping the lie spinning.
There won't be any significant reshoring until there's a cultural change. Reshoring is just too expensive for the owner class to do more than tinker with it. Without a cultural change the owner class doesn't care enough to change that.
Ecological factors from logistics are missed technological development opportunity from not having local production are not factored in here as well.
This goes for govt doing anything but working to ensure domestic production and dual/multi sourcing of essential infrastructure.
There are limits on migration for a reason... that doesn't even consider the impacts on the larger society by weakening social cohesion.
Even then, there's plenty of indication of movement from those who want a Communist society... you only need to look at the NYC election, and the Venezuela protests to see that. Without a longer term consideration for society as part of where business/corporations operate, you will only see more drift in that direction.
If this tiny movement towards "communism" amounts to anything of note in 20 years, I will be surprised. The pattern I've seen is that even if the current push is headed by idealistic leaders who don't give in to self-interested expedience (ie corruption), the next crop won't be. And the corporatist structure has been very good at neutralizing any real reforms, especially in the US.
[0] given equity with things like people who have been here for quite some time - those are undocumented Americans. For comparison, adverse possession, by which you can gain exclusive title to a piece of real estate by breaking the law usually only requires a few decades
For cars I found it interesting that my water pump on my Dodge Ram is stamped with Made in Italy. Yet the part is fairly small that even if Italy continues to make it, they can ship 50k water pumps in one shipping container to Detroit, and the truck can still be assembled here. That's not an issue. The issue is when the truck is made in Mexico entirely (which I think they still are). I know that's not "the entire supply chain" but it certainly becomes a center of gravity.
Last year many people were talking about dev shops changing their "center of gravity" from the US to other places like Poland. In other words, CEO here, EVERYTHING else is in Poland. Wherever that center of gravity is, that's the country that will benefit the most. They may even hire a remote worker in the US that is up all night - but it will be the exception, not the rule to hire US people.
That was an entirely different economic world. We also paid 25 cents for gasoline; that's not coming back, and neither are cheap t-shirts.
Even if we wanted to buy domestic-only, wealth inequality is so fucked that our people couldn't afford it. The way to solve that is higher wages, smaller corporate profits, cheaper healthcare and cost of living. But you know that ain't happening. Our economy is built around corporate profits. We're basically one large hedge fund with a lot of uber drivers.
So while you can get away with protectionism during the reign of an insane person for 4 years, you eventually need to move stuff back overseas, because nobody here can afford the stuff you make here. (You could export all your goods, but then what's the point of the protectionism?)
You're both right but you appear to differ on particularities, like if it's good to bring all manufacturing onshore.
I'd rather address Jensen's could-be-apology which pretty much mimics Grok's "Oops, I made some pedo images, sorry... but move on, nothing to see here."
Yes, Nvidia, Apple and AMD are the companies that drove the US chip manufacturing overseas. The problem is, thanks to that, they are now forcing us to pay for their enormous margins and for bringing chip production back here, all the while they swim in money.
On top of that, we are now supposed to appreciate their newly acquired wisdom and be thankful when they lecture us about what's good for America.
In the specific case of these chips, the offshoring was to Taiwan, a democracy, and one of our geopolitically closest allies. This business went to TSMC because they did a better job producing these chips than either Intel or AMD (or AMD's successor, Global Foundries). The Twinscan machines that fab the chips are from ASML in the Netherlands, another democracy and geopolitical ally. The parts for those machines come from a truly global supply chain. Modern chip manufacturing is an absolute marvel of global integration.
American consumers and businesses benefited from this arrangement in the form of very competitively priced hardware. Most of the manufacturing was in Asia, but most of the profits were to American companies. This is why America is today the richest country on Earth. It simply would not have happened like it did without free trade.
China's low wages and integrated supply chain can beat American manufacturing. China cannot beat the combined talent of the free world. Along with immigration, from the likes of Taiwanese-American Jensen Huang, free trade and an open economy was what once made America great.
In the context of Jensen's would-be-apology, it doesn't matter where the offshoring went. Nvidia, Apple and AMD drove the US chip manufacturing overseas, and thanks to that, they are now a virtual cartel which commands enormous margins, so they can "mercifully" argue about bringing chip production back here... at our expense of course.
While paying through the nose, we're also supposed to appreciate their crocodile tears and listen to their drivel about what's good for America.
What makes you think the problem that caused the industry to go won't also cause it to fail if somebody forces them to stay or tries to bring them back? Also, why one industry leaving made people there destitute?
Those things are always more complicated than they seem.
There was a strong dollar making imports cheaper and exports more expensive. At the same time there were reductions in tariffs (Tokyo Round of GATT) as well as increased quota allowances from other countries, particularly China, than were previously allowed (the Multi-Fiber Arrangement).
At the time, this particular area of the country had turned into a global textile hub and it was devastated as a byproduct (over-saturation of a single industry). Now if you come to the area, you will see all of the old mills converted into apartment complexes, coworking spaces, wedding venues, etc just to preserve the architecture.
The whole area is beautiful now and has been one of the fastest growing parts of the country for almost a decade. I moved here 25 years ago when the changes were just starting but the natives will tell you the whole story. I think a PBS documentary was being made about it too.
If we have an infinite supply of labor with no better place to allocate them then sure, any additional job is good. But that's not the case. We have a constrained labor supply, so is it better overall to focus on high value, high pay jobs, even in manufacturing instead of aiming for the entire supply chain for everything?
How do you explain that? Why do the locals vote against the countries that provide them the jobs? Are you also pro-Trump because you live in that town?
Am I saying they should be disenfranchised from the country? Have I said they I have no empathy for their concerns and hope the worst for them? No.
What I said was it was infuriating when they are doing those things to the ~40% of Texans who are liberal. I didn't say it happens on all liberal forums, I'm complaining about the cases where it does happen. And please don't shift things because I said "everyone cheers" because it should be obvious it is a common phrase and doesn't literally mean I checked and every person on the forum commented.
The past years have shown that many have no problem to change affiliation with the zeitgeist. I feel many Americans are secretly pro-Trump as long as they make money. If there would be more liberals in US tech we would see much more leaks coming from companies such as Apple, Facebook, Reddit, Google, about how the senior leadership is supporting the government policies.
For example with Facebook it needed a woman to get sexually harrassed out of her job and write a book called "careless people" so that it is reported that Facebook engineers were actively embedded with the Trump campaign while at the same time democrat voters (black people) were shown literal fake news ads to keep them away from voting.
I have not seen one Facebook senior engineer being ostracized on HN for working on the trump campaign. Everbody made their millions and joined the next big thing, with us worshipping their amazing FAANG credentials.
If the people who worked on DOGE do a "SHOW HN:" nobody would call it out.
I just look at the patterns of things that are downvoted to death. Comments that would come out of Peter Thiel or Elon Musk's mouth any day of the week are regularly downvoted to hell here.
It's not a matter of 'liberal' vs whatever anymore, it's a matter of expertise and basic ethics versus corruption riding upon anti-intellectualism, cloaked in naked bigotry. Say what you will about the prevailing value system among HN commenters, this place isn't that bad.
Don't commit the mistake of thinking Trump politics is a rupture from what came before when it comes to how the US treats Europe.
It's been economic aggression after economic aggression from both parties since Obama. Different styles, same core ideas.
Not only the direct jobs, but also the other support ones - automation, suppliers, maintenance, facilities work, etc.
That's a significant shift moving from final assembly to forcing most of the supply chain to be relocated.
Strategically, it does not make sense for democratic countries to have higher trade barriers with each other than with autocrat states. But over time the hybrid warfare by autocrat states leveraged social media to convice people to vote against their own interest e.g. brexit.
Plenty of countries have negotiated more favorable tariff positions.
There have been several favorable trade deals as well as several announcements for new production facilities in the US... this may cost more than imports, but there's something to be said for domestic security in terms of access, especially in the likes of a global pandemic or war.
I'm not suggesting it's a perfect solution, or situation, only in that it isn't exactly an idea completely without merit and just blindly applied at random.
If the economy is doing so well because of these tariffs why are they hiding numbers?
Its not even the first time US tried tariffs like these, it didn't go well then but Trump talks about like it was a golden age.
The portions regarding trade are borne out by the VAT systems in place throughout EU and UK. The fact that tariffs exist in pretty much every nation of the world bears out their utility. The reason that most people are even arguing against it is that its being championed by Trump, who is admittedly a bombastic personality.
My opinions on tariffs long predates Trump. I have similar opinions against property taxes against individual ownership as well. I don't think that you should be at risk of losing personal property for the simple fact that you survived another year.
Biden, really? If you’re attempting to stop disinformation, please start with yourself.
Michelin opened their US headquarters in Greenville in 1984. BMW opened their plant in South Carolina in 1994.
How was (at the time) Senator Joe Biden of Delaware responsible for that in any way? Why would he care so much about South Carolina?
The real reason is shipping tires and vehicles across oceans is expensive.
Michelin invested significantly in the site recently and BMW added a ton of EV manufacturing capacities, we are talking of a 1.7 billions dollars investment.
All of this is linked to subsidies they got through the IRA on top of local South Carolina subsidies. They had to do these investments to remain competitive in the US market as the subsidies are tied to local manufacturing and the conditions significantly limit what parts they can import. It was a direct attack on European manufacturing masquerading as green investments.
Guess which president passed the IRA.
[1] Eager for Credits, BMW Breaks Ground on SC Battery Plant https://www.autoweek.com/news/industry-news/a44361301/bmw-ba...
[2] Inflation Reduction Act 'super aggressive,' Macron tells his US hosts (https://www.euractiv.com/news/inflation-reduction-act-super-...)
[3] Michelin's US investments won't affect Europe, CFO says https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/michel...