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Comment by SmirkingRevenge | Hacker News Reader

We can't manufacture most of those low-end things at competitive prices with developing nations - and we never will be able to (or else we have bigger problems).

So who's going to buy the low-end stuff at high-end prices?

You can try tariffs and the like (as we're foolishly doing right now) - that usually ends up having the opposite intended effect. You make everything more expensive domestically, including manufacturing (b/c your inputs got more expensive), and hurt our ability to export, even the things we did well.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world unencumbered with protectionism reaps the benefits of free trade and out competes us.

All this eventually leads to a loss of manufacturing jobs and output and manufacturers that can only sell to the domestic market (instead of the whole world). The whole sector starts to shrink. So that's no good.

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America has lots of natural resources (even more when we're friendly with Canada) cheap electricity, good transportation infrastructure (historically).

China has to import much of their raw materials. Wood from SEA and Russia, oil from the middle east and Russia, even coal, ore and beef cattle from Australia! They don't have the water supply, forests, mines or oil that exist in North America.

There is no good reason for them to be the manufacturing center of the globe and there were rational reasons why the US was the center of manufacturing in the globe in the 20th century.

The reason they became the global center of manufacturing was policy choices in China and the US at the turn of this century, and the reason why they remain the center of manufacturing is they developed a massive amount of capital and know-how in an era where the USA was actively destroying its own.

China has plenty of coal. They import metal refining coal, which they don’t have. And they import thermal coal because it’s easier to boat the stuff in from Indonesia than move it east by rail from western China.

Australia was never very interested in being a manufacturing power house, they simply don’t have the people for it anyways, and it’s easier to ship raw material than finished goods vast distances. Russia has the same problem in population so China is convenient for them. China would have happened even if the USA didn’t help it along in 80s-90s.

Australia in the mid 70s was party to the Lima Declaration [1]

Presently there's a lot of yap how it didn't or wasn't the reason Australia lost its way to retain its manufacturing sector. Indirectly though it was bouncing around the walls of Govt and industry's board rooms and pushed decisions to reduce or discontinue ongoing training in regard to upskilling, or simply improving skill sets that might be needed in the unemployed working class.

However much of the shift way from general manufacturing was the inevitable result of the declaration, the inability for a small manufacturer in places like Australia to compete with cheap imports - I recall a relative back in 1979 - 80 having a long rant about a manufacturing company near him - the whole problem was the small dry cells the company purchased at quantity to install into an electronic device - the exact same branded dry cells were available to their oversea competition for next to nothing and could / did sell their version cheaper than the purchase price the company was paying for the batteries per unit.

The other part of the issue was those industries that opted to hang on - the bogey man here again was the thinking that it would be better / overall cheaper for manufacturing sector to be elsewhere overseas. Thus with this mindset setting fruit in the higher branches of the wealth market, there was not much help from Industry heads or Govt at the time to encourage or provide affordable means for whichever industry still hanging on, to modernise - textile being one that comes to mind. I actually had a strong belief (I knew no better from the propaganda being dribbled out,) 80s / early 90s that the reason the textile and clothing industry was falling off was overseas workers were paid a pittance, which made it hard for textile companies here to stay competitive - that was until someone who'd had travelled and had business interests though Asia and the US dispelled the usual propaganda I'd been suckling on, she corrected me on that it's not all sweat shops, and much of the textile base over in Asia had modernised quickly and been computerised for years.

[1] https://www.unido.org/sites/default/files/2012-10/Lima%20Dec... [pdf]

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