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This is the price we pay for outsourcing our manufacturing capabilities. We should have kept in-house manufacturing alive, there is plenty of capacity for it he

This is the price we pay for outsourcing our manufacturing capabilities. We should have kept in-house manufacturing alive, there is plenty of capacity for it here in the States.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
groby_b 7y ago
That's complete and utter bullshit. There is not enough capacity to make N95 masks. China retooled entire factories to make enough just for their outbreak. There's a global shortage of N95 masks. Maybe save your nativism until we're done with this.
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  You don't seem to be claiming anything they said is wrong, so why are you being so insulting?
- dang 7y ago
  Breaking the site guidelines like this will get you banned, regardless of how wrong another commenter is or you feel they are. No more of this, please. Your comment would be fine without the first and last sentences. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
pm90 7y ago
Is there any reason to think that had that kind of manufacturing skills remained in the US that the situation would be better?
- ironmagma 7y ago
  The claim is that China is hoarding N95 masks at least according to NYTimes. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/business/masks-china-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/business/masks-china-coro...
dan_quixote 7y ago
Easy to say now, but there's just not enough manpower to make _everything_ in house that we deem strategically important. And if the price isn't viable on the free market, how is it justifiable long term? I generally agree with your sentiment though.
- ironmagma 7y ago
  Not enough manpower at the moment, for sure, but we should create it through education and social investment. It's generally a strategic advantage to have manufacturing capabilities no matter what discipline; it's less that we are reliant on China for this one particular thing and more that we have allowed our once-strong manufacturing muscle to atrophy. We subsidize gas heavily because it's a strategic advantage to the nation; call it a hunch but I think there are more knock-on benefits to being able to make stuff than is readily apparent (and I thought such a view would be more popular on Hacker News to be frank).
  - generatorguy 7y ago
    I think you are bang on with capabilities vs capacity. We should have one factory for anything critical so that in case we can’t get as much as we need on the free market we can ramp up capacity by building more of the machine that makes the product. If you don’t have all of the know how that is in that machine or plant design already in your one factory making the product you are starting from zero. Hence why all of China’s cheap labour deals had technology transfer riders.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
est 7y ago
> Leo Liu, a sales director at Haigong Machinery, a Chinese company that assembles the machine parts for melt-blown lines imported from the US, Germany and Japan. "Everyone is considering mask manufacturing, but they don't understand the process. Once they learn the cost of these machines, they give up." FTA. The US does manufacture some part of the whole mask making process, but I think no country can do it alone.
TrainedMonkey 7y ago
I am not so sure because the cost of keeping the in-house manufacturing is also high. Consider military industrial complex, a bunch of companies had been kept alive through exclusive government contracts for 60+ years [1]. The result are companies optimizing for lobbying for maximum government dollars instead of efficiency or innovation. For example spreading the supply chain across every state: https://twitter.com/VP/status/971876888447725568?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E971876888447725568&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.planetary.org%2Fblogs%2Fjason-davis%2F2018%2F20180309-sls-best-not-miss.html https://twitter.com/VP/status/971876888447725568?ref_src=tws... I believe fragmentation costs of the supply chain are incredibly high. Especially when the supply chain is top down and sources complex components. A problem with the supplier causes the whole project to be delayed. I think this is a major contributing reason of some recent mega-project delays (SLS, F35, James Webb [2], your favorite mega-project here[3]...) 1. Since 1961 per Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_co... 2. Nobody built one before, but I feel like a lot of the screw ups could have been avoided. 3. Being a little facetious, mega-projects are hard.
gwright 7y ago
3M makes these masks in the US and around the world: https://news.3m.com/blog/3m-stories/3m-responds-2019-novel-coronavirus https://news.3m.com/blog/3m-stories/3m-responds-2019-novel-c...

This is the price we pay for outsourcing our manufacturing capabilities. We should have kept in-house manufacturing alive, there is plenty of capacity for it here in the States.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

groby_b 7y ago

That's complete and utter bullshit. There is not enough capacity to make N95 masks. China retooled entire factories to make enough just for their outbreak. There's a global shortage of N95 masks. Maybe save your nativism until we're done with this.

Dylan16807 7y ago
You don't seem to be claiming anything they said is wrong, so why are you being so insulting?
dang 7y ago
Breaking the site guidelines like this will get you banned, regardless of how wrong another commenter is or you feel they are. No more of this, please. Your comment would be fine without the first and last sentences. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

pm90 7y ago

Is there any reason to think that had that kind of manufacturing skills remained in the US that the situation would be better?

ironmagma 7y ago
The claim is that China is hoarding N95 masks at least according to NYTimes. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/business/masks-china-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/business/masks-china-coro...

dan_quixote 7y ago

Easy to say now, but there's just not enough manpower to make _everything_ in house that we deem strategically important. And if the price isn't viable on the free market, how is it justifiable long term? I generally agree with your sentiment though.

ironmagma 7y ago
Not enough manpower at the moment, for sure, but we should create it through education and social investment. It's generally a strategic advantage to have manufacturing capabilities no matter what discipline; it's less that we are reliant on China for this one particular thing and more that we have allowed our once-strong manufacturing muscle to atrophy. We subsidize gas heavily because it's a strategic advantage to the nation; call it a hunch but I think there are more knock-on benefits to being able to make stuff than is readily apparent (and I thought such a view would be more popular on Hacker News to be frank).
- generatorguy 7y ago
  I think you are bang on with capabilities vs capacity. We should have one factory for anything critical so that in case we can’t get as much as we need on the free market we can ramp up capacity by building more of the machine that makes the product. If you don’t have all of the know how that is in that machine or plant design already in your one factory making the product you are starting from zero. Hence why all of China’s cheap labour deals had technology transfer riders.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

est 7y ago

> Leo Liu, a sales director at Haigong Machinery, a Chinese company that assembles the machine parts for melt-blown lines imported from the US, Germany and Japan. "Everyone is considering mask manufacturing, but they don't understand the process. Once they learn the cost of these machines, they give up." FTA. The US does manufacture some part of the whole mask making process, but I think no country can do it alone.

TrainedMonkey 7y ago

I am not so sure because the cost of keeping the in-house manufacturing is also high. Consider military industrial complex, a bunch of companies had been kept alive through exclusive government contracts for 60+ years [1]. The result are companies optimizing for lobbying for maximum government dollars instead of efficiency or innovation. For example spreading the supply chain across every state: https://twitter.com/VP/status/971876888447725568?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E971876888447725568&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.planetary.org%2Fblogs%2Fjason-davis%2F2018%2F20180309-sls-best-not-miss.html https://twitter.com/VP/status/971876888447725568?ref_src=tws... I believe fragmentation costs of the supply chain are incredibly high. Especially when the supply chain is top down and sources complex components. A problem with the supplier causes the whole project to be delayed. I think this is a major contributing reason of some recent mega-project delays (SLS, F35, James Webb [2], your favorite mega-project here[3]...) 1. Since 1961 per Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_co... 2. Nobody built one before, but I feel like a lot of the screw ups could have been avoided. 3. Being a little facetious, mega-projects are hard.

gwright 7y ago

3M makes these masks in the US and around the world: https://news.3m.com/blog/3m-stories/3m-responds-2019-novel-coronavirus https://news.3m.com/blog/3m-stories/3m-responds-2019-novel-c...