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I do believe these masks are also made in the US, but this situation highlights exactly why a country having its own major manufacturing base is not just an eco

I do believe these masks are also made in the US, but this situation highlights exactly why a country having its own major manufacturing base is not just an economic need but rather also a national security need. The US needs to invest in itself immediately to rebuild its lost manufacturing base. In economic terms, under certain definitions and assumptions that are typical under modern economics, a trade war such as the current US-China trade war result in welfare losses. I believe, however, that when national security is taken into account (ie having the ability for the country to rapidly respond to productive capacity needs in a time of crisis), the trade war along with serious investment in expanding industrial capacity is likely net good.

echelon 7y ago
All the workers being replaced by automation and having to rely on "gig economy" work could pursue manufacturing instead. We have the workforce. We can pay workers livable wages and give them meaningful work. Cost of goods could be reduced through greater efficiency. Research into robotics and automation could fuel a new decade of American growth.
- bootlooped 7y ago
  How can you in once sentence say we can employ workers previously displaced by automation, and in the next sentence assert that we can produce these goods at a competitive price with automation?
  - echelon 7y ago
    I should proofread and given examples. Lack of caffeine from WFH isn't helping me. There are many types of automation. Grocery workers (cashiers, stockers) are replaced with robotics and self-checkout (which automates pricing and theft detection) that removes them from the equation. Automobile machinists and doctors are supplemented with robotics that let them do higher-precision work and avoid mundane and/or stressful tasks. The gig economy is driven by automation (customer discovery, billing, payroll, etc.), but the industry is set up in a way that happens to produce negative externalities and push risks and costs onto workers. We need the type of automation that reduces mindless repetition and extends human capability. Not the kind geared at removing people.
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      I don't understand why we insist on keeping people in jobs that can be automated. Let them go pursue something that's fulfilling. Not automating something that can be just to keep people doing jobs we don't need done is a fascinating make-work project. The displaced should be re-trained, provided meaningful opportunities, or yeah, paid basic income out of the money saved by them not going to work. Why pay them to do a less efficient job, that they're not fulfilled by, to produce uncompetitive goods at an uncompetitive price?
      - tlrobinson 7y ago
        I’m not saying we should protect these jobs by law or anything, but I question whether work that can be automated can't be fulfilling. I keep seeing these “Cafe X” robotic coffee bars in San Francisco. Surely some baristas find their job fulfilling, and some customers enjoy chatting with their human barista instead of a robot? Personally I think I’d have a hard time feeling good about working on something that directly replaces human labor without much benefit other than profit.
        krillkkl 7y ago
        > I’m not saying we should protect these jobs by law or anything, but I question whether work that can be automated can't be fulfilling. Thanks for writing this, I don't think it gets said often enough (or at all).
        gmueckl 7y ago
        You picked an example where the Job includes social interaction, which is a fundamental human need. Let's consider an assembly line worker who fastens the same set of screws over and over again. Do you still come to the same conclusion? Is a dull, repetitive job psychologically harmful over long times? There are jobs that greatly endanger people's physical health. Mining and construction come to my mind. If automation can make these jobs safer, go for it. For everything else, we will probably end up with a balance between heavy automation and niches where artisans hand craft similar products because they love doing so. It should ideally be a free choice instead if people getting preasured into low skill/low wage/high risk jobs because they need to eat.
- BubRoss 7y ago
  Who is being replaced by automation and becoming forced to rely on the gig economy?
- Camillo 7y ago
  "They were replaced by automation" is a vile anti-worker canard. The manufacturing jobs went to humans in China, not robots.
  - pdelbarba 7y ago
    Haven't heard that definition of canard in a while... As with most things, I'm fairly sure the truth lies somewhere in the middle and it varies industry to industry. Yea, a lot of stuff went to china, but a lot of workers were also replaced by automated systems. In a lot of cases, I'd even venture to say maybe a majority, it was both. It's not even close to factually true to say it's JUST china or JUST robots. Also, do you mind elaborating on how that's specifically anti-worker? Either case can be construed as such depending on your position.
    - jacobush 7y ago
      Don’t forget robots in China
  - scalableUnicon 7y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h1ooyyFkF0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h1ooyyFkF0 This episode on John Oliver's Last Week Tonight might help.
- jdietrich 7y ago
  >We have the workforce. That's the problem - you don't. By definition, the kind of efficient, highly-automated manufacturing you're thinking of doesn't need many unskilled or semi-skilled workers, but it does need skilled and experienced engineers and machinists. It needs a massive and complex ecosystem of suppliers and support. The depletion of America's industrial base has created a massive skills gap that would take decades to remedy. You can't create a new Silicon Valley with a bunch of bootcamp graduates and some wishful thinking; likewise, you can't create a manufacturing economy through sheer force of will.
  - hguant 7y ago
    This reminds me of a conversation I had at a New Year's party not too long ago - a gentleman I'd never met before and I got to talking, and in the process of getting to know one another (however much you can know someone after 4-5 drinks at a black tie party you go to once a year), he bemoaned the issues he was having trying to open a US branch of his company. Apparently medium scale sheet metal forming operations in the States have all but disappeared - everything is either outsourced to China, or is small scale, high precision work that can't meet demand of more than N hundred pieces a week. It's a boring issue - "oh no, there's no one to subcontract this work to, you have to buy from China for X percent of what it would cost to do here" - but speak volumes as to the loss of a critical component of that manufacturing ecosystem.
    - Cthulhu_ 7y ago
      It's because people have been pushed to both sides of that; manufacturing used to be a comfortable middle class job, but it's shifted to the sides, being a high value, specialist job on the one hand, and a low education required job of handling incoming finished or half-finished products coming over from abroad.
    - brigandish 7y ago
      I got chatting to the bloke next to me on a long haul flight from the UK to Japan. He was going there to buy a printing machine (he was a printer) and when I asked why go all the way to Japan he told me that, basically, only Germany and Japan make printing machines any more. He even pointed out that the pulp he bought was from abroad. I wonder if freight companies receive subsidies though - lots of airlines certainly get subsidies - that might change things in favour of more local producers. Maybe.
- downerending 7y ago
  I'm not sure that we do have the workforce. The generation of workers I remember from childhood had a large array of skills crucial in manufacturing that are now withering or have disappeared entirely. The people that are maintaining those skills and learning the new skills needed are increasingly elsewhere.
bamboozled 7y ago
A “superpower” who can’t seem make enough masks to protect its own medical professionals from a pandemic. It’s an interesting situation.
- spyckie2 7y ago
  When the hard constraint is not losing profit, many things are difficult to do.
- ardit33 7y ago
  Rome was a "superpower" militarily but it couldn't feed itself, and had to rely on grain from Egypt and the fertile crescent to feed its population..... Here we can't produce some basic silly things... as it is not that economical during normal times... Perhaps farming subsides are not a crazy type of idea after all.
  - bamboozled 7y ago
    Well two things come to mind here: - People can learn from Rome's mistakes. - Rome did at least some farming. - Rome is no more.
    - gdubs 7y ago
      I’m reminded of an old saying that there two hard things in Computer Science: - cache invalidation - naming things - and off-by-one errors
      - geekthattweaks 7y ago
        My favorite computer science joke by far!
        agustif 7y ago
        Maybe it was an array of answers, lol
      - 7y ago
Ericson2314 7y ago
Does one of the n95 cotton candy machines even exist in the US? I would love to see the specs for them made free and open so anyone could attempt to produce one and then have it vetted. Contributing to e.g. firmware code for the thing is like the only meaningful thing I could put my skills towards in this epidemic. It would be an honor to do so.
- creddit 7y ago
  I believe so, yes. An interesting article here about some history: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/05/811387424/face-masks-not-enough-are-made-in-america-to-deal-with-coronavirus https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/05/8113874...
- Inconel 7y ago
  The article mentions this Florida company as one of the suppliers of such machines. They have a reasonably informative website. http://www.hillsinc.net http://www.hillsinc.net
- AdrianB1 7y ago
  The problem is not the specs and firmware code with these machines, it is the precision and tuning it to get good quality output. In the physical world, working with sub-micron polymer products is not something you solve with software. They wrote in the article about some challenges, none is trivial and none is due to hiding the specs or writing bad code.
  - Ericson2314 7y ago
    The latency is due to those physical constraints, as you say and as discussed in the article. But that doesn't mean that IP constraints hinder the embarrassingly parallel scale out of multiple new machines put together by different people in different places. Now, having 100 new machines ready in 5 months might be little better than 3 new ones in 5 months. I don't mean to be one of those assholes that presumes software subsumes all problems, but my experience working with engineers is that they confuse a non-software hard part with a non-software critical path: even though software is the easy part, there are still gains to be had from making the easy part easier.
cycrutchfield 7y ago
Would be much less of a problem if we actually stockpiled enough masks like we were supposed to.
jhpriestley 7y ago
Stockpiling essential medical equipment sounds a lot cheaper than autarky.
- Arbalest 7y ago
  Fair comment really. People are taking the worst case and running with it. Really governments should have had more forethought to make preparations while things were still good. Attempting self sufficiency sounds more like a post apocalyptic requirement, which given the circumstance is an easy trap to fall into. Though there's always the blindspot: not all futures are predictable. Just that this one mostly was.
- ckcheng 7y ago
  Stockpiling is good as part of the preparation but isn't enough. e.g. "Five months worth of supplies were used by one hospital in six days" [1] How's any country supposed to stockpile enough at that rate? And stockpiles require upkeep and evergreening. Otherwise things like masks eventually expire [2]. Upkeep costs money too. [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/coronavirus-us-hospital-georgia-shortages-healthcare-a9406411.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic... [2] https://nationalpost.com/news/world/ontario-stockpiled-millions-of-masks-after-sars-they-all-expired-as-covid-19-nears-pandemic-status https://nationalpost.com/news/world/ontario-stockpiled-milli...
  - lazyjones 7y ago
    > e.g. "Five months worth of supplies were used by one hospital in six days" [1] Here in Austria we don't even have enough N95 masks for hospital staff and medical personnel. This is completely irresponsible and not impossible to fix. It should be part of any pandemic plan to stockpile these. Things would work much better if at least this was covered now, but sadly it isn't and people will die because of it.
    - piokoch 7y ago
      Stockpile how? This is typical niche product, nobody assumes this will be needed in huge quantities. There was a post on HN about how difficult is to produce those masks (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22613061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22613061) and that setting up assembly line for needed materials takes 6 months (6 months in Germany, who are already producing this stuff).
snowwrestler 7y ago
No country has the manufacturing base to meet the demand for these masks under a pandemic, not even China. That’s what the article is all about. Your thoughts on the merits of trade wars are not applicable.
- creddit 7y ago
  Who defines what's applicable on HN? This article discusses Chinese supply chains and a manufacturing shortage for a specific need the result of which is decreased national security. If there is another country (USA) which has relatively significantly diminished supply chains and manufacturing capacity and therefore has an even greater national security risk, why is that not applicable to be discussed? If, further, there is an opportunity and process by which that country (USA) could close that gap, why is it not applicable to be discussed?
- makomk 7y ago
  The US is having trouble making enough masks to meet its normal day-to-day demand for them, let alone the increase from a pandemic, because almost all the mask production has been outsourced to China and they're redirecting the entire output to local use. That's an issue and it's a reason why the US might want extremely substantial tariffs or even quotas on mask imports in normal circumstances.
  - vonmoltke 7y ago
    No, it wasn't. 3M has been making their N95 respirators in the US the whole time. It was cheaper masks (e.g., dust masks, procedure masks) that had their production outsourced.
- PeterisP 7y ago
  Some countries have a sufficient manufacturing base that allows them to spin up mass manufacturing of (for example) masks over a month or two. You don't need to keep spare capacity for everything, but you need to have local capacity (not necessarily spare) for building custom manufacturing machines and staffing them, so that you can divert it to manufacture arbitrary physical goods if needed. Some countries can do that, most don't - but some of these could and should build that capacity.
dehrmann 7y ago
> a country having its own major manufacturing base is not just an economic need but rather also a national security need It's a strong argument for diverse suppliers, but unless you're a major international player, you don't really have the need, and having redundant manufacturing gets expensive. Just look at people balking at the cost of switching away from Huawei (that's a name I haven't heard for a few weeks). > the trade war along with serious investment in expanding industrial capacity is likely net good. But it makes war easier. You know who's not going to war? The US and China. If they did, they'd be economically screwed. Economic interdependence makes war a lot harder.
- ralph84 7y ago
  > Economic interdependence makes war a lot harder. Citation needed. The American Revolutionary War, The American Civil War, WWI, WWII, just to name a few, all involved belligerents with significant economic interdependence.
swsieber 7y ago
My first thought about this economic mess was that it clearly illustrates why it'd be a bad idea to have another world war, even if it were mostly economic or infrastructure based. I now think that this is getting us prepared to have a world war.
sneak 7y ago
A much simpler option would to stop seeing the world as “them” and “us” and de-emphasize the borders in general. It would be great if it were illegal to control the flows of inputs to and outputs from manufacturing, but I doubt national leaders hellbent on playing the blame game and prioritizing some lives/prosperity over others simply based on the accident of birthplace would ever give up that sort of control they now exercise.
- creddit 7y ago
  The problem with the post-national view is that it has to be a consensus view globally. It's a classic prisoner's dilemma. It has to begin with everyone respecting broadly the same general ethics and views on rights. As it turns out, there are countries where women aren't allowed to drive, where religious autocracies rule, where whole populations of religious minorities are imprisoned and enslaved and the people of those countries support it happily. Do you want people with those values having a say in how you live? I don't.
  - sneak 7y ago
    The problem is that values are not evenly distributed within a country. A nation is not a useful or even approximate proxy for values. Most countries have a pretty big chunk of people in them that would be fine with a religious autocracy that enslaves those who don’t conform to the majority, the US included. It’s the same in every country. There are, for example, a whole bunch of people in the US who are fine with some fiercely racist and inhumane federal policies, such as running concentration camps wherein many children are raped and otherwise sexually abused. Do you want people with those values having a say in how you live? I don't.
    - remarkEon 7y ago
      >A nation is not a useful or even approximate proxy for values. What? Of course it is. Even if you went one level down, states in the United States itself are excellent proxies for the mean values that are held in a particular region. If your point is that every geographic region has groups of people on the fringe, then yeah fine. That's true. But that doesn't mean anything with regard to the usefulness of what makes up a nation or its borders - which are of course proving quite useful during a pandemic.
KKKKkkkk1 7y ago
When you say that the US needs to "invest in itself", what you really mean is that the US needs to divert investments from industries in which it has a comparative advantage into industries that developing countries have a comparative advantage in.
- creddit 7y ago
  If investment were somehow zero sum, yes that's a large part of what I would mean. Luckily, for my point to continue standing without being reduced to that, investment is indeed not zero-sum.
- function_seven 7y ago
  The current situation is showing us that the comparative advantage may not be as great as we thought it was for overseas manufacturing. When doing the arithmetic, a term for “national security” may have been underweighted or entirely left out.
- remarkEon 7y ago
  The "comparative advantage" we enjoy is an artificial creation of deliberate policy choices. The traditional "well this is just econ 101" macroeconomic lectures describe scenarios as they exist, not how they should be. The "comparative advantage" that you think developing countries have is using cheap slave wage labor to produce an unending wave of cheap (mostly plastic) consumer goods that people are quickly realizing in this pandemic they don't really need. Not to mention non-existent environmental regulations. I hope that this crisis makes people do a deep introspection of their consumption habits, and realize where these "goods" actually come from, and whether it was really worth it to stock our giga stores with this stuff.
- AdrianB1 7y ago
  You can die in a pandemic still singing the song about the "comparative advantage". Not to mention that there is no comparative advantage when you ignore the buzzwords and actually do the comparison seriously.
solatic 7y ago
Yes and no. The economic benefits of globalized supply chains are real. The question is not whether or not supply chains should be globalized but how to ensure their safety in the event of a global disruption? It's days like these that I'm really sad that more Americans don't do military service. Ensuring the long-term viability of large, generally dormant stockpiles is the core competency of the military in peacetime, because the military needs to spin up large numbers of resources on a dime when necessary and can't take several months or years to do so in the face of an imminent attack. My argument is that the military should maintain large manufacturing capacity that is generally dormant during peacetime (when it is too expensive compared to a globalized supply chain) so that it can be spun up in the event of global supply chain disruptions. In a day and age where security needs have more to do with economics than geopolitical control, it should arguably be the military's highest priority.
- lazyjones 7y ago
  > My argument is that the military should maintain large manufacturing capacity that is generally dormant during peacetime (when it is too expensive compared to a globalized supply chain) so that it can be spun up in the event of global supply chain disruptions. Might be a good solution, but how about having some more generic production capacity instead that can adapt quickly to urgent needs? China is quickly converting whole factories, with some research perhaps this process can be simplified and improved with more expensive, but flexible production technology. 3D printing instead of die casting etc. ...
  - AdrianB1 7y ago
    It used to be the case in some countries; for example in my country the tobacco processing plants had the dual-purpose to build rifle ammo as most of the packing equipment used ~ 7.62 diameter. My cousin that worked in such a plant said it took less than 2 weeks for a full conversion. In this particular example there was no dormant capacity during peacetime, it was actively used on alternative production.
  - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
    > "generic production capacity" Much like the generic scientist/engineer in video games (imagine telling a chemical engineer that they're suddenly a electrical engineer), there is no such thing as "generic production capacity". Specific high-tech industries require specific hardware and specific expertise (like the melt-blown fabric mentioned in the article) that you can't just keep on standby indefinitely.
Cthulhu_ 7y ago
Yes, but who would pay these companies just to stay in business? If China can produce these things for half the price (even after shipping), people will buy from them instead. That's how the free market works. I mean you could mandate that certain essential products can only be made locally / cannot be imported from abroad, but who is going to pay for it? That would require a political revolution, and despite everything that's happened over the past years, that just isn't going to happen in the US just yet. Besides, it'd make the US more communist, where the government controls the market and production and where people work.
nabla9 7y ago
It's not true that US or any other developed country have lost their manufacturing base. The rest of the economy has grown faster than manufacturing. Developed countries have moved into high-tech, high productivity, more capital intensive manufacturing with complex supply chains. If you want to bring back low productivity products into your country, you must accept wage decline, slower growth and lowering quality of life. You can prepare for emergencies using other means and using relatively small adjustments. Post-industrial societies have higher productivity than industrial societies. Turning the clock back is not a good idea.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >Turning the clock back is not a good idea. Might be a more liveable, more resilient, better for the environment, and for quality of life (which is not the same as "more gadgets") idea though...
  - simonh 7y ago
    It's hard to see how lower paid jobs are more liveable or provide better quality of life, or how smaller scale and therefore less efficient manufacturing would be better for the environment. I just don't see how these outcomes are supposed to arise. More resilient, ok maybe, but surely there are other ways that resilience could be achieved through e.g. rolling stockpiling or maintaining flexible manufacturing capability. We don't necessarily need to be able to make our own masks all the time, but have the capacity to make them if needed. there are a range of new technologies coming along that could provide this flexibility, such as 3d printing and flexible robotic assembly systems. That would come at a cost for sure, but could provide the needed flexibility at a much lower social cost than pushing people back into lower value long term employment.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      >It's hard to see how lower paid jobs are more liveable or provide better quality of life We had higher paid jobs (or more yield per job, a single working person could support a family, buy a house, send kids to college) in the 50s and 60s for example, so I'm not sure why "turning back time" means lower paid jobs (or less purchase capacity). Give me necessities (house/rent, food, taking care of kids, college, etc) and more freedom/livable work, and I can live without 90% of modern "must haves", from smartphones to same-day-delivery from poorly-paid adults in wharehouses working 10-hour shifts in diapers to send me Amazon Prime goods made in China...
megous 7y ago
It also shows that starting trade wars is not a great idea, if you may need the other country's resources in unforeseen future emergencies.
- simonh 7y ago
  The argument for trade wars is that it encourages more local manufacturing and independence. That doesn't seem to be what's happened so far in the current dispute between China and the US though. I suspect this is because the trade dispute has introduced so much uncertainty that nobody is willing to make long term investments in infrastructure and capacity, based on what may well be a temporary and constantly changing situation.
JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> a country having its own major manufacturing base American manufacturing output has grown since 1990 [1]. What it’s been losing is manufacturing employment. Having more people making a similar number of things does nothing for national security. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  The US is the 3rd largest manufacturer in the world, behind China and Germany. Wayyyyy behind China but, like, everyone is, at least when it comes to manufacturing. We're also the number one exporter of food, and hold a few other top production laurels. Not the top producer, not the top consumer -- that's China -- but the top over-all exporter.[1] As the above comment mentioned: most of that work is highly industrialized and automated. Less than 1% of the US is farmers but they produce enough to make US food exports #1. Much of the same is true for US manufacturing. [1] https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-american-food-giant-the-largest-exporter-of-food-in-the-world.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-american-food-giant-...
- stjohnswarts 7y ago
  I think people are talking about masks, medical supplies, medicine manufacturing are all critical to the national security and should be brought back. This should be taken as a learning experience as well as a national disaster. Lest we forget in a year. Those industries can be subsidized as they are critical and we can't trust other countries for those supplies in pandemics and other world disasters.
mlrtime 7y ago
This is correct and an answer I give to people on the coasts when they ask why the US govt pays farmers. It is imperative that a country can feed itself.
snarf21 7y ago
This is the conundrum. People want manufacturing here and also want it to be super high paying with skills learned in a few days. People also want to buy things at the dollar store. If all the things at the dollar store were made by US workers, there wouldn't be dollar stores. Dollar stores exploded after Clinton opened up trade with China. Want people really want is buying power even if they don't understand it. It is also why I personally feel we are better off with removing all wage taxes on the poor than trying to push minimum wage higher and higher. Rich people don't shop at Wal-Mart. If everyone there makes $20/hour, it just makes it more expensive for the same people who now make "more" money (and they'll pay more taxes). If costs rise just like wages, buying power doesn't increase and could actually go down even if someone "makes" more.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  > It is also why I personally feel we are better off with removing all wage taxes on the poor than trying to push minimum wage higher and higher. Confused, are you under the impression the entirety of everyone's wages is taxed in the United States? P.S. On your larger point: I'm not sure in what world you think 0% tax is a substitute for minimum wage. It certainly does not prevent you from earning atrociously low wages (and having correspondingly abysmal purchasing power). It only means the government won't take any of your measly earnings. Whereas minimum wage is designed to solve exactly that problem.
  - snarf21 7y ago
    To be fair, I never said get rid of minimum wage. I was talking about pushing it up to things like $20. The point I was trying to make is that if you go too high, you cause people to just up tax brackets and higher costs at the places they shop because those workers are also making $20/hour now too. Some people think tools like EITC helps the poor more than pushing minimum wage up and I tend to agree. I don't think EITC goes far enough and I would remove all federal taxes for people who earn less than some $X/year.
    - kittiepryde 7y ago
ardy42 7y ago
> I do believe these masks are also made in the US, but this situation highlights exactly why a country having its own major manufacturing base is not just an economic need but rather also a national security need. The US needs to invest in itself immediately to rebuild its lost manufacturing base. 3M and Prestige Ameritech are the only companies with the ability to manufacturing N95 masks in the US from US sourced materials. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/shortages-confusion-and-poor-communication-complicate-coronavirus-preparations/2020/02/25/d9e56396-575d-11ea-9b35-def5a027d470_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/shortages-confusion-an... https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/02/15/coronavirus-mask-shortage-texas-manufacturing/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/02/15/coronavir... Totally agree with you on manufacturing. It's super important to have this kind of domestic manufacturing capability, because trade links break down in a crisis like this. The US is short on supply and can't import more (other countries are banning exports to conserve supply for domestic needs). If all the manufacturing capability had been outsourced, US healthcare workers would be in even worse shape.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  > 3M and Prestige Ameritech are the only companies with the ability to manufacturing N95 masks in the US from US sourced materials. I'm confused about your italics. Why does it matter where the source materials you give them comes from? i.e. Why would other manufacturers in the US be only able to manufacture masks from non-US-sourced-materials, but fail on US-sourced materials? Is there something defective with US-sourced materials that if you gave them to US-based manufacturers, their machines would break or something?
  - afiori 7y ago
    It could be a matter of having the whole process happen in the US. In the sense that those 2 companies are the only one that have sufficient domestic supply chain for production, while all other companies need to rely on import.
    - mehrdadn 7y ago
eru 7y ago
> I do believe these masks are also made in the US, but this situation highlights exactly why a country having its own major manufacturing base is not just an economic need but rather also a national security need. I might take your argument for the security need. But how does this highlight anything about an economic need? (Or am I misreading that?) > In economic terms, under certain definitions and assumptions that are typical under modern economics, a trade war such as the current US-China trade war result in welfare losses. I believe, however, that when national security is taken into account (ie having the ability for the country to rapidly respond to productive capacity needs in a time of crisis), the trade war along with serious investment in expanding industrial capacity is likely net good. Perhaps an optimally waged trade war might be? Not sure. But in practice, politicians use these highly theoretical arguments that might apply in very special cases to defend very crude behaviour. Eg if you want to justify a trade war on national security grounds, your goal would presumably to weaken the other party? One of the demands in Trump's trade war was that China open its markets more to American goods and services, and lower tariffs and restrictions on foreign commerce in general. That would only strengthen the Chinese economy, for all the orthodox reasons.

echelon 7y ago

All the workers being replaced by automation and having to rely on "gig economy" work could pursue manufacturing instead. We have the workforce. We can pay workers livable wages and give them meaningful work. Cost of goods could be reduced through greater efficiency. Research into robotics and automation could fuel a new decade of American growth.

bootlooped 7y ago
How can you in once sentence say we can employ workers previously displaced by automation, and in the next sentence assert that we can produce these goods at a competitive price with automation?
- echelon 7y ago
  I should proofread and given examples. Lack of caffeine from WFH isn't helping me. There are many types of automation. Grocery workers (cashiers, stockers) are replaced with robotics and self-checkout (which automates pricing and theft detection) that removes them from the equation. Automobile machinists and doctors are supplemented with robotics that let them do higher-precision work and avoid mundane and/or stressful tasks. The gig economy is driven by automation (customer discovery, billing, payroll, etc.), but the industry is set up in a way that happens to produce negative externalities and push risks and costs onto workers. We need the type of automation that reduces mindless repetition and extends human capability. Not the kind geared at removing people.
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    I don't understand why we insist on keeping people in jobs that can be automated. Let them go pursue something that's fulfilling. Not automating something that can be just to keep people doing jobs we don't need done is a fascinating make-work project. The displaced should be re-trained, provided meaningful opportunities, or yeah, paid basic income out of the money saved by them not going to work. Why pay them to do a less efficient job, that they're not fulfilled by, to produce uncompetitive goods at an uncompetitive price?
    - tlrobinson 7y ago
      I’m not saying we should protect these jobs by law or anything, but I question whether work that can be automated can't be fulfilling. I keep seeing these “Cafe X” robotic coffee bars in San Francisco. Surely some baristas find their job fulfilling, and some customers enjoy chatting with their human barista instead of a robot? Personally I think I’d have a hard time feeling good about working on something that directly replaces human labor without much benefit other than profit.
      - krillkkl 7y ago
        > I’m not saying we should protect these jobs by law or anything, but I question whether work that can be automated can't be fulfilling. Thanks for writing this, I don't think it gets said often enough (or at all).
      - gmueckl 7y ago
        You picked an example where the Job includes social interaction, which is a fundamental human need. Let's consider an assembly line worker who fastens the same set of screws over and over again. Do you still come to the same conclusion? Is a dull, repetitive job psychologically harmful over long times? There are jobs that greatly endanger people's physical health. Mining and construction come to my mind. If automation can make these jobs safer, go for it. For everything else, we will probably end up with a balance between heavy automation and niches where artisans hand craft similar products because they love doing so. It should ideally be a free choice instead if people getting preasured into low skill/low wage/high risk jobs because they need to eat.
BubRoss 7y ago
Who is being replaced by automation and becoming forced to rely on the gig economy?
Camillo 7y ago
"They were replaced by automation" is a vile anti-worker canard. The manufacturing jobs went to humans in China, not robots.
- pdelbarba 7y ago
  Haven't heard that definition of canard in a while... As with most things, I'm fairly sure the truth lies somewhere in the middle and it varies industry to industry. Yea, a lot of stuff went to china, but a lot of workers were also replaced by automated systems. In a lot of cases, I'd even venture to say maybe a majority, it was both. It's not even close to factually true to say it's JUST china or JUST robots. Also, do you mind elaborating on how that's specifically anti-worker? Either case can be construed as such depending on your position.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    Don’t forget robots in China
- scalableUnicon 7y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h1ooyyFkF0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h1ooyyFkF0 This episode on John Oliver's Last Week Tonight might help.
jdietrich 7y ago
>We have the workforce. That's the problem - you don't. By definition, the kind of efficient, highly-automated manufacturing you're thinking of doesn't need many unskilled or semi-skilled workers, but it does need skilled and experienced engineers and machinists. It needs a massive and complex ecosystem of suppliers and support. The depletion of America's industrial base has created a massive skills gap that would take decades to remedy. You can't create a new Silicon Valley with a bunch of bootcamp graduates and some wishful thinking; likewise, you can't create a manufacturing economy through sheer force of will.
- hguant 7y ago
  This reminds me of a conversation I had at a New Year's party not too long ago - a gentleman I'd never met before and I got to talking, and in the process of getting to know one another (however much you can know someone after 4-5 drinks at a black tie party you go to once a year), he bemoaned the issues he was having trying to open a US branch of his company. Apparently medium scale sheet metal forming operations in the States have all but disappeared - everything is either outsourced to China, or is small scale, high precision work that can't meet demand of more than N hundred pieces a week. It's a boring issue - "oh no, there's no one to subcontract this work to, you have to buy from China for X percent of what it would cost to do here" - but speak volumes as to the loss of a critical component of that manufacturing ecosystem.
  - Cthulhu_ 7y ago
    It's because people have been pushed to both sides of that; manufacturing used to be a comfortable middle class job, but it's shifted to the sides, being a high value, specialist job on the one hand, and a low education required job of handling incoming finished or half-finished products coming over from abroad.
  - brigandish 7y ago
    I got chatting to the bloke next to me on a long haul flight from the UK to Japan. He was going there to buy a printing machine (he was a printer) and when I asked why go all the way to Japan he told me that, basically, only Germany and Japan make printing machines any more. He even pointed out that the pulp he bought was from abroad. I wonder if freight companies receive subsidies though - lots of airlines certainly get subsidies - that might change things in favour of more local producers. Maybe.
downerending 7y ago
I'm not sure that we do have the workforce. The generation of workers I remember from childhood had a large array of skills crucial in manufacturing that are now withering or have disappeared entirely. The people that are maintaining those skills and learning the new skills needed are increasingly elsewhere.

bamboozled 7y ago

A “superpower” who can’t seem make enough masks to protect its own medical professionals from a pandemic. It’s an interesting situation.

spyckie2 7y ago
When the hard constraint is not losing profit, many things are difficult to do.
ardit33 7y ago
Rome was a "superpower" militarily but it couldn't feed itself, and had to rely on grain from Egypt and the fertile crescent to feed its population..... Here we can't produce some basic silly things... as it is not that economical during normal times... Perhaps farming subsides are not a crazy type of idea after all.
- bamboozled 7y ago
  Well two things come to mind here: - People can learn from Rome's mistakes. - Rome did at least some farming. - Rome is no more.
  - gdubs 7y ago
    I’m reminded of an old saying that there two hard things in Computer Science: - cache invalidation - naming things - and off-by-one errors
    - geekthattweaks 7y ago
      My favorite computer science joke by far!
      - agustif 7y ago
        Maybe it was an array of answers, lol
    - 7y ago

Ericson2314 7y ago

Does one of the n95 cotton candy machines even exist in the US? I would love to see the specs for them made free and open so anyone could attempt to produce one and then have it vetted. Contributing to e.g. firmware code for the thing is like the only meaningful thing I could put my skills towards in this epidemic. It would be an honor to do so.

creddit 7y ago
I believe so, yes. An interesting article here about some history: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/05/811387424/face-masks-not-enough-are-made-in-america-to-deal-with-coronavirus https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/05/8113874...
Inconel 7y ago
The article mentions this Florida company as one of the suppliers of such machines. They have a reasonably informative website. http://www.hillsinc.net http://www.hillsinc.net
AdrianB1 7y ago
The problem is not the specs and firmware code with these machines, it is the precision and tuning it to get good quality output. In the physical world, working with sub-micron polymer products is not something you solve with software. They wrote in the article about some challenges, none is trivial and none is due to hiding the specs or writing bad code.
- Ericson2314 7y ago
  The latency is due to those physical constraints, as you say and as discussed in the article. But that doesn't mean that IP constraints hinder the embarrassingly parallel scale out of multiple new machines put together by different people in different places. Now, having 100 new machines ready in 5 months might be little better than 3 new ones in 5 months. I don't mean to be one of those assholes that presumes software subsumes all problems, but my experience working with engineers is that they confuse a non-software hard part with a non-software critical path: even though software is the easy part, there are still gains to be had from making the easy part easier.

cycrutchfield 7y ago

Would be much less of a problem if we actually stockpiled enough masks like we were supposed to.

jhpriestley 7y ago

Stockpiling essential medical equipment sounds a lot cheaper than autarky.

Arbalest 7y ago
Fair comment really. People are taking the worst case and running with it. Really governments should have had more forethought to make preparations while things were still good. Attempting self sufficiency sounds more like a post apocalyptic requirement, which given the circumstance is an easy trap to fall into. Though there's always the blindspot: not all futures are predictable. Just that this one mostly was.
ckcheng 7y ago
Stockpiling is good as part of the preparation but isn't enough. e.g. "Five months worth of supplies were used by one hospital in six days" [1] How's any country supposed to stockpile enough at that rate? And stockpiles require upkeep and evergreening. Otherwise things like masks eventually expire [2]. Upkeep costs money too. [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/coronavirus-us-hospital-georgia-shortages-healthcare-a9406411.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic... [2] https://nationalpost.com/news/world/ontario-stockpiled-millions-of-masks-after-sars-they-all-expired-as-covid-19-nears-pandemic-status https://nationalpost.com/news/world/ontario-stockpiled-milli...
- lazyjones 7y ago
  > e.g. "Five months worth of supplies were used by one hospital in six days" [1] Here in Austria we don't even have enough N95 masks for hospital staff and medical personnel. This is completely irresponsible and not impossible to fix. It should be part of any pandemic plan to stockpile these. Things would work much better if at least this was covered now, but sadly it isn't and people will die because of it.
  - piokoch 7y ago
    Stockpile how? This is typical niche product, nobody assumes this will be needed in huge quantities. There was a post on HN about how difficult is to produce those masks (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22613061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22613061) and that setting up assembly line for needed materials takes 6 months (6 months in Germany, who are already producing this stuff).

snowwrestler 7y ago

No country has the manufacturing base to meet the demand for these masks under a pandemic, not even China. That’s what the article is all about. Your thoughts on the merits of trade wars are not applicable.

creddit 7y ago
Who defines what's applicable on HN? This article discusses Chinese supply chains and a manufacturing shortage for a specific need the result of which is decreased national security. If there is another country (USA) which has relatively significantly diminished supply chains and manufacturing capacity and therefore has an even greater national security risk, why is that not applicable to be discussed? If, further, there is an opportunity and process by which that country (USA) could close that gap, why is it not applicable to be discussed?
makomk 7y ago
The US is having trouble making enough masks to meet its normal day-to-day demand for them, let alone the increase from a pandemic, because almost all the mask production has been outsourced to China and they're redirecting the entire output to local use. That's an issue and it's a reason why the US might want extremely substantial tariffs or even quotas on mask imports in normal circumstances.
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  No, it wasn't. 3M has been making their N95 respirators in the US the whole time. It was cheaper masks (e.g., dust masks, procedure masks) that had their production outsourced.
PeterisP 7y ago
Some countries have a sufficient manufacturing base that allows them to spin up mass manufacturing of (for example) masks over a month or two. You don't need to keep spare capacity for everything, but you need to have local capacity (not necessarily spare) for building custom manufacturing machines and staffing them, so that you can divert it to manufacture arbitrary physical goods if needed. Some countries can do that, most don't - but some of these could and should build that capacity.

dehrmann 7y ago

> a country having its own major manufacturing base is not just an economic need but rather also a national security need It's a strong argument for diverse suppliers, but unless you're a major international player, you don't really have the need, and having redundant manufacturing gets expensive. Just look at people balking at the cost of switching away from Huawei (that's a name I haven't heard for a few weeks). > the trade war along with serious investment in expanding industrial capacity is likely net good. But it makes war easier. You know who's not going to war? The US and China. If they did, they'd be economically screwed. Economic interdependence makes war a lot harder.

ralph84 7y ago
> Economic interdependence makes war a lot harder. Citation needed. The American Revolutionary War, The American Civil War, WWI, WWII, just to name a few, all involved belligerents with significant economic interdependence.

swsieber 7y ago

My first thought about this economic mess was that it clearly illustrates why it'd be a bad idea to have another world war, even if it were mostly economic or infrastructure based. I now think that this is getting us prepared to have a world war.

sneak 7y ago

A much simpler option would to stop seeing the world as “them” and “us” and de-emphasize the borders in general. It would be great if it were illegal to control the flows of inputs to and outputs from manufacturing, but I doubt national leaders hellbent on playing the blame game and prioritizing some lives/prosperity over others simply based on the accident of birthplace would ever give up that sort of control they now exercise.

creddit 7y ago
The problem with the post-national view is that it has to be a consensus view globally. It's a classic prisoner's dilemma. It has to begin with everyone respecting broadly the same general ethics and views on rights. As it turns out, there are countries where women aren't allowed to drive, where religious autocracies rule, where whole populations of religious minorities are imprisoned and enslaved and the people of those countries support it happily. Do you want people with those values having a say in how you live? I don't.
- sneak 7y ago
  The problem is that values are not evenly distributed within a country. A nation is not a useful or even approximate proxy for values. Most countries have a pretty big chunk of people in them that would be fine with a religious autocracy that enslaves those who don’t conform to the majority, the US included. It’s the same in every country. There are, for example, a whole bunch of people in the US who are fine with some fiercely racist and inhumane federal policies, such as running concentration camps wherein many children are raped and otherwise sexually abused. Do you want people with those values having a say in how you live? I don't.
  - remarkEon 7y ago
    >A nation is not a useful or even approximate proxy for values. What? Of course it is. Even if you went one level down, states in the United States itself are excellent proxies for the mean values that are held in a particular region. If your point is that every geographic region has groups of people on the fringe, then yeah fine. That's true. But that doesn't mean anything with regard to the usefulness of what makes up a nation or its borders - which are of course proving quite useful during a pandemic.

KKKKkkkk1 7y ago

When you say that the US needs to "invest in itself", what you really mean is that the US needs to divert investments from industries in which it has a comparative advantage into industries that developing countries have a comparative advantage in.

creddit 7y ago
If investment were somehow zero sum, yes that's a large part of what I would mean. Luckily, for my point to continue standing without being reduced to that, investment is indeed not zero-sum.
function_seven 7y ago
The current situation is showing us that the comparative advantage may not be as great as we thought it was for overseas manufacturing. When doing the arithmetic, a term for “national security” may have been underweighted or entirely left out.
remarkEon 7y ago
The "comparative advantage" we enjoy is an artificial creation of deliberate policy choices. The traditional "well this is just econ 101" macroeconomic lectures describe scenarios as they exist, not how they should be. The "comparative advantage" that you think developing countries have is using cheap slave wage labor to produce an unending wave of cheap (mostly plastic) consumer goods that people are quickly realizing in this pandemic they don't really need. Not to mention non-existent environmental regulations. I hope that this crisis makes people do a deep introspection of their consumption habits, and realize where these "goods" actually come from, and whether it was really worth it to stock our giga stores with this stuff.
AdrianB1 7y ago
You can die in a pandemic still singing the song about the "comparative advantage". Not to mention that there is no comparative advantage when you ignore the buzzwords and actually do the comparison seriously.

solatic 7y ago

Yes and no. The economic benefits of globalized supply chains are real. The question is not whether or not supply chains should be globalized but how to ensure their safety in the event of a global disruption? It's days like these that I'm really sad that more Americans don't do military service. Ensuring the long-term viability of large, generally dormant stockpiles is the core competency of the military in peacetime, because the military needs to spin up large numbers of resources on a dime when necessary and can't take several months or years to do so in the face of an imminent attack. My argument is that the military should maintain large manufacturing capacity that is generally dormant during peacetime (when it is too expensive compared to a globalized supply chain) so that it can be spun up in the event of global supply chain disruptions. In a day and age where security needs have more to do with economics than geopolitical control, it should arguably be the military's highest priority.

lazyjones 7y ago
> My argument is that the military should maintain large manufacturing capacity that is generally dormant during peacetime (when it is too expensive compared to a globalized supply chain) so that it can be spun up in the event of global supply chain disruptions. Might be a good solution, but how about having some more generic production capacity instead that can adapt quickly to urgent needs? China is quickly converting whole factories, with some research perhaps this process can be simplified and improved with more expensive, but flexible production technology. 3D printing instead of die casting etc. ...
- AdrianB1 7y ago
  It used to be the case in some countries; for example in my country the tobacco processing plants had the dual-purpose to build rifle ammo as most of the packing equipment used ~ 7.62 diameter. My cousin that worked in such a plant said it took less than 2 weeks for a full conversion. In this particular example there was no dormant capacity during peacetime, it was actively used on alternative production.
- ThrowawayR2 7y ago
  > "generic production capacity" Much like the generic scientist/engineer in video games (imagine telling a chemical engineer that they're suddenly a electrical engineer), there is no such thing as "generic production capacity". Specific high-tech industries require specific hardware and specific expertise (like the melt-blown fabric mentioned in the article) that you can't just keep on standby indefinitely.

Cthulhu_ 7y ago

Yes, but who would pay these companies just to stay in business? If China can produce these things for half the price (even after shipping), people will buy from them instead. That's how the free market works. I mean you could mandate that certain essential products can only be made locally / cannot be imported from abroad, but who is going to pay for it? That would require a political revolution, and despite everything that's happened over the past years, that just isn't going to happen in the US just yet. Besides, it'd make the US more communist, where the government controls the market and production and where people work.

nabla9 7y ago

It's not true that US or any other developed country have lost their manufacturing base. The rest of the economy has grown faster than manufacturing. Developed countries have moved into high-tech, high productivity, more capital intensive manufacturing with complex supply chains. If you want to bring back low productivity products into your country, you must accept wage decline, slower growth and lowering quality of life. You can prepare for emergencies using other means and using relatively small adjustments. Post-industrial societies have higher productivity than industrial societies. Turning the clock back is not a good idea.

coldtea 7y ago
>Turning the clock back is not a good idea. Might be a more liveable, more resilient, better for the environment, and for quality of life (which is not the same as "more gadgets") idea though...
- simonh 7y ago
  It's hard to see how lower paid jobs are more liveable or provide better quality of life, or how smaller scale and therefore less efficient manufacturing would be better for the environment. I just don't see how these outcomes are supposed to arise. More resilient, ok maybe, but surely there are other ways that resilience could be achieved through e.g. rolling stockpiling or maintaining flexible manufacturing capability. We don't necessarily need to be able to make our own masks all the time, but have the capacity to make them if needed. there are a range of new technologies coming along that could provide this flexibility, such as 3d printing and flexible robotic assembly systems. That would come at a cost for sure, but could provide the needed flexibility at a much lower social cost than pushing people back into lower value long term employment.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >It's hard to see how lower paid jobs are more liveable or provide better quality of life We had higher paid jobs (or more yield per job, a single working person could support a family, buy a house, send kids to college) in the 50s and 60s for example, so I'm not sure why "turning back time" means lower paid jobs (or less purchase capacity). Give me necessities (house/rent, food, taking care of kids, college, etc) and more freedom/livable work, and I can live without 90% of modern "must haves", from smartphones to same-day-delivery from poorly-paid adults in wharehouses working 10-hour shifts in diapers to send me Amazon Prime goods made in China...

megous 7y ago

It also shows that starting trade wars is not a great idea, if you may need the other country's resources in unforeseen future emergencies.

simonh 7y ago
The argument for trade wars is that it encourages more local manufacturing and independence. That doesn't seem to be what's happened so far in the current dispute between China and the US though. I suspect this is because the trade dispute has introduced so much uncertainty that nobody is willing to make long term investments in infrastructure and capacity, based on what may well be a temporary and constantly changing situation.

JumpCrisscross 7y ago

> a country having its own major manufacturing base American manufacturing output has grown since 1990 [1]. What it’s been losing is manufacturing employment. Having more people making a similar number of things does nothing for national security. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS

blaser-waffle 7y ago
The US is the 3rd largest manufacturer in the world, behind China and Germany. Wayyyyy behind China but, like, everyone is, at least when it comes to manufacturing. We're also the number one exporter of food, and hold a few other top production laurels. Not the top producer, not the top consumer -- that's China -- but the top over-all exporter.[1] As the above comment mentioned: most of that work is highly industrialized and automated. Less than 1% of the US is farmers but they produce enough to make US food exports #1. Much of the same is true for US manufacturing. [1] https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-american-food-giant-the-largest-exporter-of-food-in-the-world.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-american-food-giant-...
stjohnswarts 7y ago
I think people are talking about masks, medical supplies, medicine manufacturing are all critical to the national security and should be brought back. This should be taken as a learning experience as well as a national disaster. Lest we forget in a year. Those industries can be subsidized as they are critical and we can't trust other countries for those supplies in pandemics and other world disasters.

mlrtime 7y ago

This is correct and an answer I give to people on the coasts when they ask why the US govt pays farmers. It is imperative that a country can feed itself.

snarf21 7y ago

This is the conundrum. People want manufacturing here and also want it to be super high paying with skills learned in a few days. People also want to buy things at the dollar store. If all the things at the dollar store were made by US workers, there wouldn't be dollar stores. Dollar stores exploded after Clinton opened up trade with China. Want people really want is buying power even if they don't understand it. It is also why I personally feel we are better off with removing all wage taxes on the poor than trying to push minimum wage higher and higher. Rich people don't shop at Wal-Mart. If everyone there makes $20/hour, it just makes it more expensive for the same people who now make "more" money (and they'll pay more taxes). If costs rise just like wages, buying power doesn't increase and could actually go down even if someone "makes" more.

mehrdadn 7y ago
> It is also why I personally feel we are better off with removing all wage taxes on the poor than trying to push minimum wage higher and higher. Confused, are you under the impression the entirety of everyone's wages is taxed in the United States? P.S. On your larger point: I'm not sure in what world you think 0% tax is a substitute for minimum wage. It certainly does not prevent you from earning atrociously low wages (and having correspondingly abysmal purchasing power). It only means the government won't take any of your measly earnings. Whereas minimum wage is designed to solve exactly that problem.
- snarf21 7y ago
  To be fair, I never said get rid of minimum wage. I was talking about pushing it up to things like $20. The point I was trying to make is that if you go too high, you cause people to just up tax brackets and higher costs at the places they shop because those workers are also making $20/hour now too. Some people think tools like EITC helps the poor more than pushing minimum wage up and I tend to agree. I don't think EITC goes far enough and I would remove all federal taxes for people who earn less than some $X/year.
  - kittiepryde 7y ago

ardy42 7y ago

> I do believe these masks are also made in the US, but this situation highlights exactly why a country having its own major manufacturing base is not just an economic need but rather also a national security need. The US needs to invest in itself immediately to rebuild its lost manufacturing base. 3M and Prestige Ameritech are the only companies with the ability to manufacturing N95 masks in the US from US sourced materials. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/shortages-confusion-and-poor-communication-complicate-coronavirus-preparations/2020/02/25/d9e56396-575d-11ea-9b35-def5a027d470_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/shortages-confusion-an... https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/02/15/coronavirus-mask-shortage-texas-manufacturing/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/02/15/coronavir... Totally agree with you on manufacturing. It's super important to have this kind of domestic manufacturing capability, because trade links break down in a crisis like this. The US is short on supply and can't import more (other countries are banning exports to conserve supply for domestic needs). If all the manufacturing capability had been outsourced, US healthcare workers would be in even worse shape.

mehrdadn 7y ago
> 3M and Prestige Ameritech are the only companies with the ability to manufacturing N95 masks in the US from US sourced materials. I'm confused about your italics. Why does it matter where the source materials you give them comes from? i.e. Why would other manufacturers in the US be only able to manufacture masks from non-US-sourced-materials, but fail on US-sourced materials? Is there something defective with US-sourced materials that if you gave them to US-based manufacturers, their machines would break or something?
- afiori 7y ago
  It could be a matter of having the whole process happen in the US. In the sense that those 2 companies are the only one that have sufficient domestic supply chain for production, while all other companies need to rely on import.
  - mehrdadn 7y ago

eru 7y ago

> I do believe these masks are also made in the US, but this situation highlights exactly why a country having its own major manufacturing base is not just an economic need but rather also a national security need. I might take your argument for the security need. But how does this highlight anything about an economic need? (Or am I misreading that?) > In economic terms, under certain definitions and assumptions that are typical under modern economics, a trade war such as the current US-China trade war result in welfare losses. I believe, however, that when national security is taken into account (ie having the ability for the country to rapidly respond to productive capacity needs in a time of crisis), the trade war along with serious investment in expanding industrial capacity is likely net good. Perhaps an optimally waged trade war might be? Not sure. But in practice, politicians use these highly theoretical arguments that might apply in very special cases to defend very crude behaviour. Eg if you want to justify a trade war on national security grounds, your goal would presumably to weaken the other party? One of the demands in Trump's trade war was that China open its markets more to American goods and services, and lower tariffs and restrictions on foreign commerce in general. That would only strengthen the Chinese economy, for all the orthodox reasons.