Even more worrying about this is the downstream effects this will have if they are forcing major manufacturing centers to go idle. I’m involved with a small ma

Even more worrying about this is the downstream effects this will have if they are forcing major manufacturing centers to go idle. I’m involved with a small manufacturing company that makes highly specialized components for capital equipment and production lines. Combinatorics of the options (and being able to offer replacement parts for everything we have sold for nearly 30 years) mean these parts are made to order from raw materials, so we cannot easily stockpile a few and shut down manufacturing. If we lost most of our business, we would be forced to either close or charge $20k for a normally $100 part when one breaks in someone’s medical supplies manufacturing line (Breakages go up drastically when you suddenly switch to 24/7 operation). Even if we didn’t directly loose business, we could still be crippled if we suffered equipment failure, and the makers of the equipment were not on someones ‘critical infrastructure’ list to obtain replacement parts from.