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It is not about autarky, but diversification and resiliency of the supply chain. Automakers are experts at this - BMW cars made in USA (South Carolina) have US
by systemvoltage 7y ago
It is not about autarky, but diversification and resiliency of the supply chain. Automakers are experts at this - BMW cars made in USA (South Carolina) have US made parts and ones made in Germany have locally sourced parts from Germany, yet the ones made in South Africa have diversified sources - both local and international. If you're in the US, you can see this % of locally made parts right on the window price sticker. It's not just for show - if there is a shortage of headliners in US, it can import it for a short term needs from Europe and vice-versa.
No one is suggesting complete in-house isolation aka Autarky, but to avoid SPOF (single point of failure) supply chains - probability of each link breaking adds up when your supply chain is 18 levels deep from an iPhone to the copper mine.
- bryanlarsen 7y agoI imagine that unless it's 100%, the "% of locally made parts" is very poorly correlated with supply chain robustness. If a BMW contains 99% local American parts, it's quite likely that much of the 1% are the hardest things to produce locally.