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It is shameful that the US has abandoned its manufacturing base and allowed its productive capacity to be destroyed. The pandemic exposes how weak this makes us

It is shameful that the US has abandoned its manufacturing base and allowed its productive capacity to be destroyed. The pandemic exposes how weak this makes us, but I don’t know that things will change when the pandemic eventually ends. Once things calm down, I doubt people will retain the ability to see the downsides of always chasing the absolute lowest cost supplier.

deburo 7y ago
There has been a lot of discussions politically around that overall, the covid merely but harshely exposing the medical aspect. It's a space to keep an eye on after this pendimic, I wouldn't be so pessimistic about it.
philwelch 7y ago
When this is all over, we’ll have a lot of unemployed workers and a devastated service sector. It will represent an opportunity to rebuild an industrial base. During the Second World War the US not only managed economic autarky, but we had enough agricultural and industrial capacity left over to feed, arm, and equip much of the free world. We lost that through complacency and the past 40-50 years have been a series of escalating kicks in the teeth. Maybe this will be enough for things to change.
- gruez 7y ago
  >It will represent an opportunity to rebuild an industrial base. How would this work? Who is going to buy all those expensive (by asian standards) american-made goods? >We lost that through complacency AFAIK we lost it because of globalization, which caused the labor market to be flooded cheap labor from developing countries.
  - erik_seaberg 7y ago
    This. Trickle-down economics does work, but when capital has access to global markets, it trickles way, way down past our own labor pool.
  - philwelch 7y ago
    “Cheap labor” is an excuse IMO. The US firmly fell behind other countries (most famously Japan) in manufacturing expertise in the late 20th century. We buy a lot of stuff that’s made in rich, expensive-labor countries like South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. Even some Chinese manufacturing hubs are rapidly approaching first-world standards of living. Cheap labor might be enough to win a niche in stuff like textiles but there’s no reason you can’t manufacture electronics in a first world country.
    - nojvek 7y ago
      In the world of modern technological marvel, robots should ideally be cheaper than human labor. Toyota employs fewer humans per car produced than Tesla. They simply invested in their industries such that mass production techniques makes things cheaper. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, are all examples of wealthy and industrialized nations.
      - philwelch 7y ago
        I suspect "per car produced" has a lot more to do with Toyota producing higher volume than Tesla. At least according to the stuff that's been popularized and written about, the Toyota Production System de-emphasizes automation. The rationale being that until you've refined the manufacturing process through experience, you don't know which steps to automate. Think of it this way: if you rely upon robots too much, you're making a huge bet that you can design the manufacturing process from scratch and basically get it right the first time. If you get something wrong, it's going to be expensive to go back and improve it because you need to rework all of the automation. Conversely, if you design a less automated manufacturing process, more of the work is done by human beings, who are typically smarter and more adaptable than robots. That way, if you come up with process improvements later on, you can just teach it to the humans. Better yet, the humans themselves can think of their own process improvements. At any rate, Toyota produces millions of cars in the United States on an annual basis; clearly the cost of American labor isn't a problem for them.
- beerandt 7y ago
  Post wwii had a lot to do with repurposed war-machine factories that were already paid for. Which happened to align with a new glut of available labor. You've only got half the equation here, at best.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  "During the Second World War the US not only managed economic autarky" Suppose someone said that's completely untrue, could you back your assertion up?
- greedo 7y ago
  The fact that most competing economies post WW2 were in ruins doesn't factor in at all? The US was extremely fortunate to have no real competition from any other countries for a decade. And then American companies didn't pay attention to when Japan and Europe started to compete.
  - philwelch 7y ago
    That factors into the complacency for sure.
crazygringo 7y ago
There's nothing "shameful" about it whatsoever. It's not like manufacturing is some moral goodness that we've lost, or a defect in the nation's character. Manufacturing isn't "better" than services. It's not more honest or anything. Free trade raises everyone's living standards. It's economically incredibly wasteful to manufacture everything locally. Countries absolutely have to make decisions about retaining certain capacity for essential items in case of war or emergency... but everything has tradeoffs. There's nothing "shameful" here, it's just cost-benefit. On the other hand, if you don't have the manufacturing capacity and you don't stockpile? Yeah, that's shameful. The fact the US didn't have a national stockpile of emergency masks for both civilians and doctors is shameful.
- atomi 7y ago
  There is a lot to be said of the environmental costs of shipping massive loads of product across the world.
  - missedthecue 7y ago
    And it would be unimaginably more pollutant for each country to manufacture its own everything.
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    Poorly-regulated sulfur emissions aside, container ships are very efficient per ton.
    - ironmagma 7y ago
      Efficiency is not the issue, it’s energy being used that wouldn’t need to be if the items were produced locally.
      - Dylan16807 7y ago
        If you can get all the ingredients locally. And the bigger your facility is, the more efficiently you can transport things in and out. Very local production means work trucks running around wasting fuel all over.
erentz 7y ago
It is a shame. But what’s interesting about this is that even the manufacturing base we do have could be scaled up quickly to meet more of the demand, yet it’s not. So why does it save us to have manufacturing base if you won’t scale it to meet surge demand when needed. The hospitals not signing contracts with him is bad. But probably the more surprising to me is that the government isn’t calling him up to say “hey we will pay you $BIG to start producing masks for us 24/7 that we will distribute”. Where $BIG is enough for him to offset his concerns. After this pandemic slows down the government can continue buying from him to restock (and constantly refresh) the stockpile. How has the government not by now started to track all the items we need, all the items we have, and called every damn company that can possibly produce those items or know who can to tell them to start cranking? Why do we continue to hear about discoveries of masks in warehouses and the like? The logistical failures here seem to be extreme.
- karlkatzke 7y ago
  Depends. What contracts will he have to take on to meet that? I think that’s his complaint. He can’t get what he needs on the spot market most of the time, he has to sign a supply contract and machinery maintenance contracts and everything else. At best, if he can’t make use of the extra capacity when the world isn’t experiencing a critical pandemic, he breaks even on the pandemic work. At worst, he loses his shirt again. The materials you are talking about aren’t usually found on a warehouse shelf because they deteriorate over time. You wouldn’t want to put expired material through a machine because it becomes brittle and breaks. And as for why we haven’t started tracking materials more closely? Kushner’s running this show. The word you’re looking for is incompetence.
  - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
    Cut him some slack. He's got like 20 jobs.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- taneq 7y ago
  This is exactly like all of the "skills shortage" panics we regularly see here. It's not an issue of being unable to produce the item, it's an issue of being unable to produce the item at as cheap a price as the best price we've had from the lowest bidder during ideal circumstances.
UncleMeat 7y ago
The US hasn't abandoned its manufacturing base. We make more stuff now than ever before. We just use fewer people to do this.
blackrock 7y ago
In America, it’s more profitable and glamorous to make fake startup companies like Snapchat, or yet another Todo app, than to make boring facemasks and N95 respirators. Like, when was the last time a pandemic ever happened? Pshh.. not my problem.

deburo 7y ago

There has been a lot of discussions politically around that overall, the covid merely but harshely exposing the medical aspect. It's a space to keep an eye on after this pendimic, I wouldn't be so pessimistic about it.

philwelch 7y ago

When this is all over, we’ll have a lot of unemployed workers and a devastated service sector. It will represent an opportunity to rebuild an industrial base. During the Second World War the US not only managed economic autarky, but we had enough agricultural and industrial capacity left over to feed, arm, and equip much of the free world. We lost that through complacency and the past 40-50 years have been a series of escalating kicks in the teeth. Maybe this will be enough for things to change.

gruez 7y ago
>It will represent an opportunity to rebuild an industrial base. How would this work? Who is going to buy all those expensive (by asian standards) american-made goods? >We lost that through complacency AFAIK we lost it because of globalization, which caused the labor market to be flooded cheap labor from developing countries.
- erik_seaberg 7y ago
  This. Trickle-down economics does work, but when capital has access to global markets, it trickles way, way down past our own labor pool.
- philwelch 7y ago
  “Cheap labor” is an excuse IMO. The US firmly fell behind other countries (most famously Japan) in manufacturing expertise in the late 20th century. We buy a lot of stuff that’s made in rich, expensive-labor countries like South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. Even some Chinese manufacturing hubs are rapidly approaching first-world standards of living. Cheap labor might be enough to win a niche in stuff like textiles but there’s no reason you can’t manufacture electronics in a first world country.
  - nojvek 7y ago
    In the world of modern technological marvel, robots should ideally be cheaper than human labor. Toyota employs fewer humans per car produced than Tesla. They simply invested in their industries such that mass production techniques makes things cheaper. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, are all examples of wealthy and industrialized nations.
    - philwelch 7y ago
      I suspect "per car produced" has a lot more to do with Toyota producing higher volume than Tesla. At least according to the stuff that's been popularized and written about, the Toyota Production System de-emphasizes automation. The rationale being that until you've refined the manufacturing process through experience, you don't know which steps to automate. Think of it this way: if you rely upon robots too much, you're making a huge bet that you can design the manufacturing process from scratch and basically get it right the first time. If you get something wrong, it's going to be expensive to go back and improve it because you need to rework all of the automation. Conversely, if you design a less automated manufacturing process, more of the work is done by human beings, who are typically smarter and more adaptable than robots. That way, if you come up with process improvements later on, you can just teach it to the humans. Better yet, the humans themselves can think of their own process improvements. At any rate, Toyota produces millions of cars in the United States on an annual basis; clearly the cost of American labor isn't a problem for them.
beerandt 7y ago
Post wwii had a lot to do with repurposed war-machine factories that were already paid for. Which happened to align with a new glut of available labor. You've only got half the equation here, at best.
perl4ever 7y ago
"During the Second World War the US not only managed economic autarky" Suppose someone said that's completely untrue, could you back your assertion up?
greedo 7y ago
The fact that most competing economies post WW2 were in ruins doesn't factor in at all? The US was extremely fortunate to have no real competition from any other countries for a decade. And then American companies didn't pay attention to when Japan and Europe started to compete.
- philwelch 7y ago
  That factors into the complacency for sure.

crazygringo 7y ago

There's nothing "shameful" about it whatsoever. It's not like manufacturing is some moral goodness that we've lost, or a defect in the nation's character. Manufacturing isn't "better" than services. It's not more honest or anything. Free trade raises everyone's living standards. It's economically incredibly wasteful to manufacture everything locally. Countries absolutely have to make decisions about retaining certain capacity for essential items in case of war or emergency... but everything has tradeoffs. There's nothing "shameful" here, it's just cost-benefit. On the other hand, if you don't have the manufacturing capacity and you don't stockpile? Yeah, that's shameful. The fact the US didn't have a national stockpile of emergency masks for both civilians and doctors is shameful.

atomi 7y ago
There is a lot to be said of the environmental costs of shipping massive loads of product across the world.
- missedthecue 7y ago
  And it would be unimaginably more pollutant for each country to manufacture its own everything.
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  Poorly-regulated sulfur emissions aside, container ships are very efficient per ton.
  - ironmagma 7y ago
    Efficiency is not the issue, it’s energy being used that wouldn’t need to be if the items were produced locally.
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      If you can get all the ingredients locally. And the bigger your facility is, the more efficiently you can transport things in and out. Very local production means work trucks running around wasting fuel all over.

erentz 7y ago

It is a shame. But what’s interesting about this is that even the manufacturing base we do have could be scaled up quickly to meet more of the demand, yet it’s not. So why does it save us to have manufacturing base if you won’t scale it to meet surge demand when needed. The hospitals not signing contracts with him is bad. But probably the more surprising to me is that the government isn’t calling him up to say “hey we will pay you $BIG to start producing masks for us 24/7 that we will distribute”. Where $BIG is enough for him to offset his concerns. After this pandemic slows down the government can continue buying from him to restock (and constantly refresh) the stockpile. How has the government not by now started to track all the items we need, all the items we have, and called every damn company that can possibly produce those items or know who can to tell them to start cranking? Why do we continue to hear about discoveries of masks in warehouses and the like? The logistical failures here seem to be extreme.

karlkatzke 7y ago
Depends. What contracts will he have to take on to meet that? I think that’s his complaint. He can’t get what he needs on the spot market most of the time, he has to sign a supply contract and machinery maintenance contracts and everything else. At best, if he can’t make use of the extra capacity when the world isn’t experiencing a critical pandemic, he breaks even on the pandemic work. At worst, he loses his shirt again. The materials you are talking about aren’t usually found on a warehouse shelf because they deteriorate over time. You wouldn’t want to put expired material through a machine because it becomes brittle and breaks. And as for why we haven’t started tracking materials more closely? Kushner’s running this show. The word you’re looking for is incompetence.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  Cut him some slack. He's got like 20 jobs.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
taneq 7y ago
This is exactly like all of the "skills shortage" panics we regularly see here. It's not an issue of being unable to produce the item, it's an issue of being unable to produce the item at as cheap a price as the best price we've had from the lowest bidder during ideal circumstances.

UncleMeat 7y ago

The US hasn't abandoned its manufacturing base. We make more stuff now than ever before. We just use fewer people to do this.

blackrock 7y ago

In America, it’s more profitable and glamorous to make fake startup companies like Snapchat, or yet another Todo app, than to make boring facemasks and N95 respirators. Like, when was the last time a pandemic ever happened? Pshh.. not my problem.