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but stop and think for a second about all those short term profits Wall Street made by outsourcing all of our crucial manufacturing! Those congressional bribes

but stop and think for a second about all those short term profits Wall Street made by outsourcing all of our crucial manufacturing! Those congressional bribes don't pay themselves either! /s the worst part is our government is rewarding them for bad behavior, the article mentions the billion dollar chip subsidy program. So these companies made money outsourcing and will now make more by bringing it back. Instead they should put a massive tariff on any chip not made in the US. Companies that invested here would be rewarded for loyalty

dcolkitt 5y ago
What short term profits? The car industry has among the lowest margins in the entire economy. Moreover the chips were never outsourced. Toyota never made its own chips, nor is it feasible to. You seem to have some sort of idealized view where a company internally manufactures everything it needs starting from raw materials. That’s not how it works, and that’s never how it worked.
- ren_engineer 5y ago
  "silicon valley" is the name because of all the chips that used to be made here, US used to lead the world in chip manufacturing Toyota is just a symptom, every other car manufacturer and other industries are facing shortages as well. The US economy is now strangled because our supply chain got outsourced for "efficiency" that didn't account for potential disruptions
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    > Instead they should put a massive tariff on any chip not made in the US. Companies that invested here would be rewarded for loyalty Voters would have rewarded politicians who supported these tariffs by voting them out of office for making all their toys more expensive. Everyone likes cheaper stuff and more stuff in the short term.
    - ren_engineer 5y ago
      voters have complained about stuff being made in China for years and if it was framed from a nation security perspective you'd get wide bipartisan support. The current chip subsidy program literally just got wide bipartisan support, it's extremely popular
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Now that the effects have been felt, yes. But not a few decades ago when the majority were enjoying cheaper goods. Even now, I do not see broad support for tariffs in order to bring production back to the country.
misja111 5y ago
It's a bit too easy to blame this only on Wall Street. First of all companies have outsourced their production facilities to lower production costs. The parties benefiting from this were: - shareholders (more profit) - consumers (lower prices) Second, you could say shareholders == Wall Street, but you could just as well say that shareholders are pension holders, banks, insurances and small private investors. All of these simply want to have return on their investment that is as high as possible. If that's good or bad is an interesting question, but the bottom line is that very few people are without blame here.
- ren_engineer 5y ago
  you'll notice I also blamed congress for effectively being bribed to allow this to happen. The government's job should be to prevent stupidity like this from happening, Department of Defense at the very least should have been sounding the horn of how our supply chain issues are national security issues plenty of people have been warning for decades how the reliance on manufacturing from other countries could have major consequences. The fact that a small island like Taiwan is probably the most important geo-political issue in the world could have been prevented with a little bit of long term planning

dcolkitt 5y ago

What short term profits? The car industry has among the lowest margins in the entire economy. Moreover the chips were never outsourced. Toyota never made its own chips, nor is it feasible to. You seem to have some sort of idealized view where a company internally manufactures everything it needs starting from raw materials. That’s not how it works, and that’s never how it worked.

ren_engineer 5y ago
"silicon valley" is the name because of all the chips that used to be made here, US used to lead the world in chip manufacturing Toyota is just a symptom, every other car manufacturer and other industries are facing shortages as well. The US economy is now strangled because our supply chain got outsourced for "efficiency" that didn't account for potential disruptions
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  > Instead they should put a massive tariff on any chip not made in the US. Companies that invested here would be rewarded for loyalty Voters would have rewarded politicians who supported these tariffs by voting them out of office for making all their toys more expensive. Everyone likes cheaper stuff and more stuff in the short term.
  - ren_engineer 5y ago
    voters have complained about stuff being made in China for years and if it was framed from a nation security perspective you'd get wide bipartisan support. The current chip subsidy program literally just got wide bipartisan support, it's extremely popular
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Now that the effects have been felt, yes. But not a few decades ago when the majority were enjoying cheaper goods. Even now, I do not see broad support for tariffs in order to bring production back to the country.

misja111 5y ago

It's a bit too easy to blame this only on Wall Street. First of all companies have outsourced their production facilities to lower production costs. The parties benefiting from this were: - shareholders (more profit) - consumers (lower prices) Second, you could say shareholders == Wall Street, but you could just as well say that shareholders are pension holders, banks, insurances and small private investors. All of these simply want to have return on their investment that is as high as possible. If that's good or bad is an interesting question, but the bottom line is that very few people are without blame here.

ren_engineer 5y ago
you'll notice I also blamed congress for effectively being bribed to allow this to happen. The government's job should be to prevent stupidity like this from happening, Department of Defense at the very least should have been sounding the horn of how our supply chain issues are national security issues plenty of people have been warning for decades how the reliance on manufacturing from other countries could have major consequences. The fact that a small island like Taiwan is probably the most important geo-political issue in the world could have been prevented with a little bit of long term planning