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https://www.csis.org/analysis/china-outpacing-us-defense-industrial-base https://www.csis.org/analysis/china-outpacing-us-defense-ind... China is heavily inves

by treme 2y ago

https://www.csis.org/analysis/china-outpacing-us-defense-industrial-base https://www.csis.org/analysis/china-outpacing-us-defense-ind... China is heavily investing in munitions and acquiring high-end weapons systems and equipment five to six times faster than the United States. China is also the world’s largest shipbuilder and has a shipbuilding capacity that is roughly 230 times larger than the United States. One of China’s large shipyards, such as Jiangnan Shipyard, has more capacity than all U.S. shipyards combined. "U.S. Defense Industrial Base Is Not Prepared for a Possible Conflict with China" https://features.csis.org/preparing-the-US-industrial-base-to-deter-conflict-with-China/ https://features.csis.org/preparing-the-US-industrial-base-t...

atleastoptimal 2y ago
I don’t understand why the US voluntarily gave up its significant advantage in manufacturing. Is it just because it would be impossible to have an industrial base in a world where Asia exists and can produce everything that could be built in the US for 1/5 the cost? In every universe where the US dollar is significantly stronger than the next greatest probable superpower, will that next greatest probable superpower always be in a perfect position to exploit this disparity and become the de facto world leader in heavy industry?
- lazide 2y ago
  It’s very profitable having someone else make it for 1/5th the cost, and as long as it isn’t literally artillery and stuff, why not? Or are you saying people wouldn’t do something short sighted if it made them super rich in the meantime?
  - avidiax 2y ago
    Turns out that manufacturing toys, consumer electronics, semiconductors, etc. is very important for future wars that use cheap drones instead of $2,000 155mm artillery shells. It's not clear that we predicted that shift, so it's a good reason to maintain some manufacturing capability in pretty much all areas, comparative advantage be damned.
    - lazide 2y ago
      Sounds like a good way to not get your quarterly bonus!
    - lupire 2y ago
      China leapfrogged the world by copying the world's work up till then. Why can't US leapfrog by copying back?
      - lazide 2y ago
        We’d have to be hungry and willing to get dirty. Near as I can tell, at the moment we’re mostly confused and tired.
- mensetmanusman 2y ago
  Wall St. read “the End of History” and assumed China would be more invested in friendly relations with their nearest neighbors, so to save costs they punished any western company that didn’t outsource. (Also the politicians weren’t smart enough to stop this.) I.e. greed will be the downfall.
- tyre 2y ago
  Because capitalism has weaknesses and this is one of them. Markets will drift towards efficiency without considering externalities. Markets will not drift towards strategic manufacturing capacity at a higher cost per unit produced without government intervention (subsidies, tariffs.) So corporations and consumers outsourced because quantity at price beat quality and strategic concerns.
  - cjbgkagh 2y ago
    What we have is more corporatism than capitalism - the markets are busy working with governments and setting up rackets to extract monopolistic rents. I don't have much experience with China but from my vantage point it does appear that there is quite a lot of competition between companies that does not seem to exist in the US to the same extent.
    - cyberax 2y ago
      Uhm. Monopolism is the ultimate fate of unrestricted capitalism in established markets.
      - panick21_ 2y ago
        A claim made by socialist 200 years ago and yet it hasn't actually happened. And the minor amount of 'anti-monopoly' action taken by governments is hard to credit for that. The reality is that a monopoly is incredibly hard to sustain without government. And even in the cases where something close to it can be created, they can seldomly really push up the price as much as they think. Historically its governments creating the monopolies most of the time.
        cyberax 2y ago
        > A claim made by socialist 200 years ago and yet it hasn't actually happened. It kinda did. Large stagnant industries tend to collapse into monopolies. However, this was masked either by new more nimble companies pushing out the incumbents by utilizing newer technologies, or by industries fading away entirely.
- pitaj 2y ago
  Have you ever heard about the Jones Act? The US tried to specifically keep shipmaking capabilities, but implementing such protectionism arguably backfired. The point is, what policies would you have implemented to keep that manufacturing capacity?
  - cjbgkagh 2y ago
    Financialization is eating the rest of the economy. That is the beast that must be slain if we wish to survive. Since that is not going to happen I think it is wise to instead prepare for the worst.
    - eru 2y ago
      The question is, how would you do that preparation?
      - cjbgkagh 2y ago
        Some countries will fair better than others, so perhaps move to a country that maintains cordial relationships with both China and the US. I'm preparing by learning how to design and make things so I can do my own manufacturing in-house to minimize dependency on supply lines that could be disrupted. Manufacturing technology is has improved in leaps and bounds. It's much easier that it used to be. And I can do all this from a self sufficient homestead deep in the forest.
        eru 2y ago
        > Some countries will fair better than others, so perhaps move to a country that maintains cordial relationships with both China and the US. I moved to Singapore a while ago. Not for those reasons, but being on good terms with almost anyone certainly is a nice bonus. Though my question was rather, what policies would a country want to adopt? > Manufacturing technology is has improved in leaps and bounds. It's much easier that it used to be. And I can do all this from a self sufficient homestead deep in the forest. Yes, but that's essentially just a hobby or at most craft production. So that is neither competitive as mass production in peace time, nor of much use for mass production in wartime. (It definitely sounds like a great hobby, though!)
- csomar 2y ago
  I think the US underestimated the capacity of the Chinese to grow this much this fast. To give you an example, India in 1960 had double the gdp per capita of that of China. China now has x5 the per capita of India. That's 10 times more growth than India.
- k12sosse 2y ago
  The "gave it up" to make the elite even richer, offshoring everything in the name of returns on shareholder investments. People like to complain that it's the labour market, that nobody wanted the jobs.. but that's a lie told to stop the masses from organizing and putting some heads on pikes.
- jltsiren 2y ago
  China had a steady supply of cheap skilled labor. Automation has made that less important than it used to be, but back then it was a decisive advantage. At least when combined with good enough quality and sufficient political stability. One mistake the US did was switching from defined benefit pensions to individual retirement savings. When the stock market is something you hear about in the news, most people don't really care about it. But when you see it in your retirement account balance, it becomes relevant. If outsourcing to China is good for the stock market, you vote politicians who make it easier.
  - KRAKRISMOTT 2y ago
    > One mistake the US did was switching from defined benefit pensions to individual retirement savings. Depending on how the pension system is setup, it could become an indefinite pyramid scheme. You end with countries like Canada (and many in places like Europe) constantly importing immigrant labor just to prop up the older generations' retirement. It kicks the ball down the road.
    - littlestymaar 2y ago
      Europe isn't importing immigrants to prop up the pensions…
      - diordiderot 2y ago
        Yes it is.
      - KRAKRISMOTT 2y ago
        I am sure Merkel accepted the Arab Spring refugees out of the goodness of her heart.
        geysersam 2y ago
        Not out of goodness of heart, but out of ideological conviction and obligation to international refugee conventions
- AtlasBarfed 2y ago
  Because the "elite" that actually make US economic policy made a mint on it and could engage in their all time favorite activity in the world: undercutting and destroying the financial viability of unions and labor The rich don't actually care about how much money they have, they care about how much money they have relative to other people. Hollowing out the middle class meant while milking profits from cheap overseas near-slave labor? My god, so many billionaire boners. Why do you think nothing tangible has been done about illegal immigration in, what, 40, 50 years now? Something that massively increases the number of desperate workers to undermine labor supply and union-based manual labor and trades? As it stands now, this problem will self-correct because manufacturing WILL onshore. It has to. China is dropping the hammer on economic reforms and ratcheting up totalitarian control, to say nothing of demographic bombs, the real estate / regional debt crisis, and the inevitable sanctions from a Taiwan invasion. Don't worry about the shipbuilding. China doesn't have carriers. They don't have a navy that can leave shore more than a hundred miles or so. The fact is the US Navy can blockade China's food imports and petroleum (as in, fertilizer so ... most domestic food) shipments in Malaysia at will and ... China starves a couple months later. The policy that needs to be pursued isn't one of China as a dangerous peer state. That has already passed. The policy is to deal with China as a dangerous collapsing state. It's kind of the same effect (manufactured goods being shut off, reestablishing more domestic production and manufacturing), just with or without overt warfare. IMO this is an opportunity for greenfield modern manufacturing construction: lots of automation, lots of modern EV-based low cost low carbon transportation and infrastructure, building up the domestic energy industry around alternative energy on a fundamentally cheap basis never seen before. One way to do this is to intelligently allow the best and brightest in China to immigrate. They'll certainly want to get out... As for the article, it was a lot easier to crank out airplanes when they were basically automobiles with different body shapes. These weren't turbojets, they were ICE engine-powered prop planes. Yes that handwaves a massive amount of engineering and retooling, but it wasn't like ICE engine designers suddenly needed to learn how chip manufacturing worked.
  - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
    >> US Navy can blockade China's food imports and petroleum It can't, as long as China has atomic bombs and ICBMs to deliver them.
- littlestymaar 2y ago
  “Capitalists will sell the rope to hang them” Lenin > Is it just because it would be impossible to have an industrial base in a world where Asia exists and can produce everything that could be built in the US for 1/5 the cost? It's not impossible, had the US kept capital control and tariffs there would have been no way for Asia to catch-up at all. But the free trade ideology and greed led the US where it is now.
  - concordDance 2y ago
    Worth noting this also lifted a billion people out of poverty.
    - mrguyorama 2y ago
      China could have lifted their people out of poverty on their own. We didn't need to sell them our manufacturing base to do that.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  If you can get an extra lambo in your garage, by firing all your factory employees, and move your manufacturing to China, well...what do you think will happen? This is especially egregious, because the few folks that have enough ethics to not do that, get driven into bankruptcy, by the ones that do. The general consumer market basically wants cheap. If they can get stuff that does what they want, for less, then they go that way. They aren't particular, as to the source. The market for High Quality is actually pretty small. People that make good stuff, don't get rich. People that make lots of cheap crap, get very rich. The only way to reverse this, would be to invoke protectionism (or have a war, which will do that, anyway). That isn't very popular, with this crowd.
  - mcny 2y ago
    > The only way to reverse this, would be to invoke protectionism (or have a war, which will do that, anyway). That isn't very popular, with this crowd. Because we know that protectionism with people like those you explained at the top > If you can get an extra lambo in your garage, by firing all your factory employees, and move your manufacturing to China, well...what do you think will happen? does not guarantee better products/outcomes. Those who would use basically slave labor offshore for profits, will also do other nasty things for profits at home as well. Not a fan of dichotomy like these. I want cheap Chinese electric cars here in the US.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
      > I want cheap Chinese electric cars here in the US. Not sure I support that broad a statement. Here in NY, we have had many instances of dangerous building fires, caused by cheap Chinese scooters, which are a favorite transportation mode for folks without means. A number of these fires caused many families to lose their homes and meager possessions, because one tenant was charging crap batteries.
      - epolanski 2y ago
        Plenty of Teslas took fire while charging. I kinda hate this "Chinese = crap" narrative, it's naive, it misses the forest for the trees. Just because they are the biggest manufacturer in the world they also produce lots of crap, it's just statistically more probable that you gonna find lots of crap that's Chinese, but generalizing this over entire industries and all kind of products is just...naive. It kinda reminds me of that documentary where a Chinese billionaire buys a plant in Ohio to make car glass and American workers looked like crap compared to their Chinese counterparts when it came to the craft, even though they did produce glass before already before the Chinese ownership. It's the kind of narrative that people pushed on Russian army after their failures in Ukraine claiming huge incompetence and their incoming demise. Or when people were sure their economy was gonna collapse because this and that. Just saying stuff doesn't make it true. The longer we keep with those biases the more naive and vulnerable we'll keep being.
- someguydave 2y ago
  China “cheats” in the sense that they suppress their currency. In theory the profits from successful exports should go back into the Chinese people’s pockets and China should become much richer than it is. But the CCP cannot abide that scenario, so they sell yuan and buy dollars to keep the price down. I do not think they can do this forever.
- bluGill 2y ago
  > I don’t understand why the US voluntarily gave up its significant advantage in manufacturing We didn't. The US manufactures more than ever. It seems like we gave up the advantage because we let China take over the cheap junk market (before them Japan and Taiwan had that - both have moved up quality though); and we use far less people. A typically factory in 1950 with 2000 workers would now have around 200 to produce the same amount.
  - notfromhere 2y ago
    We did. The U.S. is really more of a low volume, high end manufacturer. We don’t have the ability to do the same kind of industrial mobilization we did in ww2.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > I don’t understand why the US voluntarily gave up its significant advantage in manufacturing Because there's a basic heirarchy in capitalism where resource extraction is at the bottom, manufacturing in the middle, and finance at the top, and the higher on that heirarchy your comparative advantage is, the more value you capture out of the global economy. The US won (or, more accurately, is winning, its not a static state) global capitalism is what happened.
- faeriechangling 2y ago
  I think it’s very easy to explain. The US are some of the worlds greatest sellers of intellectual property which makes for better business, since you only need to invent something once and then you can sell it over and over. The US would prefer to spend it’s time doing more lucrative work. I don’t even think it’s very clear that recent US efforts to onshore manufacturing, both broadly and within green energy specifically, are even helping it. The US is paying close to a million in extra costs for every job it’s on-shoring, although there is the benefit of improving the US negotiating position and military readiness beyond bolstering employment.
  - deepsun 2y ago
    Sorry but I didn't understand anything from your explanaiton. Nothing in it answers the parent's question.
    - faeriechangling 2y ago
      >The US would prefer to spend it’s time doing more lucrative work.
- pphysch 2y ago
  In short, Washington abandoned the republic after WW2 and embraced shadow imperialism. It doesn't matter who is working the factories as long as the global elite gets to set the rules and reap the profits.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- up2isomorphism 2y ago
  When you don't have enemy, you are your enemy. This is exactly what happened in US. Putting the part that work actually been done in US fosters competition, and outsource will always benefit for big corps to kill of competitors in early stage.
- the_duke 2y ago
  Lots of "greed", "stupidity", etc arguments here, but that is too simplistic. There are other aspects. * Industry/mining/some types of manufacturing are often dirty business and cause pollution, not something you love to be around. Energy consumption is also high. * They usually come with many hard jobs that people don't exactly love to do if they have alternatives. This can be countered with automation, but that comes with high cost and limitations that we are only now approaching solutions for (eg flexible humanoid robots with AI-driven controls). * The big industrialization craze of the 90ies/early 2000s came about as western markets started to saturate and approach low growth rates. The hope was that lifting new countries out of poverty would create economic opportunities.
  - topspin 2y ago
    This. US deindustrialization can only be understood as a major political shift and, like all major political shifts in the world, it is the product of a conflation of multiple, simultaneous pressures. Among these are: 1. political leaders exploiting the lucrative US market for foreign relation wins. 2. differential labor costs 3. differential regulatory burdens (health and safety, environmental, etc.) Manufacturers have had all of these pressures applied and they've responded accordingly. Seeking lower labor costs and lower regulatory burdens is not merely simple-minded "greed." When competitors leverage these affordances they gain an advantage in cost, so others must consider following.
  - the_duke 2y ago
    For posterity, I meant globalisation craze of course, not industrialization craze.
tyre 2y ago
They’d need to switch to aircraft carriers and fast. The US has 11. China has 2. They are expensive, require specifically trained crews, and air superiority counters all of that shipyard capacity.
- blackoil 2y ago
  Third is in sea trial and fourth under construction. Also, China doesn't pretend to be global police, so it needs them only in South China sea, while US need to be present in Middle East, Europe and USA also.
  - kurthr 2y ago
    Ummm, who's going to make sure all the oil comes from the middle east? It's not like the US needs to import light sweet crude from there since the refineries are made for heavier oil than comes from Saudi or fracking.
  - hollerith 2y ago
    That great, so the US, which produces all the oil it needs within its borders, needs to be present in the Middle East, but China, which produces some oil, but not enough to run its current fleet of cars and trucks, let alone fight a war, does not need to be in the Middle East. Interesting analysis :) Note that Russia's oil does not help China here: the infrastructure in Russia only allows export via European ports, not Asian ports and not over the Russia-China border, though with the construction of a few 5,000-km-long pipelines, I guess that could change in a few years if Russia cares enough.
    - maxglute 2y ago
      [flagged]
    - DeathArrow 2y ago
      US isn't in Middle East to protect their oil sources in case of war. US is in Middle East to control oil prices, do policing, help Israel and threat Iran and other regional actors. I believe Russia and China signed agreements for building gas and oil pipes.
gonzo41 2y ago
the USA is VERY competent at deploying to and fighting wars. America loves fighting so much it's had a civil war and fought a few of it's closest allies at various times. China is a novice at fighting. Whilst they may have lots of ships, having really good people to fight in a complex battlespace is different.
- eru 2y ago
  Yes. The last war China was involved in was the relatively small Sino-Vietnamese war in 1979. And the last one before that was WW2. It would be hard to count all the wars the US involved themselves in during that time. However, with regards to China Americans seem to be mostly worried about Taiwan. Taiwan is a lot closer to the coast of the PRC than it is to the coast of the US. (On the other hand, the people living in Taiwan are even closer to Taiwan than the PRC is. And they would certainly enter the fray, too.)
  - MaxPock 2y ago
    Funny how you forgot the Korean war and how Chinese entry ensured a stalemate
    - eru 2y ago
      Sorry, yes, you are right. However, that was before the Sino-Vietnamese war. So the point about their last war being almost half a century ago still stands.
  - gonzo41 2y ago
    For China to take Taiwan, it would represent China doing the most complex surprise invasion that even the US military couldn't probably pull off. Assaulting a beach head is up there as possible the most difficult thing you can do. In WW2 the Allies got lucky because, Radar, Missiles, and drones didn't exist yet. Taiwan has stacks of weapons, enough to repel and invasion and they also have, jungles, mountains and cities to extend the fighting into.
    - 2y ago
DeathArrow 2y ago
China is now capable of producing more than 1000 missiles per day.
devoutsalsa 2y ago
China has a lot of shipbuilding capacity, but I think it'd be pretty vulnerable to attack. The USA couldn't ramp up shipbuilding capacity overnight, but it could certainly degrade China's ability to build ships overnight. I'm assuming that most of China's ship producing capacity is on the coast, which may be an incorrect assumption.
- jandrese 2y ago
  Any shipbuilding not on the coast would only be set up for river vessels anyway which are mostly irrelevant in this scenario.
- faeriechangling 2y ago
  The thing about building ships is not only does it take forever to build up shipbuilding capacity - it takes forever to build ships. This should be interpreted as emphasizing the strength of the US Navy though, since it would take years and years for China to possibly match the tonnage of the US Navy even if the US didn’t build anything.
Buttons840 2y ago
Maybe if the US spent 230 times more on defense that would help? (/s) More seriously, why are we not prepared? Didn't we spend enough to keep our defense industry competitive?

by treme 2y ago

atleastoptimal 2y ago

I don’t understand why the US voluntarily gave up its significant advantage in manufacturing. Is it just because it would be impossible to have an industrial base in a world where Asia exists and can produce everything that could be built in the US for 1/5 the cost? In every universe where the US dollar is significantly stronger than the next greatest probable superpower, will that next greatest probable superpower always be in a perfect position to exploit this disparity and become the de facto world leader in heavy industry?

lazide 2y ago
It’s very profitable having someone else make it for 1/5th the cost, and as long as it isn’t literally artillery and stuff, why not? Or are you saying people wouldn’t do something short sighted if it made them super rich in the meantime?
- avidiax 2y ago
  Turns out that manufacturing toys, consumer electronics, semiconductors, etc. is very important for future wars that use cheap drones instead of $2,000 155mm artillery shells. It's not clear that we predicted that shift, so it's a good reason to maintain some manufacturing capability in pretty much all areas, comparative advantage be damned.
  - lazide 2y ago
    Sounds like a good way to not get your quarterly bonus!
  - lupire 2y ago
    China leapfrogged the world by copying the world's work up till then. Why can't US leapfrog by copying back?
    - lazide 2y ago
      We’d have to be hungry and willing to get dirty. Near as I can tell, at the moment we’re mostly confused and tired.
mensetmanusman 2y ago
Wall St. read “the End of History” and assumed China would be more invested in friendly relations with their nearest neighbors, so to save costs they punished any western company that didn’t outsource. (Also the politicians weren’t smart enough to stop this.) I.e. greed will be the downfall.
tyre 2y ago
Because capitalism has weaknesses and this is one of them. Markets will drift towards efficiency without considering externalities. Markets will not drift towards strategic manufacturing capacity at a higher cost per unit produced without government intervention (subsidies, tariffs.) So corporations and consumers outsourced because quantity at price beat quality and strategic concerns.
- cjbgkagh 2y ago
  What we have is more corporatism than capitalism - the markets are busy working with governments and setting up rackets to extract monopolistic rents. I don't have much experience with China but from my vantage point it does appear that there is quite a lot of competition between companies that does not seem to exist in the US to the same extent.
  - cyberax 2y ago
    Uhm. Monopolism is the ultimate fate of unrestricted capitalism in established markets.
    - panick21_ 2y ago
      A claim made by socialist 200 years ago and yet it hasn't actually happened. And the minor amount of 'anti-monopoly' action taken by governments is hard to credit for that. The reality is that a monopoly is incredibly hard to sustain without government. And even in the cases where something close to it can be created, they can seldomly really push up the price as much as they think. Historically its governments creating the monopolies most of the time.
      - cyberax 2y ago
        > A claim made by socialist 200 years ago and yet it hasn't actually happened. It kinda did. Large stagnant industries tend to collapse into monopolies. However, this was masked either by new more nimble companies pushing out the incumbents by utilizing newer technologies, or by industries fading away entirely.
pitaj 2y ago
Have you ever heard about the Jones Act? The US tried to specifically keep shipmaking capabilities, but implementing such protectionism arguably backfired. The point is, what policies would you have implemented to keep that manufacturing capacity?
- cjbgkagh 2y ago
  Financialization is eating the rest of the economy. That is the beast that must be slain if we wish to survive. Since that is not going to happen I think it is wise to instead prepare for the worst.
  - eru 2y ago
    The question is, how would you do that preparation?
    - cjbgkagh 2y ago
      Some countries will fair better than others, so perhaps move to a country that maintains cordial relationships with both China and the US. I'm preparing by learning how to design and make things so I can do my own manufacturing in-house to minimize dependency on supply lines that could be disrupted. Manufacturing technology is has improved in leaps and bounds. It's much easier that it used to be. And I can do all this from a self sufficient homestead deep in the forest.
      - eru 2y ago
        > Some countries will fair better than others, so perhaps move to a country that maintains cordial relationships with both China and the US. I moved to Singapore a while ago. Not for those reasons, but being on good terms with almost anyone certainly is a nice bonus. Though my question was rather, what policies would a country want to adopt? > Manufacturing technology is has improved in leaps and bounds. It's much easier that it used to be. And I can do all this from a self sufficient homestead deep in the forest. Yes, but that's essentially just a hobby or at most craft production. So that is neither competitive as mass production in peace time, nor of much use for mass production in wartime. (It definitely sounds like a great hobby, though!)
csomar 2y ago
I think the US underestimated the capacity of the Chinese to grow this much this fast. To give you an example, India in 1960 had double the gdp per capita of that of China. China now has x5 the per capita of India. That's 10 times more growth than India.
k12sosse 2y ago
The "gave it up" to make the elite even richer, offshoring everything in the name of returns on shareholder investments. People like to complain that it's the labour market, that nobody wanted the jobs.. but that's a lie told to stop the masses from organizing and putting some heads on pikes.
jltsiren 2y ago
China had a steady supply of cheap skilled labor. Automation has made that less important than it used to be, but back then it was a decisive advantage. At least when combined with good enough quality and sufficient political stability. One mistake the US did was switching from defined benefit pensions to individual retirement savings. When the stock market is something you hear about in the news, most people don't really care about it. But when you see it in your retirement account balance, it becomes relevant. If outsourcing to China is good for the stock market, you vote politicians who make it easier.
- KRAKRISMOTT 2y ago
  > One mistake the US did was switching from defined benefit pensions to individual retirement savings. Depending on how the pension system is setup, it could become an indefinite pyramid scheme. You end with countries like Canada (and many in places like Europe) constantly importing immigrant labor just to prop up the older generations' retirement. It kicks the ball down the road.
  - littlestymaar 2y ago
    Europe isn't importing immigrants to prop up the pensions…
    - diordiderot 2y ago
      Yes it is.
    - KRAKRISMOTT 2y ago
      I am sure Merkel accepted the Arab Spring refugees out of the goodness of her heart.
      - geysersam 2y ago
        Not out of goodness of heart, but out of ideological conviction and obligation to international refugee conventions
AtlasBarfed 2y ago
Because the "elite" that actually make US economic policy made a mint on it and could engage in their all time favorite activity in the world: undercutting and destroying the financial viability of unions and labor The rich don't actually care about how much money they have, they care about how much money they have relative to other people. Hollowing out the middle class meant while milking profits from cheap overseas near-slave labor? My god, so many billionaire boners. Why do you think nothing tangible has been done about illegal immigration in, what, 40, 50 years now? Something that massively increases the number of desperate workers to undermine labor supply and union-based manual labor and trades? As it stands now, this problem will self-correct because manufacturing WILL onshore. It has to. China is dropping the hammer on economic reforms and ratcheting up totalitarian control, to say nothing of demographic bombs, the real estate / regional debt crisis, and the inevitable sanctions from a Taiwan invasion. Don't worry about the shipbuilding. China doesn't have carriers. They don't have a navy that can leave shore more than a hundred miles or so. The fact is the US Navy can blockade China's food imports and petroleum (as in, fertilizer so ... most domestic food) shipments in Malaysia at will and ... China starves a couple months later. The policy that needs to be pursued isn't one of China as a dangerous peer state. That has already passed. The policy is to deal with China as a dangerous collapsing state. It's kind of the same effect (manufactured goods being shut off, reestablishing more domestic production and manufacturing), just with or without overt warfare. IMO this is an opportunity for greenfield modern manufacturing construction: lots of automation, lots of modern EV-based low cost low carbon transportation and infrastructure, building up the domestic energy industry around alternative energy on a fundamentally cheap basis never seen before. One way to do this is to intelligently allow the best and brightest in China to immigrate. They'll certainly want to get out... As for the article, it was a lot easier to crank out airplanes when they were basically automobiles with different body shapes. These weren't turbojets, they were ICE engine-powered prop planes. Yes that handwaves a massive amount of engineering and retooling, but it wasn't like ICE engine designers suddenly needed to learn how chip manufacturing worked.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
  >> US Navy can blockade China's food imports and petroleum It can't, as long as China has atomic bombs and ICBMs to deliver them.
littlestymaar 2y ago
“Capitalists will sell the rope to hang them” Lenin > Is it just because it would be impossible to have an industrial base in a world where Asia exists and can produce everything that could be built in the US for 1/5 the cost? It's not impossible, had the US kept capital control and tariffs there would have been no way for Asia to catch-up at all. But the free trade ideology and greed led the US where it is now.
- concordDance 2y ago
  Worth noting this also lifted a billion people out of poverty.
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    China could have lifted their people out of poverty on their own. We didn't need to sell them our manufacturing base to do that.
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
If you can get an extra lambo in your garage, by firing all your factory employees, and move your manufacturing to China, well...what do you think will happen? This is especially egregious, because the few folks that have enough ethics to not do that, get driven into bankruptcy, by the ones that do. The general consumer market basically wants cheap. If they can get stuff that does what they want, for less, then they go that way. They aren't particular, as to the source. The market for High Quality is actually pretty small. People that make good stuff, don't get rich. People that make lots of cheap crap, get very rich. The only way to reverse this, would be to invoke protectionism (or have a war, which will do that, anyway). That isn't very popular, with this crowd.
- mcny 2y ago
  > The only way to reverse this, would be to invoke protectionism (or have a war, which will do that, anyway). That isn't very popular, with this crowd. Because we know that protectionism with people like those you explained at the top > If you can get an extra lambo in your garage, by firing all your factory employees, and move your manufacturing to China, well...what do you think will happen? does not guarantee better products/outcomes. Those who would use basically slave labor offshore for profits, will also do other nasty things for profits at home as well. Not a fan of dichotomy like these. I want cheap Chinese electric cars here in the US.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    > I want cheap Chinese electric cars here in the US. Not sure I support that broad a statement. Here in NY, we have had many instances of dangerous building fires, caused by cheap Chinese scooters, which are a favorite transportation mode for folks without means. A number of these fires caused many families to lose their homes and meager possessions, because one tenant was charging crap batteries.
    - epolanski 2y ago
      Plenty of Teslas took fire while charging. I kinda hate this "Chinese = crap" narrative, it's naive, it misses the forest for the trees. Just because they are the biggest manufacturer in the world they also produce lots of crap, it's just statistically more probable that you gonna find lots of crap that's Chinese, but generalizing this over entire industries and all kind of products is just...naive. It kinda reminds me of that documentary where a Chinese billionaire buys a plant in Ohio to make car glass and American workers looked like crap compared to their Chinese counterparts when it came to the craft, even though they did produce glass before already before the Chinese ownership. It's the kind of narrative that people pushed on Russian army after their failures in Ukraine claiming huge incompetence and their incoming demise. Or when people were sure their economy was gonna collapse because this and that. Just saying stuff doesn't make it true. The longer we keep with those biases the more naive and vulnerable we'll keep being.
someguydave 2y ago
China “cheats” in the sense that they suppress their currency. In theory the profits from successful exports should go back into the Chinese people’s pockets and China should become much richer than it is. But the CCP cannot abide that scenario, so they sell yuan and buy dollars to keep the price down. I do not think they can do this forever.
bluGill 2y ago
> I don’t understand why the US voluntarily gave up its significant advantage in manufacturing We didn't. The US manufactures more than ever. It seems like we gave up the advantage because we let China take over the cheap junk market (before them Japan and Taiwan had that - both have moved up quality though); and we use far less people. A typically factory in 1950 with 2000 workers would now have around 200 to produce the same amount.
- notfromhere 2y ago
  We did. The U.S. is really more of a low volume, high end manufacturer. We don’t have the ability to do the same kind of industrial mobilization we did in ww2.
dragonwriter 2y ago
> I don’t understand why the US voluntarily gave up its significant advantage in manufacturing Because there's a basic heirarchy in capitalism where resource extraction is at the bottom, manufacturing in the middle, and finance at the top, and the higher on that heirarchy your comparative advantage is, the more value you capture out of the global economy. The US won (or, more accurately, is winning, its not a static state) global capitalism is what happened.
faeriechangling 2y ago
I think it’s very easy to explain. The US are some of the worlds greatest sellers of intellectual property which makes for better business, since you only need to invent something once and then you can sell it over and over. The US would prefer to spend it’s time doing more lucrative work. I don’t even think it’s very clear that recent US efforts to onshore manufacturing, both broadly and within green energy specifically, are even helping it. The US is paying close to a million in extra costs for every job it’s on-shoring, although there is the benefit of improving the US negotiating position and military readiness beyond bolstering employment.
- deepsun 2y ago
  Sorry but I didn't understand anything from your explanaiton. Nothing in it answers the parent's question.
  - faeriechangling 2y ago
    >The US would prefer to spend it’s time doing more lucrative work.
pphysch 2y ago
In short, Washington abandoned the republic after WW2 and embraced shadow imperialism. It doesn't matter who is working the factories as long as the global elite gets to set the rules and reap the profits.
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up2isomorphism 2y ago
When you don't have enemy, you are your enemy. This is exactly what happened in US. Putting the part that work actually been done in US fosters competition, and outsource will always benefit for big corps to kill of competitors in early stage.
the_duke 2y ago
Lots of "greed", "stupidity", etc arguments here, but that is too simplistic. There are other aspects. * Industry/mining/some types of manufacturing are often dirty business and cause pollution, not something you love to be around. Energy consumption is also high. * They usually come with many hard jobs that people don't exactly love to do if they have alternatives. This can be countered with automation, but that comes with high cost and limitations that we are only now approaching solutions for (eg flexible humanoid robots with AI-driven controls). * The big industrialization craze of the 90ies/early 2000s came about as western markets started to saturate and approach low growth rates. The hope was that lifting new countries out of poverty would create economic opportunities.
- topspin 2y ago
  This. US deindustrialization can only be understood as a major political shift and, like all major political shifts in the world, it is the product of a conflation of multiple, simultaneous pressures. Among these are: 1. political leaders exploiting the lucrative US market for foreign relation wins. 2. differential labor costs 3. differential regulatory burdens (health and safety, environmental, etc.) Manufacturers have had all of these pressures applied and they've responded accordingly. Seeking lower labor costs and lower regulatory burdens is not merely simple-minded "greed." When competitors leverage these affordances they gain an advantage in cost, so others must consider following.
- the_duke 2y ago
  For posterity, I meant globalisation craze of course, not industrialization craze.

tyre 2y ago

They’d need to switch to aircraft carriers and fast. The US has 11. China has 2. They are expensive, require specifically trained crews, and air superiority counters all of that shipyard capacity.

blackoil 2y ago
Third is in sea trial and fourth under construction. Also, China doesn't pretend to be global police, so it needs them only in South China sea, while US need to be present in Middle East, Europe and USA also.
- kurthr 2y ago
  Ummm, who's going to make sure all the oil comes from the middle east? It's not like the US needs to import light sweet crude from there since the refineries are made for heavier oil than comes from Saudi or fracking.
- hollerith 2y ago
  That great, so the US, which produces all the oil it needs within its borders, needs to be present in the Middle East, but China, which produces some oil, but not enough to run its current fleet of cars and trucks, let alone fight a war, does not need to be in the Middle East. Interesting analysis :) Note that Russia's oil does not help China here: the infrastructure in Russia only allows export via European ports, not Asian ports and not over the Russia-China border, though with the construction of a few 5,000-km-long pipelines, I guess that could change in a few years if Russia cares enough.
  - maxglute 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - DeathArrow 2y ago
    US isn't in Middle East to protect their oil sources in case of war. US is in Middle East to control oil prices, do policing, help Israel and threat Iran and other regional actors. I believe Russia and China signed agreements for building gas and oil pipes.

gonzo41 2y ago

the USA is VERY competent at deploying to and fighting wars. America loves fighting so much it's had a civil war and fought a few of it's closest allies at various times. China is a novice at fighting. Whilst they may have lots of ships, having really good people to fight in a complex battlespace is different.

eru 2y ago
Yes. The last war China was involved in was the relatively small Sino-Vietnamese war in 1979. And the last one before that was WW2. It would be hard to count all the wars the US involved themselves in during that time. However, with regards to China Americans seem to be mostly worried about Taiwan. Taiwan is a lot closer to the coast of the PRC than it is to the coast of the US. (On the other hand, the people living in Taiwan are even closer to Taiwan than the PRC is. And they would certainly enter the fray, too.)
- MaxPock 2y ago
  Funny how you forgot the Korean war and how Chinese entry ensured a stalemate
  - eru 2y ago
    Sorry, yes, you are right. However, that was before the Sino-Vietnamese war. So the point about their last war being almost half a century ago still stands.
- gonzo41 2y ago
  For China to take Taiwan, it would represent China doing the most complex surprise invasion that even the US military couldn't probably pull off. Assaulting a beach head is up there as possible the most difficult thing you can do. In WW2 the Allies got lucky because, Radar, Missiles, and drones didn't exist yet. Taiwan has stacks of weapons, enough to repel and invasion and they also have, jungles, mountains and cities to extend the fighting into.
  - 2y ago

DeathArrow 2y ago

China is now capable of producing more than 1000 missiles per day.

devoutsalsa 2y ago

China has a lot of shipbuilding capacity, but I think it'd be pretty vulnerable to attack. The USA couldn't ramp up shipbuilding capacity overnight, but it could certainly degrade China's ability to build ships overnight. I'm assuming that most of China's ship producing capacity is on the coast, which may be an incorrect assumption.

jandrese 2y ago
Any shipbuilding not on the coast would only be set up for river vessels anyway which are mostly irrelevant in this scenario.
faeriechangling 2y ago
The thing about building ships is not only does it take forever to build up shipbuilding capacity - it takes forever to build ships. This should be interpreted as emphasizing the strength of the US Navy though, since it would take years and years for China to possibly match the tonnage of the US Navy even if the US didn’t build anything.

Buttons840 2y ago

Maybe if the US spent 230 times more on defense that would help? (/s) More seriously, why are we not prepared? Didn't we spend enough to keep our defense industry competitive?