14 ms·

This is going to utterly fuck so many R&D projects at my company. We actually do large-scale manufacturing of industrial valves in the USA. But a lot of our pro

This is going to utterly fuck so many R&D projects at my company. We actually do large-scale manufacturing of industrial valves in the USA. But a lot of our prototyping involves working with Chinese suppliers and getting small batches of samples / prototypes / revisions sent in packages on airplanes. I literally do not know how the electrical and firmware engineers will do their jobs now if we cannot receive packages from China. It's going to halt all our R&D for at least 6 months while we onboard domestic contractor alternatives --- which will also just generally be shit. Not to mention the American contractors WONT BE ABLE TO SHIP IN THE FUCKING ELECTRICAL COMPONENTS FROM CHINA THEY NEED FOR THE PROTOTYPES. Every single R&D department in the USA just got fuuuuuuuuucked by this.

anigbrowl 2y ago
Well if you're not busy you'll have time join in a general strike. Shutting the economy down is rapidly becoming the only nonviolent option.
- pessimizer 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - anigbrowl 2y ago
    No, the only nonviolent option for people who want to protest the administration's scattershot behavior, of which this is but one example. I think you understand this just fine, don't you?
boopdewoop 2y ago
ill buy em for ya mate, get them posted from Australia, It will just cost you $500 in postage fees.
- dzhiurgis 2y ago
  Let's do it via New Zealand, it's $600 plus you wait about 6 months.
999900000999 2y ago
The obvious solution to this is to BUILD IT ALL IN AMERICA. And while waiting 15 years for that to become possible, just move that US based R&D to countries not ran by idiots. I blame myself for not immigrating earlier. I had a chance to move overseas for a least a year and I didn't.
- JohnBooty 2y ago
  I know it's absolutely not the point of your post and you don't mean 15 years as a literal prediction but I thought about it anyway and damn, 15 years is pretty optimistic. Think about how long it took China to become a manufacturing giant. It would take the US even longer to get back to that. The US would have to do what China did, with additional challenges such as: - overcoming environmental regulations - a more disjointed government that changes hands every 4 or 8 years - competition from, well, China - US dollar making exports very challenging because of strength relative to yuan etc it would take, honestly, more like 30-50 years and/or a true forcing function like a world war (heaven forbid)
  - transcriptase 2y ago
    I think you’ve, intentionally or not, hit on a critical point that most like to ignore while passively accepting that “China is simply where things are manufactured”. As if that wasn’t the case until about the time the median HN reader was born. Some will attribute it to the proximity of factories to one another, collaboration between those in adjacent industries, culture, government intentionality, a general lack of enforcement on IP as long as it favors China… but the truth is if China along with every alternative adopted Western environmental and labor laws tomorrow, by mid-2026 there would be factories open in every town and city in the USA and Canada. The West loves to play holier than thou while paying others to put their negatives on their books. Canada implementing carbon pricing and phasing out coal domestically while simply shipping it to Asia instead is the perfect example. Or banning single use plastic because we were shipping it to countries that claimed they were recycling it and instead dumping it into rivers. There is no reason why we can’t produce things, aside from the fact that it’s unpalatable and often illegal to have to deal with the realities of manufacturing like toxic effluents and aerosols. It’s why we tend to stick to manufacturing things that only involve assembling, processing, and welding materials after the bulk of the nastiness has been done overseas.
dtquad 2y ago
>I literally do not know how the electrical and firmware engineers will do their jobs now if we cannot receive packages from China As a software engineer who works closely with electrical and firmware engineers I know what you are saying is completely true. The question is how did we let it go this far? Why has there never been serious Western alternatives to JLCPCB, PCBWay, JLCCNC etc.? Has anyone asked themselves how these Chinese firms are so cheap? How can JLCCNC take ~$120 worth of raw material, CNC machine it into our specified part, anodize the part, and send it to Denmark for ~$120? Like what is going on?
- antigeox 2y ago
  [flagged]
- Aurornis 2y ago
  > The question is how did we let it go this far? Why has there never been serious Western alternatives to JLCPCB, PCBWay, JLCCNC etc.? Has anyone asked themselves how these Chinese firms are so cheap? It’s not really a secret. They have cheap labor. Very lax environmental standards (big deal for PCB manufacturing). They have a high density of manufacturing and production. One factory can get their materials and machines from other factories nearby. Their government manipulates exchange rates. People are also quick to forget US companies that serve these same markets. OSH Park was doing cheap PCB panel share before JLCPCB was a common name. Boards manufactured right in the United States. They don’t have the volume of JLCPCB but they’ve been doing cheap boards for hobbyists for a long time: https://docs.oshpark.com/services/ https://docs.oshpark.com/services/
  - stingrae 2y ago
    In China, they compete with each other to get be the cheapest. Here (Bay Area) it feels like the PCB fab and assembly houses have decided to be higher priced because the defense contracts (and FAANG Quick turns) are willing to pay it.
    - pclmulqdq 2y ago
JohnBooty 2y ago
Can you ship via non-USPS couriers? FedEx, etc?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- anonylizard 2y ago
  Indeed you can. This only affects the heavily subsidized usps shipping process. If your r&d cannot afford fedex you shouldn’t be doing r&d. For all the supposed panic and importance of this process, the poster didn’t do even a google search of this issue
  - reaperman 2y ago
    upvoted by poster. BUT - USPS stopped subsidizing Chinese packages back in 2018? https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/418081-usps-is-done-subsidizing-chinese-package-shipping/ https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/418081-usps-is-done-subs... So on the surface, this looks more like corporate welfare to FedEx/DHL.
    - j16sdiz 2y ago
      (declaimer: I am from Hong Kong, and have worked on some import tax/declaration system) Import tax and tariff relies on clear and accurate import declaration. For DHL/FexEx imported package, you can fine them when the declaration isn't right. For USPS imported package, you can't fine USPS -- they didn't know what's in package when it arrive. You can't fine Hong Kong Post or China Post, because they are not US entities. Rejecting parcel in bulk is one of the reasonable option if they can't get the shipper fill in the correct declaration form.
      - callmeal 2y ago
        >For USPS imported package, you can't fine USPS Or you could do what pretty much every other country in the world does, and fine the recipient.
smileson2 2y ago
Yeah probably makes sense to just offshore r&d more to countries that don’t get in the way so much
JKCalhoun 2y ago
Ha ha, whoops, just placed an order with AliExpress earlier today.
- paxys 2y ago
  AliExpress uses private couriers, not usps.
King-Aaron 2y ago
Can you get things forwarded via Singapore or Australia etc?
sandworm101 2y ago
Are there not other delivery services? Is FedEx also not allowed to deliver packages?
likeabatterycar 2y ago
Your company is grossly mismanaged or your work isn't very important if you are shipping hardware China Post. Which would take weeks on a good day. Had you read the article you would realize this only affects parcels sent through the mail.
khelavastr 2y ago
Surely they can use DHL/UPS, right?
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  Should be minimal disruption; when someone in China wanted to send me a package, they used DHL anyway.
  - throwfgtpwd234 2y ago
    This is $$$$ compared to China Post Epackets.
eru 2y ago
Could you ship to eg Singapore first, and then ship from there to the US?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
khana 2y ago
[dead]
briandear 2y ago
Then ship UPS/DHL/Fedex. Those aren’t affected.
thesaintlives 2y ago
Time to step up?
instagib 2y ago
Well add a mid ship point in Mexico, Canada, or Japan.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
VagabundoP 2y ago
It would be cheaper to temp relocate a bunch of teams to the EU at this point, than completely stop all R&D.
- stonogo 2y ago
  The only team you need in the EU is someone to peel shipping labels off inbound parcels and ship them on to the US.
  - ZaoLahma 2y ago
    That's a fantastic way to get the attention of and end up getting the stick from the US, so I think (hope) the EU would have mechanisms in place to quickly shut down tariff evasion strategies that would involve just relabeling goods.
    - mschuster91 2y ago
      We don't even have that in place for illegal Russian oil exports or imports of stuff they use to make rockets to shoot at Ukraine with.
    - stonogo 2y ago
      It is already an established business model.
ashoeafoot 2y ago
My guess is that a shitton of R&D labs will move out of the us now?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
catherd 2y ago
Only if "utterly fucked" somehow means you can still pay a bit more to DHL and get packages even faster than USPS. Your fast prototypes coming by air freight likely aren't routed through USPS at all unless it's the last leg of a consolidated shipment that's broken apart once it reaches the US. Those would be using some other carrier to get them from China to the US and then USPS only inside the US. USPS all the way from China is slow. Paying ~$30 for express shipping through DHL (plus whatever the new tariffs end up being) will still get you those parts in 3-5 days to most major shipping hubs in the US, your suppliers will just need to start filing the export paperwork correctly. These changes will likely have bigger impacts on cheap off the shelf parts from e-commerce places like Temu or AliExpress, who were previously taking advantage of both the de minimis rule and inequal international rates through USPS. Your Chinese suppliers can still ship by any of the normal commercial express shipping carriers as long as they understand how to file export paperwork or have an agent who can do it for them. Previously this usually added 1-2 days to the transit time over shipping undeclared "samples". Last year DHL moved to a paperless system and that extra 1-2 days delay is probably going away anyway. They may have even done it because they saw this coming. People have been grumbling about the de-minimis stuff for a while now.
- boxed 2y ago
  > Only if "utterly fucked" somehow means you can still pay a bit more to DHL and get packages even faster than USPS. That probably will work for like a week, considering how fast and reckless the administration moves.
- relistan 2y ago
  I’d deem it extremely unlikely that US customs processing or the express carriers will be able to handle that overflow in anything like a reasonable timeframe.
  - catherd 2y ago
    Could be. The carriers do already have practice ramping up and down for Christmas and Chinese New Year so it seems plausible they could absorb significant extra volume in whatever time it would take to negotiate the leases on the extra flights they use during those times. For that matter customs processing also has experience managing the same surges. I'd believe we might have some sort of own-goal planned for customs that could hang things up.
bboygravity 2y ago
Just get them through Europe? Outsource to European contractors? You could literally just outsource your prototyping to me (I'm in Europe, EE with embedded programming skills and good connections to local 8--day turn-around PCBA production) and I'll ship them from Europe to US (using 1 day shipping if needed). Ok, sorry for spamming, but my point is: there are ways?
qwertox 2y ago
> Every single R&D department in the USA just got fuuuuuuuuucked by this. The problem is that your important R&D purchases are competing against the lipstick order of the neighbors wife (or his own) or that cute little cat toy. IDK who's to blame for if R&D then starts having problems, but it might be R&D department itself if they are happy to compete with lipsticks, in terms of shipping.
ta20240528 2y ago
> I literally do not know how the electrical and firmware engineers will do their jobs now Move. Like the rest of us had to when all the tech was in the USA.
bgro 2y ago
It’ll be circumvented with proxy shipments from other locations, or third party shipping companies. Just like Russian sanctions and anything else people prepanic about or think will have any effect good or bad. Any raise in cost will disappear and be absorbed as profit in supply chain shrouds of smoke and mirrors, permanently. Unless it legitimately costs slightly more money or causes any inconvenience to companies and we hear about it on the news.
K0balt 2y ago
We do R&D in the Dominican Republic. Like most nations in the USA orbit, we receive our eastern imports via the USA via transshipping. This is also disrupting the nascent technology industries in the Caribbean and the Latin-American diaspora. For us specifically, it will increase our logistics costs by multiples and lead times by weeks. I expect this will result in substantial schedule misses and cost overruns.
- Symbiote 2y ago
  Perhaps new transshippers in Canada or maybe Mexico could take the place of the Americans.
  - K0balt 2y ago
    Perhaps. For now, it looks like we get a reprieve.
meaningjoj 2y ago
Not just R&D. This is how manufacturing works in general. Nobody is like "here's the CAD, go ahead and send me 50,000 units! I'm sure it will be fine."
davidmurdoch 2y ago
Hopefully the company started setting up those relationships when Trump was elected. I personally bought a bunch of hard to get domestically "Made in China" stuff I knew I'd need in the next year back in December to hedge against Trump's anti-China policies, so I imagine most American companies that rely heavily on China aren't completely unprepared right now. Edit: if you don't agree with something I've said, please comment and explain why. I really don't see how this is controversial.
MisterTea 2y ago
> But a lot of our prototyping involves working with Chinese suppliers and getting small batches of samples / prototypes / revisions sent in packages on airplanes. There are shops in the USA that can do that work.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
Big US corps moved manufacturing to China to save money and destroyed the supply chains that used to exist in the US. Oops. But at least big shareholders made a lot of money, and GDP is up!! (I don't think most people realize how easy it is for China to f*k with the US for this very reason. Yeah, they'd also be shooting themselves in the foot, but they're a country that might be willing to do that if they had to, because they don't have elections to worry about.)
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  Shareholders made tons of money and consumers saved tons of money. People demand cheap shit, and riot over expensive stuff. Hell Trump is arguably in power because people couldn't handle prices increasing since 2020 (despite wages increasing too).
  - insane_dreamer 2y ago
    Consumers didn't save tons of money. They just bought more stuff with the money they had. > People demand cheap shit and riot over expensive stuff Sure, agree. But moving manufacturing to China wasn't done under pressure of Americans protesting that prices were high.
    - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
      I remember the 90s before China joined the WTO and things did feel “more expensive”, the rise of Chinese production definitely led to lower prices and basically tamed inflation for a couple of decades.
    - Workaccount2 2y ago
      No, but it was done under pressure of Americans buying Walmart over local mom and pop. I cannot take anyone seriously who thinks people care about "Made in USA" more than $10 sweatshirts and $50 dinnerware sets.
      - insane_dreamer 2y ago
DaveExeter 2y ago
It will create jobs, for customs inspectors. Good, high-paying jobs with the best health insurance and lifetime pensions. And it's a small price to pay for the freedom of Ross Ulbricht and the January 6th patriots.

anigbrowl 2y ago

Well if you're not busy you'll have time join in a general strike. Shutting the economy down is rapidly becoming the only nonviolent option.

pessimizer 2y ago
[flagged]
- anigbrowl 2y ago
  No, the only nonviolent option for people who want to protest the administration's scattershot behavior, of which this is but one example. I think you understand this just fine, don't you?

boopdewoop 2y ago

ill buy em for ya mate, get them posted from Australia, It will just cost you $500 in postage fees.

dzhiurgis 2y ago
Let's do it via New Zealand, it's $600 plus you wait about 6 months.

999900000999 2y ago

The obvious solution to this is to BUILD IT ALL IN AMERICA. And while waiting 15 years for that to become possible, just move that US based R&D to countries not ran by idiots. I blame myself for not immigrating earlier. I had a chance to move overseas for a least a year and I didn't.

JohnBooty 2y ago
I know it's absolutely not the point of your post and you don't mean 15 years as a literal prediction but I thought about it anyway and damn, 15 years is pretty optimistic. Think about how long it took China to become a manufacturing giant. It would take the US even longer to get back to that. The US would have to do what China did, with additional challenges such as: - overcoming environmental regulations - a more disjointed government that changes hands every 4 or 8 years - competition from, well, China - US dollar making exports very challenging because of strength relative to yuan etc it would take, honestly, more like 30-50 years and/or a true forcing function like a world war (heaven forbid)
- transcriptase 2y ago
  I think you’ve, intentionally or not, hit on a critical point that most like to ignore while passively accepting that “China is simply where things are manufactured”. As if that wasn’t the case until about the time the median HN reader was born. Some will attribute it to the proximity of factories to one another, collaboration between those in adjacent industries, culture, government intentionality, a general lack of enforcement on IP as long as it favors China… but the truth is if China along with every alternative adopted Western environmental and labor laws tomorrow, by mid-2026 there would be factories open in every town and city in the USA and Canada. The West loves to play holier than thou while paying others to put their negatives on their books. Canada implementing carbon pricing and phasing out coal domestically while simply shipping it to Asia instead is the perfect example. Or banning single use plastic because we were shipping it to countries that claimed they were recycling it and instead dumping it into rivers. There is no reason why we can’t produce things, aside from the fact that it’s unpalatable and often illegal to have to deal with the realities of manufacturing like toxic effluents and aerosols. It’s why we tend to stick to manufacturing things that only involve assembling, processing, and welding materials after the bulk of the nastiness has been done overseas.

dtquad 2y ago

>I literally do not know how the electrical and firmware engineers will do their jobs now if we cannot receive packages from China As a software engineer who works closely with electrical and firmware engineers I know what you are saying is completely true. The question is how did we let it go this far? Why has there never been serious Western alternatives to JLCPCB, PCBWay, JLCCNC etc.? Has anyone asked themselves how these Chinese firms are so cheap? How can JLCCNC take ~$120 worth of raw material, CNC machine it into our specified part, anodize the part, and send it to Denmark for ~$120? Like what is going on?

antigeox 2y ago
[flagged]
Aurornis 2y ago
> The question is how did we let it go this far? Why has there never been serious Western alternatives to JLCPCB, PCBWay, JLCCNC etc.? Has anyone asked themselves how these Chinese firms are so cheap? It’s not really a secret. They have cheap labor. Very lax environmental standards (big deal for PCB manufacturing). They have a high density of manufacturing and production. One factory can get their materials and machines from other factories nearby. Their government manipulates exchange rates. People are also quick to forget US companies that serve these same markets. OSH Park was doing cheap PCB panel share before JLCPCB was a common name. Boards manufactured right in the United States. They don’t have the volume of JLCPCB but they’ve been doing cheap boards for hobbyists for a long time: https://docs.oshpark.com/services/ https://docs.oshpark.com/services/
- stingrae 2y ago
  In China, they compete with each other to get be the cheapest. Here (Bay Area) it feels like the PCB fab and assembly houses have decided to be higher priced because the defense contracts (and FAANG Quick turns) are willing to pay it.
  - pclmulqdq 2y ago

JohnBooty 2y ago

Can you ship via non-USPS couriers? FedEx, etc?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
anonylizard 2y ago
Indeed you can. This only affects the heavily subsidized usps shipping process. If your r&d cannot afford fedex you shouldn’t be doing r&d. For all the supposed panic and importance of this process, the poster didn’t do even a google search of this issue
- reaperman 2y ago
  upvoted by poster. BUT - USPS stopped subsidizing Chinese packages back in 2018? https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/418081-usps-is-done-subsidizing-chinese-package-shipping/ https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/418081-usps-is-done-subs... So on the surface, this looks more like corporate welfare to FedEx/DHL.
  - j16sdiz 2y ago
    (declaimer: I am from Hong Kong, and have worked on some import tax/declaration system) Import tax and tariff relies on clear and accurate import declaration. For DHL/FexEx imported package, you can fine them when the declaration isn't right. For USPS imported package, you can't fine USPS -- they didn't know what's in package when it arrive. You can't fine Hong Kong Post or China Post, because they are not US entities. Rejecting parcel in bulk is one of the reasonable option if they can't get the shipper fill in the correct declaration form.
    - callmeal 2y ago
      >For USPS imported package, you can't fine USPS Or you could do what pretty much every other country in the world does, and fine the recipient.

smileson2 2y ago

Yeah probably makes sense to just offshore r&d more to countries that don’t get in the way so much

JKCalhoun 2y ago

Ha ha, whoops, just placed an order with AliExpress earlier today.

paxys 2y ago
AliExpress uses private couriers, not usps.

King-Aaron 2y ago

Can you get things forwarded via Singapore or Australia etc?

sandworm101 2y ago

Are there not other delivery services? Is FedEx also not allowed to deliver packages?

likeabatterycar 2y ago

Your company is grossly mismanaged or your work isn't very important if you are shipping hardware China Post. Which would take weeks on a good day. Had you read the article you would realize this only affects parcels sent through the mail.

khelavastr 2y ago

Surely they can use DHL/UPS, right?

thaumasiotes 2y ago
Should be minimal disruption; when someone in China wanted to send me a package, they used DHL anyway.
- throwfgtpwd234 2y ago
  This is $$$$ compared to China Post Epackets.

eru 2y ago

Could you ship to eg Singapore first, and then ship from there to the US?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

khana 2y ago

[dead]

briandear 2y ago

Then ship UPS/DHL/Fedex. Those aren’t affected.

thesaintlives 2y ago

Time to step up?

instagib 2y ago

Well add a mid ship point in Mexico, Canada, or Japan.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

VagabundoP 2y ago

It would be cheaper to temp relocate a bunch of teams to the EU at this point, than completely stop all R&D.

stonogo 2y ago
The only team you need in the EU is someone to peel shipping labels off inbound parcels and ship them on to the US.
- ZaoLahma 2y ago
  That's a fantastic way to get the attention of and end up getting the stick from the US, so I think (hope) the EU would have mechanisms in place to quickly shut down tariff evasion strategies that would involve just relabeling goods.
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    We don't even have that in place for illegal Russian oil exports or imports of stuff they use to make rockets to shoot at Ukraine with.
  - stonogo 2y ago
    It is already an established business model.

ashoeafoot 2y ago

My guess is that a shitton of R&D labs will move out of the us now?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

catherd 2y ago

Only if "utterly fucked" somehow means you can still pay a bit more to DHL and get packages even faster than USPS. Your fast prototypes coming by air freight likely aren't routed through USPS at all unless it's the last leg of a consolidated shipment that's broken apart once it reaches the US. Those would be using some other carrier to get them from China to the US and then USPS only inside the US. USPS all the way from China is slow. Paying ~$30 for express shipping through DHL (plus whatever the new tariffs end up being) will still get you those parts in 3-5 days to most major shipping hubs in the US, your suppliers will just need to start filing the export paperwork correctly. These changes will likely have bigger impacts on cheap off the shelf parts from e-commerce places like Temu or AliExpress, who were previously taking advantage of both the de minimis rule and inequal international rates through USPS. Your Chinese suppliers can still ship by any of the normal commercial express shipping carriers as long as they understand how to file export paperwork or have an agent who can do it for them. Previously this usually added 1-2 days to the transit time over shipping undeclared "samples". Last year DHL moved to a paperless system and that extra 1-2 days delay is probably going away anyway. They may have even done it because they saw this coming. People have been grumbling about the de-minimis stuff for a while now.

boxed 2y ago
> Only if "utterly fucked" somehow means you can still pay a bit more to DHL and get packages even faster than USPS. That probably will work for like a week, considering how fast and reckless the administration moves.
relistan 2y ago
I’d deem it extremely unlikely that US customs processing or the express carriers will be able to handle that overflow in anything like a reasonable timeframe.
- catherd 2y ago
  Could be. The carriers do already have practice ramping up and down for Christmas and Chinese New Year so it seems plausible they could absorb significant extra volume in whatever time it would take to negotiate the leases on the extra flights they use during those times. For that matter customs processing also has experience managing the same surges. I'd believe we might have some sort of own-goal planned for customs that could hang things up.

bboygravity 2y ago

Just get them through Europe? Outsource to European contractors? You could literally just outsource your prototyping to me (I'm in Europe, EE with embedded programming skills and good connections to local 8--day turn-around PCBA production) and I'll ship them from Europe to US (using 1 day shipping if needed). Ok, sorry for spamming, but my point is: there are ways?

qwertox 2y ago

> Every single R&D department in the USA just got fuuuuuuuuucked by this. The problem is that your important R&D purchases are competing against the lipstick order of the neighbors wife (or his own) or that cute little cat toy. IDK who's to blame for if R&D then starts having problems, but it might be R&D department itself if they are happy to compete with lipsticks, in terms of shipping.

ta20240528 2y ago

> I literally do not know how the electrical and firmware engineers will do their jobs now Move. Like the rest of us had to when all the tech was in the USA.

bgro 2y ago

It’ll be circumvented with proxy shipments from other locations, or third party shipping companies. Just like Russian sanctions and anything else people prepanic about or think will have any effect good or bad. Any raise in cost will disappear and be absorbed as profit in supply chain shrouds of smoke and mirrors, permanently. Unless it legitimately costs slightly more money or causes any inconvenience to companies and we hear about it on the news.

K0balt 2y ago

We do R&D in the Dominican Republic. Like most nations in the USA orbit, we receive our eastern imports via the USA via transshipping. This is also disrupting the nascent technology industries in the Caribbean and the Latin-American diaspora. For us specifically, it will increase our logistics costs by multiples and lead times by weeks. I expect this will result in substantial schedule misses and cost overruns.

Symbiote 2y ago
Perhaps new transshippers in Canada or maybe Mexico could take the place of the Americans.
- K0balt 2y ago
  Perhaps. For now, it looks like we get a reprieve.

meaningjoj 2y ago

Not just R&D. This is how manufacturing works in general. Nobody is like "here's the CAD, go ahead and send me 50,000 units! I'm sure it will be fine."

davidmurdoch 2y ago

Hopefully the company started setting up those relationships when Trump was elected. I personally bought a bunch of hard to get domestically "Made in China" stuff I knew I'd need in the next year back in December to hedge against Trump's anti-China policies, so I imagine most American companies that rely heavily on China aren't completely unprepared right now. Edit: if you don't agree with something I've said, please comment and explain why. I really don't see how this is controversial.

MisterTea 2y ago

> But a lot of our prototyping involves working with Chinese suppliers and getting small batches of samples / prototypes / revisions sent in packages on airplanes. There are shops in the USA that can do that work.

insane_dreamer 2y ago

Big US corps moved manufacturing to China to save money and destroyed the supply chains that used to exist in the US. Oops. But at least big shareholders made a lot of money, and GDP is up!! (I don't think most people realize how easy it is for China to f*k with the US for this very reason. Yeah, they'd also be shooting themselves in the foot, but they're a country that might be willing to do that if they had to, because they don't have elections to worry about.)

Workaccount2 2y ago
Shareholders made tons of money and consumers saved tons of money. People demand cheap shit, and riot over expensive stuff. Hell Trump is arguably in power because people couldn't handle prices increasing since 2020 (despite wages increasing too).
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  Consumers didn't save tons of money. They just bought more stuff with the money they had. > People demand cheap shit and riot over expensive stuff Sure, agree. But moving manufacturing to China wasn't done under pressure of Americans protesting that prices were high.
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    I remember the 90s before China joined the WTO and things did feel “more expensive”, the rise of Chinese production definitely led to lower prices and basically tamed inflation for a couple of decades.
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
    No, but it was done under pressure of Americans buying Walmart over local mom and pop. I cannot take anyone seriously who thinks people care about "Made in USA" more than $10 sweatshirts and $50 dinnerware sets.
    - insane_dreamer 2y ago

DaveExeter 2y ago

It will create jobs, for customs inspectors. Good, high-paying jobs with the best health insurance and lifetime pensions. And it's a small price to pay for the freedom of Ross Ulbricht and the January 6th patriots.