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> Other than that it seems to be mostly good points, especially the overall one: you cannot do this overnight. It's annoying Americans were given only two choi

> Other than that it seems to be mostly good points, especially the overall one: you cannot do this overnight. It's annoying Americans were given only two choices - offshoring is great and let's keep doing it, and, as you say, the opposite, meth-fueled let's bring back manufacturing overnight. The kind of slow and steady protection and promotion of home-grown industry that China and most of Asia so successfully used to grow their economies was completely absent as even a talking point.

zasz 2y ago
That IS what Biden was trying to do though with the CHIPS Incentive Act. He was trying to onshore production of semiconductors in a partnership with TSMC. Didn't do him any favors, and Harris lost the state of Arizona anyway. Americans had the choice between a party that was serious about trying to onshore some manufacturing and a party that wasn't, and it made the wrong choice because vibes, basically.
- like_any_other 2y ago
  > because vibes, basically This may be more accurate than you realize. Both Democrat and old Republican party rhetoric and policies were pro-globalization/offshoring, with the occasional exception such as CHIPS (and corn subsidies). It's not surprising nobody believed they were changing direction, if for every "we're bringing semiconductors back", they heard ten "your car is German your phone is Chinese your tacos are Mexican, how dare you interfere with glorious Free Trade!"
  - jghn 2y ago
    Also one can't ignore that the GOP managed to remarked the CHIPS act as a key source of inflation, which they also managed to pin on "Bidenomics". Which was another source of "vibes, basically"
    - kelipso 2y ago
      Weren't we hearing for years about how it went to waste because Intel did stock buybacks or whatever using the CHIPS money. Now we are supposed to believe it's critical?
      - rsfern 2y ago
        CHIPS incentive funding is way bigger than just Intel, so it’s a bit disingenuous to write off the whole program just because of one (or even several) high profile bad actor. We should have a nuanced discussion and fix the shortcomings of our programs, but at least assess things in a balanced way. If you check the transcript of the confirmation hearing for the current Commerce secretary, practically every Senator brags about their state’s CHIPS funded R&D hub. Lots of growth in small and medium businesses there. And CHIPS incentive funding played a huge role in bringing the new TSMC fab in Arizona https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/jobs/2024/04/09/12-things-to-know-about-expanding-tsmc-phoenix-arizona-microchip-semiconductor-plant/73236438007/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/jobs/2024/04/...
        imchillyb 2y ago
        R&D is a cost center that can no longer be written off of a company’s taxes. I don’t believe that cost centers are a good example of returning manufacturing onshore. Or an example of a state using federal funding well. Cost centers are not a good investment for federal funding, without a clear path to paying back our taxed dollars.
        like_any_other 2y ago
        > R&D is a cost center that can no longer be written off of a company’s taxes. Can you elaborate on this? It was my understanding a company only pays taxes on profit. So isn't the revenue that goes into R&D effectively taxed at 0%, since at that point it's not yet profit? I.e. only dividend payouts get taxed.
        2y ago
FirmwareBurner 2y ago
> The kind of slow and steady protection and promotion of home-grown industry that China and most of Asia so successfully used to grow their economies was completely absent as even a talking point The slow and steady way that post-WW2 Korea and Japan did needs a unanimously agreed 10-20 year long game plan between industry and government, which is incompatible with democracies who change colors and strategies every 4 years where the new administration begins to tear down everything the previous administration did because they serve different voter bases and corporate lobby groups. It is also incompatible with the US since a lot of corporations made bank due to offshoring and will fight it every way they can since they don't want to deal with costly US labor who can unionize or sue you for millions if they break a finger at work. Even TSMC Arizona had to bring half the workers from Taiwan, and it's not like they're making tchotchkes.
- freeone3000 2y ago
  They were brought from Taiwan due to their expertise and familiarity with TSMC processes. America doesn’t have a glut of people with EUV fab experience — they all already work for Intel.
  - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
    Sure, but it's not like they're paying them super competitive wages. Some people on HN said the Taiwanese TSMC Arizona workers already started applying at Intel. If you want to kick-start manufacturing, you're gonna have to attract people somehow initially, either through more money, or free education/training, etc
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  There's various forms of democracy and many are not as chaotic as the US kind in regards to long term plans. A good example is the general global approach to Net Zero. It's slow, methodical, science based, negotiated. But if anyone brings up planning for 2050 it's usually in the context of "It's all bullshit, politicians are crap, they're just lying to you and kicking the can down the road till they retire" (and if you scratch the surface you'll have even chance that the person saying that has been radicalised into not even believing there's a problem to be solved). But only the US is in and out of the Paris agreement etc.
fendy3002 2y ago
Well, money talks and it's hard to choose the other option. On one hand bring manufacturing back to US and pay them higher, because otherwise the pay in McDonald's is better with a less demanding physical (cmiiw, don't live in US). On the other hand, keep manufacturing outside of US for cheaper labor to keep price low and having bigger margin. It's an easy choice to make. And again this is not a US specific problem, it's almost all of countries nowadays have a massive wealth gap that makes people racing to the bottom of living / working standard.
- myrmidon 2y ago
  The thing is also that absolutely nothing about the overall situation changed meaningfully over the last 50 years or so. People had the exact same concerns and fears when electronics manufacturing started shifting to Japan like 50 years ago-- they went in the same way up the value chain that China did, and they started losing a lot of the industry with rising wages, too, exactly like what we see with China => Vietnam/Indonesia/... nowadays. I think 90% of the whole political debate about the economy is misplaced nostalgia combined with problematic local wealth inequality-- poor countries lifting themselves up by manufacturing stuff for low wages is how the whole system is actually supposed to work from my perspective; describing that as "ripping off the American people" is completely unhinged, misinformed self-delusion to me.
  - like_any_other 2y ago
    Seeing it as a "rip off" is indeed delusion, but turning a blind eye to the dangers of becoming (ever more) dependent on a foreign country is an even worse folly.
    - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
      If the dependencies go both ways, it's probably a good thing.
  - 9rx 2y ago
    > I think 90% of the whole political debate about the economy is misplaced nostalgia combined with problematic local wealth inequality When Trump said that new manufacturing facilities would be fast-tracked to being able to build their own on-site power plants because the grid is "at risk of bombing", I've come to think that the whole political debate is really about: What the hell are we going to do if WWIII happens? Manufacturing capability and capacity is an incredibly precious resource if you find yourself in a large scale war, and there is growing concern (realistic or not) that America has given it away/lost it. It makes no difference in peaceful times, but there is growing belief that the era of peace is coming to an end. In fact, if you take a higher level view of what is going on, like the wanting to annex Canada and Greenland, it seems the entire motivation for it all is preparing for the possibility of war with Russia (and China).
rickdeckard 2y ago
The weird part for me is this: While the economy was evolving, Production was offshored from US for cost-reasons, but also in part to focus on higher-skill labor in US, delegating the low-skill mass-production to China. Over time, China also developed mid/high level skills, complemented their low-skill production offering with it and now competes in new industries, new tech, etc. So...to compete with China, the country with 4x the US-population, the solution is that low-skill labor needs to return to US....? Shouldn't instead the focus be to again foster mid/high-skill labor, moving the part that is offshored again towards low-skill labor...?
- like_any_other 2y ago
  The problem is ecosystem effects. High-tech industries evolve from and depend on low-tech ones. There is a limit to how much they can be separated.
- digikata 2y ago
  I think the mistake here is the model of low-skill/high-skill labor is not a useful distinction. Manufacturing is high skill period, however there are low-infrastructure and high-infrastructure products and factories. The labor wages themselves are a factor, but an increasingly minor factor in product costs. By bypassing investment in US manufacturing skills and infra, the US sat itself on the sidelines for the ability to build, staff, and supply modern low, medium and high infrastructure factories. It's not impossible to build back, but it would require long term stable policies to favor it at more levels than just tariffs.
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    The solution is to pay everyone a living wage, regardless of job, and disconnect healthcare from employment. Lots of inertia against those ideas though. So, instead, "good manufacturing jobs" is the parroted point. Any job is a good job if you can live off of it. (tariffs do nothing to address labor shortages in healthcare, teaching, and other domestic service based sectors, for example)
    - 2y ago
taylodl 2y ago
Thing is, manufacturing in America is up. The 2008 crises dealt a blow, but manufacturing has been building-back. I don't think people realize how many high-value items are made in the United States. Let the East Asians make our mass-consumer junk while we focus on the high-value stuff. Just goes to show the administration isn't working with facts and doing the hard-nosed analysis required to drive effective policy. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/tags/series?t=manufacturing%3Boutput%3Busa https://fred.stlouisfed.org/tags/series?t=manufacturing%3Bou...
- _bin_ 2y ago
  The administration is probably aware of this and doesn't care. A huge portion of his base were rust belt voters who want what are essentially handouts, which trump intends to achieve by forcing the American consumer to pay $30/hour for el cheapo goods that could be made elsewhere and have no tangible security impact. You're mistaking the rhetoric he uses to sell this idiocy to the rest of the country for a good-faith argument.
  - red_admiral 2y ago
    > and have no tangible security impact I would not object to a tariff on shitty IoT devices, with the level determined by things like if the default password is "admin".
  - Yeul 2y ago
    And America can't even export any off it because Trump managed to start a trade war with the rest of the world. Apparently the US doesn't need allies anymore against China...
  - throwway120385 2y ago
    The joke is on them. We'll simply buy less stuff and make due more with what we have.
    - _bin_ 2y ago
      Yeah personally I buy very little and live pretty minimally so I'm not impacted much either way. I think most people's takes, however, are influenced by what is best for their pocketbooks short-term rather than for the nation long-term. And Trump is influenced by what's best for him short-term.
hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
This is the part that is so frustrating to me, and not just with regards to tariffs. It's that I see the extremes being so laughably bad (though not necessarily equally - I'm not "both sides"-ing this), and more ludicrously bad is that I've seen positions that don't follow these extremes as being derided now as "centrism". E.g. before the administration's attack on higher education, I do believe a lot of elite universities had completely jumped the shark with their ideological purity tests like required DEI statements. And importantly, there were thoughtful, measured criticisms of these things, e.g. https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2024/02/10/jon-haidt-goes-after-dei/ https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2024/02/10/jon-haidt-goes-aft.... But the administration attack is so ridiculously egregious and demands an even worse, government-imposed ideological alignment, that making logical arguments in this environment feels almost pointless.
- pjc50 2y ago
  > making logical arguments in this environment feels almost pointless. Unfortunately this is the culmination of social media as a controversy machine, that promotes the worst arguments. > ideological purity tests like required DEI statements Example? There's a controversy industry that cherry picks the worst examples of student-politics excess in these regards and then carefully conflates it with university policy. As well as the sad truth that as soon as you take away "DEI" requirements the segregationists come back and purge the library, delete all the black Medal of Honor recipients from the website, etc.
  - like_any_other 2y ago
    > Example? Diversity Statements Required for One-Fifth of Academic Jobs - https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/2021/11/11/study-diversity-statements-required-for-one-fifth-of-academic-jobs/ https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/2021/11/11/study-diversity-... More examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43692945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43692945
    - insane_dreamer 2y ago
      20% isn't so bad; the way it's usually portrayed in the media it sounds more like 90% of posts require such statements
jaredklewis 2y ago
But Americans were given that choice? The chips act was an industrial policy play based on the industrial policy playbook of east asian countries like South Korea and Taiwan. I'm not a fan of industrial policy or the chips act, but it seems to be just the choice you are asking for.
philistine 2y ago
The candidate who opposed Trump during the primaries would have done something very similar to what you said. But then she was born with ovaries so the Republican Party wanted nothing to do with her as the top boss.
- xienze 2y ago
  Democrat voters didn’t want anything to do with her during the 2020 primaries and didn’t turn out as much for her in 2024 as they did for Biden in 2020, so who are the real misogynists here?
  - watwut 2y ago
    Pretty clearly republicans, to be honest.
    - xienze 2y ago
      And this is why Democrats lost. Why admit and address that perhaps they ran a candidate that was deeply unpopular, even within her own party, when they could just instead blame the “misogynistic Republican” boogeyman.
      - stetrain 2y ago
        > And this is why Democrats lost. What do Democrats have to do with Republican candidates in a Republican primary?
        xienze 2y ago
        Ah my mistake, I missed that this was referencing the Republican primaries here. Forgive me, the whole "Harris wasn't elected because Americans are misogynists" trope has been repeated so often I had that burned into my brain. Addressing the primaries, no one was beating Trump, it has nothing to do with his closest but still far distant challenger being a woman.
    - 2y ago
SecretDreams 2y ago
It turns out good policy takes a long time to play out and isn't well suited for the current destabilized US political system where nothing good gets done and the rare things that do get reversed within four years.
matthewdgreen 2y ago
I find it annoying that you think the other choice was “offshoring is great.” Spending on US factory construction surged under Biden. This was largely due to stuff like the IRA and the CHIPS Act. If voters had made different choices in November 2024, in Congress as well as the Presidency, I think we could have had even more aggressive industrial policy — instead of this absolute shitshow that will permanently damage the US’s economic position. On the other hand, I am a believer in the idea that voters get the government they deserve. So maybe we deserve this.
- gosub100 2y ago
  Largely due to government welfare, business is great!
  - stetrain 2y ago
    There are carrots and sticks. The current plan seems to be to cut down giant trees at random and hope they don't fall on anything important. If they do there will need to be government welfare applied anyway to keep businesses alive just like during the previous Trump administration.
    - matthewdgreen 2y ago
      I've mostly decided to stop arguing about this stuff, since it's fairly obvious that Trump is going to ruin the economy and discredit his party for a generation.
stetrain 2y ago
> It's annoying Americans were given only two choices - offshoring is great and let's keep doing it, and, as you say, the opposite, meth-fueled let's bring back manufacturing overnight. There were a lot of slower manufacturing on-shoring incentives during the Biden administration that would have presumably continued under the Harris administration. Mainly around green energy and electric vehicle manufacturing incentives - which have successfully resulted in new auto, battery, and supply chain factories being built mostly in red states - and semiconductor manufacturing. The Biden administration also maintained and increased tariffs on specific types of products coming from China including EVs. So I don't think your categorization of the two choices Americans were given is quite accurate.
- horsawlarway 2y ago
  As someone watching EV & battery plants break ground in my state (GA), this is absolutely my take. Biden's infrastructure and funding bills were basically doing exactly this, and their foreign policy largely aligned with this goal as well. I was not a huge Biden fan early in his presidency (Breaking the rail union strike and the complete lackluster response to actually prosecuting criminality in the outgoing admin were not my desired policies - democrats are markedly too corporatist in general). But his infrastructure bills were sorely needed practical steps to doing a lot of good for a lot of folks in the US. There's a reason so many politicians then tried to take credit for them (incl Trump).
rtkwe 2y ago
We were getting the slow and steady version at least for chip manufacturing with the CHIPS Act but Trump has a major need to get credit for everything so that's being torn apart too. The US faces a much tougher hill to climb though in regards to bringing manufacturing back. China had it easy because they had most of what you could want; a huge labor force that could upskill to manufacturing (the rural poor population), cheap labor (kind of an extension to point 1 but also includes their lower COL and wage expectations over all), and low environmental barriers. To bring manufacturing back to the US is a way harder lift; we have a lot tighter labor market, if we shift a lot of people to manufacturing someone needs to take the jobs they leave. We (well I at least don't enjoy the idea of going back to when rivers caught fire on the regular) don't want to strip environmental protections back to a level to make it cheap to dispose of waste. The best targets are low labor, high price, high skill goods, like, I don't know, chip manufacturing!
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  >The US faces a much tougher hill to climb though in regards to bringing manufacturing back. I saw a headline yesterday that says there are more pets than children in Japan. How long until this is true in the US? The truth of the matter is that there is no workforce left in the United States, and will be less of one by the time manufacturing does spin up. In WWII, the Army was happy at how many of the young men there had come from farms and were familiar with using/driving heavy equipment, how many knew some welding, etc. Then after the war, that translated right back into mnufacturing there these now older men were familiar with "making things". They could do actual labor. How well will the part-time baristas and Uber Eats delivery drivers and Dollar General shelf stockers do on the assembly line? >if we shift a lot of people to manufacturing someone needs to take the jobs they leave. If we could bring back manufacturing, then we would need to restructure our society such that those jobs lesser/menial jobs could go undone (or be automated). But we can't really bring it back, and they will bring in others on any number of weird visas no one has really heard of to do the lesser/menial jobs which are the only ones left. The people who set this in motion aren't even just retired, they're already dead of old age and there's nothing anyone can do about what's coming.
  - 2y ago
aredox 2y ago
>It's annoying Americans were given only two choices - offshoring is great and let's keep doing it, and, as you say, the opposite, meth-fueled let's bring back manufacturing overnight. Excuse me, but I am old enough to remember Biden's program such as CHIPS, a slow and steady protection and promotion of home-grown industry. America had the choice. It chose wrong. Are Americans going to assume the consequences of their choices or are they going to lie to themselves they weren't given the choice? That last option would fit more with the "character" of the America nowadays, the one who voted Trump: make mistakes and blame someone else for it.
- Yeul 2y ago
  I don't think the Rust belt really gives a shit about high tech industry making chips. I have seen this in my own country when mega corps build highly automated data centres that only employ a few local cleaners and security guards.
  - aredox 2y ago
    Chip making is manufacturing and requires far more engineers, technicians and a wide network of suppliers than data centers or Amazon warehouses.
robertlagrant 2y ago
> The kind of slow and steady protection and promotion of home-grown industry that China and most of Asia so successfully used to grow their economies was completely absent as even a talking point. I think this is because China is an autocracy, so they can make long-term plans. Democracies that swing as wildly as the US currently does is no place for that, and that's not limited to the new administration.
- pphysch 2y ago
  Did America stop being a democracy under FDR? Conflating specific term limits with autocracy/democracy is a bit dramatic. There isn't anything physically stopping America from doing what China is doing. We literally did it first (in modernity)! Albeit for too short a time before the robber barons and foreign interests retook control.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    I think what I wrote here covers what you're saying: > Democracies that swing as wildly as the US currently does It's not "robber barons" etc. It's just two very different worldviews existing in one place that cause big swings in policy when the other one is elected.
    - pphysch 2y ago
      I'm not talking about Red vs. Blue. US national policy doesn't actually swing that much when Red switches to Blue and so on. Yes, Trump abandoned this or that agreement, but Biden generally didn't reverse. I believe Lee Kuan Yew said "In China, you can't change the government but you can change the policy. In America you can change the government but you can't change the policy", referring to the postwar neoliberal / Deng era.
jayd16 2y ago
Was it absent? The "Green New Deal" was hitting on some of that. You can't beat "<Some other country> is going to pay for it" and "Coal jobs are going to come back", especially when there's no accountability or fact checking.
recoup-papyrus 2y ago
[dead]

zasz 2y ago

That IS what Biden was trying to do though with the CHIPS Incentive Act. He was trying to onshore production of semiconductors in a partnership with TSMC. Didn't do him any favors, and Harris lost the state of Arizona anyway. Americans had the choice between a party that was serious about trying to onshore some manufacturing and a party that wasn't, and it made the wrong choice because vibes, basically.

like_any_other 2y ago
> because vibes, basically This may be more accurate than you realize. Both Democrat and old Republican party rhetoric and policies were pro-globalization/offshoring, with the occasional exception such as CHIPS (and corn subsidies). It's not surprising nobody believed they were changing direction, if for every "we're bringing semiconductors back", they heard ten "your car is German your phone is Chinese your tacos are Mexican, how dare you interfere with glorious Free Trade!"
- jghn 2y ago
  Also one can't ignore that the GOP managed to remarked the CHIPS act as a key source of inflation, which they also managed to pin on "Bidenomics". Which was another source of "vibes, basically"
  - kelipso 2y ago
    Weren't we hearing for years about how it went to waste because Intel did stock buybacks or whatever using the CHIPS money. Now we are supposed to believe it's critical?
    - rsfern 2y ago
      CHIPS incentive funding is way bigger than just Intel, so it’s a bit disingenuous to write off the whole program just because of one (or even several) high profile bad actor. We should have a nuanced discussion and fix the shortcomings of our programs, but at least assess things in a balanced way. If you check the transcript of the confirmation hearing for the current Commerce secretary, practically every Senator brags about their state’s CHIPS funded R&D hub. Lots of growth in small and medium businesses there. And CHIPS incentive funding played a huge role in bringing the new TSMC fab in Arizona https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/jobs/2024/04/09/12-things-to-know-about-expanding-tsmc-phoenix-arizona-microchip-semiconductor-plant/73236438007/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/jobs/2024/04/...
      - imchillyb 2y ago
        R&D is a cost center that can no longer be written off of a company’s taxes. I don’t believe that cost centers are a good example of returning manufacturing onshore. Or an example of a state using federal funding well. Cost centers are not a good investment for federal funding, without a clear path to paying back our taxed dollars.
        like_any_other 2y ago
        > R&D is a cost center that can no longer be written off of a company’s taxes. Can you elaborate on this? It was my understanding a company only pays taxes on profit. So isn't the revenue that goes into R&D effectively taxed at 0%, since at that point it's not yet profit? I.e. only dividend payouts get taxed.
        2y ago

FirmwareBurner 2y ago

> The kind of slow and steady protection and promotion of home-grown industry that China and most of Asia so successfully used to grow their economies was completely absent as even a talking point The slow and steady way that post-WW2 Korea and Japan did needs a unanimously agreed 10-20 year long game plan between industry and government, which is incompatible with democracies who change colors and strategies every 4 years where the new administration begins to tear down everything the previous administration did because they serve different voter bases and corporate lobby groups. It is also incompatible with the US since a lot of corporations made bank due to offshoring and will fight it every way they can since they don't want to deal with costly US labor who can unionize or sue you for millions if they break a finger at work. Even TSMC Arizona had to bring half the workers from Taiwan, and it's not like they're making tchotchkes.

freeone3000 2y ago
They were brought from Taiwan due to their expertise and familiarity with TSMC processes. America doesn’t have a glut of people with EUV fab experience — they all already work for Intel.
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  Sure, but it's not like they're paying them super competitive wages. Some people on HN said the Taiwanese TSMC Arizona workers already started applying at Intel. If you want to kick-start manufacturing, you're gonna have to attract people somehow initially, either through more money, or free education/training, etc
ZeroGravitas 2y ago
There's various forms of democracy and many are not as chaotic as the US kind in regards to long term plans. A good example is the general global approach to Net Zero. It's slow, methodical, science based, negotiated. But if anyone brings up planning for 2050 it's usually in the context of "It's all bullshit, politicians are crap, they're just lying to you and kicking the can down the road till they retire" (and if you scratch the surface you'll have even chance that the person saying that has been radicalised into not even believing there's a problem to be solved). But only the US is in and out of the Paris agreement etc.

fendy3002 2y ago

Well, money talks and it's hard to choose the other option. On one hand bring manufacturing back to US and pay them higher, because otherwise the pay in McDonald's is better with a less demanding physical (cmiiw, don't live in US). On the other hand, keep manufacturing outside of US for cheaper labor to keep price low and having bigger margin. It's an easy choice to make. And again this is not a US specific problem, it's almost all of countries nowadays have a massive wealth gap that makes people racing to the bottom of living / working standard.

myrmidon 2y ago
The thing is also that absolutely nothing about the overall situation changed meaningfully over the last 50 years or so. People had the exact same concerns and fears when electronics manufacturing started shifting to Japan like 50 years ago-- they went in the same way up the value chain that China did, and they started losing a lot of the industry with rising wages, too, exactly like what we see with China => Vietnam/Indonesia/... nowadays. I think 90% of the whole political debate about the economy is misplaced nostalgia combined with problematic local wealth inequality-- poor countries lifting themselves up by manufacturing stuff for low wages is how the whole system is actually supposed to work from my perspective; describing that as "ripping off the American people" is completely unhinged, misinformed self-delusion to me.
- like_any_other 2y ago
  Seeing it as a "rip off" is indeed delusion, but turning a blind eye to the dangers of becoming (ever more) dependent on a foreign country is an even worse folly.
  - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
    If the dependencies go both ways, it's probably a good thing.
- 9rx 2y ago
  > I think 90% of the whole political debate about the economy is misplaced nostalgia combined with problematic local wealth inequality When Trump said that new manufacturing facilities would be fast-tracked to being able to build their own on-site power plants because the grid is "at risk of bombing", I've come to think that the whole political debate is really about: What the hell are we going to do if WWIII happens? Manufacturing capability and capacity is an incredibly precious resource if you find yourself in a large scale war, and there is growing concern (realistic or not) that America has given it away/lost it. It makes no difference in peaceful times, but there is growing belief that the era of peace is coming to an end. In fact, if you take a higher level view of what is going on, like the wanting to annex Canada and Greenland, it seems the entire motivation for it all is preparing for the possibility of war with Russia (and China).

rickdeckard 2y ago

The weird part for me is this: While the economy was evolving, Production was offshored from US for cost-reasons, but also in part to focus on higher-skill labor in US, delegating the low-skill mass-production to China. Over time, China also developed mid/high level skills, complemented their low-skill production offering with it and now competes in new industries, new tech, etc. So...to compete with China, the country with 4x the US-population, the solution is that low-skill labor needs to return to US....? Shouldn't instead the focus be to again foster mid/high-skill labor, moving the part that is offshored again towards low-skill labor...?

like_any_other 2y ago
The problem is ecosystem effects. High-tech industries evolve from and depend on low-tech ones. There is a limit to how much they can be separated.
digikata 2y ago
I think the mistake here is the model of low-skill/high-skill labor is not a useful distinction. Manufacturing is high skill period, however there are low-infrastructure and high-infrastructure products and factories. The labor wages themselves are a factor, but an increasingly minor factor in product costs. By bypassing investment in US manufacturing skills and infra, the US sat itself on the sidelines for the ability to build, staff, and supply modern low, medium and high infrastructure factories. It's not impossible to build back, but it would require long term stable policies to favor it at more levels than just tariffs.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  The solution is to pay everyone a living wage, regardless of job, and disconnect healthcare from employment. Lots of inertia against those ideas though. So, instead, "good manufacturing jobs" is the parroted point. Any job is a good job if you can live off of it. (tariffs do nothing to address labor shortages in healthcare, teaching, and other domestic service based sectors, for example)
  - 2y ago

taylodl 2y ago

Thing is, manufacturing in America is up. The 2008 crises dealt a blow, but manufacturing has been building-back. I don't think people realize how many high-value items are made in the United States. Let the East Asians make our mass-consumer junk while we focus on the high-value stuff. Just goes to show the administration isn't working with facts and doing the hard-nosed analysis required to drive effective policy. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/tags/series?t=manufacturing%3Boutput%3Busa https://fred.stlouisfed.org/tags/series?t=manufacturing%3Bou...

_bin_ 2y ago
The administration is probably aware of this and doesn't care. A huge portion of his base were rust belt voters who want what are essentially handouts, which trump intends to achieve by forcing the American consumer to pay $30/hour for el cheapo goods that could be made elsewhere and have no tangible security impact. You're mistaking the rhetoric he uses to sell this idiocy to the rest of the country for a good-faith argument.
- red_admiral 2y ago
  > and have no tangible security impact I would not object to a tariff on shitty IoT devices, with the level determined by things like if the default password is "admin".
- Yeul 2y ago
  And America can't even export any off it because Trump managed to start a trade war with the rest of the world. Apparently the US doesn't need allies anymore against China...
- throwway120385 2y ago
  The joke is on them. We'll simply buy less stuff and make due more with what we have.
  - _bin_ 2y ago
    Yeah personally I buy very little and live pretty minimally so I'm not impacted much either way. I think most people's takes, however, are influenced by what is best for their pocketbooks short-term rather than for the nation long-term. And Trump is influenced by what's best for him short-term.

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago

This is the part that is so frustrating to me, and not just with regards to tariffs. It's that I see the extremes being so laughably bad (though not necessarily equally - I'm not "both sides"-ing this), and more ludicrously bad is that I've seen positions that don't follow these extremes as being derided now as "centrism". E.g. before the administration's attack on higher education, I do believe a lot of elite universities had completely jumped the shark with their ideological purity tests like required DEI statements. And importantly, there were thoughtful, measured criticisms of these things, e.g. https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2024/02/10/jon-haidt-goes-after-dei/ https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2024/02/10/jon-haidt-goes-aft.... But the administration attack is so ridiculously egregious and demands an even worse, government-imposed ideological alignment, that making logical arguments in this environment feels almost pointless.

pjc50 2y ago
> making logical arguments in this environment feels almost pointless. Unfortunately this is the culmination of social media as a controversy machine, that promotes the worst arguments. > ideological purity tests like required DEI statements Example? There's a controversy industry that cherry picks the worst examples of student-politics excess in these regards and then carefully conflates it with university policy. As well as the sad truth that as soon as you take away "DEI" requirements the segregationists come back and purge the library, delete all the black Medal of Honor recipients from the website, etc.
- like_any_other 2y ago
  > Example? Diversity Statements Required for One-Fifth of Academic Jobs - https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/2021/11/11/study-diversity-statements-required-for-one-fifth-of-academic-jobs/ https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/2021/11/11/study-diversity-... More examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43692945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43692945
  - insane_dreamer 2y ago
    20% isn't so bad; the way it's usually portrayed in the media it sounds more like 90% of posts require such statements

jaredklewis 2y ago

But Americans were given that choice? The chips act was an industrial policy play based on the industrial policy playbook of east asian countries like South Korea and Taiwan. I'm not a fan of industrial policy or the chips act, but it seems to be just the choice you are asking for.

philistine 2y ago

The candidate who opposed Trump during the primaries would have done something very similar to what you said. But then she was born with ovaries so the Republican Party wanted nothing to do with her as the top boss.

xienze 2y ago
Democrat voters didn’t want anything to do with her during the 2020 primaries and didn’t turn out as much for her in 2024 as they did for Biden in 2020, so who are the real misogynists here?
- watwut 2y ago
  Pretty clearly republicans, to be honest.
  - xienze 2y ago
    And this is why Democrats lost. Why admit and address that perhaps they ran a candidate that was deeply unpopular, even within her own party, when they could just instead blame the “misogynistic Republican” boogeyman.
    - stetrain 2y ago
      > And this is why Democrats lost. What do Democrats have to do with Republican candidates in a Republican primary?
      - xienze 2y ago
        Ah my mistake, I missed that this was referencing the Republican primaries here. Forgive me, the whole "Harris wasn't elected because Americans are misogynists" trope has been repeated so often I had that burned into my brain. Addressing the primaries, no one was beating Trump, it has nothing to do with his closest but still far distant challenger being a woman.
  - 2y ago

SecretDreams 2y ago

It turns out good policy takes a long time to play out and isn't well suited for the current destabilized US political system where nothing good gets done and the rare things that do get reversed within four years.

matthewdgreen 2y ago

I find it annoying that you think the other choice was “offshoring is great.” Spending on US factory construction surged under Biden. This was largely due to stuff like the IRA and the CHIPS Act. If voters had made different choices in November 2024, in Congress as well as the Presidency, I think we could have had even more aggressive industrial policy — instead of this absolute shitshow that will permanently damage the US’s economic position. On the other hand, I am a believer in the idea that voters get the government they deserve. So maybe we deserve this.

gosub100 2y ago
Largely due to government welfare, business is great!
- stetrain 2y ago
  There are carrots and sticks. The current plan seems to be to cut down giant trees at random and hope they don't fall on anything important. If they do there will need to be government welfare applied anyway to keep businesses alive just like during the previous Trump administration.
  - matthewdgreen 2y ago
    I've mostly decided to stop arguing about this stuff, since it's fairly obvious that Trump is going to ruin the economy and discredit his party for a generation.

stetrain 2y ago

> It's annoying Americans were given only two choices - offshoring is great and let's keep doing it, and, as you say, the opposite, meth-fueled let's bring back manufacturing overnight. There were a lot of slower manufacturing on-shoring incentives during the Biden administration that would have presumably continued under the Harris administration. Mainly around green energy and electric vehicle manufacturing incentives - which have successfully resulted in new auto, battery, and supply chain factories being built mostly in red states - and semiconductor manufacturing. The Biden administration also maintained and increased tariffs on specific types of products coming from China including EVs. So I don't think your categorization of the two choices Americans were given is quite accurate.

horsawlarway 2y ago
As someone watching EV & battery plants break ground in my state (GA), this is absolutely my take. Biden's infrastructure and funding bills were basically doing exactly this, and their foreign policy largely aligned with this goal as well. I was not a huge Biden fan early in his presidency (Breaking the rail union strike and the complete lackluster response to actually prosecuting criminality in the outgoing admin were not my desired policies - democrats are markedly too corporatist in general). But his infrastructure bills were sorely needed practical steps to doing a lot of good for a lot of folks in the US. There's a reason so many politicians then tried to take credit for them (incl Trump).

rtkwe 2y ago

We were getting the slow and steady version at least for chip manufacturing with the CHIPS Act but Trump has a major need to get credit for everything so that's being torn apart too. The US faces a much tougher hill to climb though in regards to bringing manufacturing back. China had it easy because they had most of what you could want; a huge labor force that could upskill to manufacturing (the rural poor population), cheap labor (kind of an extension to point 1 but also includes their lower COL and wage expectations over all), and low environmental barriers. To bring manufacturing back to the US is a way harder lift; we have a lot tighter labor market, if we shift a lot of people to manufacturing someone needs to take the jobs they leave. We (well I at least don't enjoy the idea of going back to when rivers caught fire on the regular) don't want to strip environmental protections back to a level to make it cheap to dispose of waste. The best targets are low labor, high price, high skill goods, like, I don't know, chip manufacturing!

NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
>The US faces a much tougher hill to climb though in regards to bringing manufacturing back. I saw a headline yesterday that says there are more pets than children in Japan. How long until this is true in the US? The truth of the matter is that there is no workforce left in the United States, and will be less of one by the time manufacturing does spin up. In WWII, the Army was happy at how many of the young men there had come from farms and were familiar with using/driving heavy equipment, how many knew some welding, etc. Then after the war, that translated right back into mnufacturing there these now older men were familiar with "making things". They could do actual labor. How well will the part-time baristas and Uber Eats delivery drivers and Dollar General shelf stockers do on the assembly line? >if we shift a lot of people to manufacturing someone needs to take the jobs they leave. If we could bring back manufacturing, then we would need to restructure our society such that those jobs lesser/menial jobs could go undone (or be automated). But we can't really bring it back, and they will bring in others on any number of weird visas no one has really heard of to do the lesser/menial jobs which are the only ones left. The people who set this in motion aren't even just retired, they're already dead of old age and there's nothing anyone can do about what's coming.
- 2y ago

aredox 2y ago

>It's annoying Americans were given only two choices - offshoring is great and let's keep doing it, and, as you say, the opposite, meth-fueled let's bring back manufacturing overnight. Excuse me, but I am old enough to remember Biden's program such as CHIPS, a slow and steady protection and promotion of home-grown industry. America had the choice. It chose wrong. Are Americans going to assume the consequences of their choices or are they going to lie to themselves they weren't given the choice? That last option would fit more with the "character" of the America nowadays, the one who voted Trump: make mistakes and blame someone else for it.

Yeul 2y ago
I don't think the Rust belt really gives a shit about high tech industry making chips. I have seen this in my own country when mega corps build highly automated data centres that only employ a few local cleaners and security guards.
- aredox 2y ago
  Chip making is manufacturing and requires far more engineers, technicians and a wide network of suppliers than data centers or Amazon warehouses.

robertlagrant 2y ago

> The kind of slow and steady protection and promotion of home-grown industry that China and most of Asia so successfully used to grow their economies was completely absent as even a talking point. I think this is because China is an autocracy, so they can make long-term plans. Democracies that swing as wildly as the US currently does is no place for that, and that's not limited to the new administration.

pphysch 2y ago
Did America stop being a democracy under FDR? Conflating specific term limits with autocracy/democracy is a bit dramatic. There isn't anything physically stopping America from doing what China is doing. We literally did it first (in modernity)! Albeit for too short a time before the robber barons and foreign interests retook control.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  I think what I wrote here covers what you're saying: > Democracies that swing as wildly as the US currently does It's not "robber barons" etc. It's just two very different worldviews existing in one place that cause big swings in policy when the other one is elected.
  - pphysch 2y ago
    I'm not talking about Red vs. Blue. US national policy doesn't actually swing that much when Red switches to Blue and so on. Yes, Trump abandoned this or that agreement, but Biden generally didn't reverse. I believe Lee Kuan Yew said "In China, you can't change the government but you can change the policy. In America you can change the government but you can't change the policy", referring to the postwar neoliberal / Deng era.

jayd16 2y ago

Was it absent? The "Green New Deal" was hitting on some of that. You can't beat "<Some other country> is going to pay for it" and "Coal jobs are going to come back", especially when there's no accountability or fact checking.

recoup-papyrus 2y ago

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