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I am very much on the fence on this one. I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, based on having been in manufacturing across various industries for over

I am very much on the fence on this one. I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, based on having been in manufacturing across various industries for over thirty years, that the US and Europe have been on a path to loose nearly all manufacturing capacity within ten years, maybe twenty at best. How do we compare the pain (and yes, some destruction) that we have to endure today against the devastation that is clearly in the horizon for both regions within a decade or two? To be sure, what's going on today should have been done twenty to thirty years ago. Doing this today is far more difficult and painful. I think Kevin O'Leary put it best: What we want a reasonably free markets. It isn't just about tariffs. It's about regulatory lockout, intellectual property and more. For example, India imposes as much as a 110% tariff on US cars and trucks. The list of such actions --which also included non-tariff rules-based restrictions-- is long. From China imposing up to 25% on our cars, autos, chemicals and food to the EU, Canada, Mexico and others following suit. Brazil collected over $800 million in retaliatory tariffs blocking US pharmaceuticals, autos and textiles. In other words, the relationship with hundreds of countries has been very one-sided for a long time. US industry needs to export to thrive, but if countries like Turkey impose 140% tariffs on our autos and trucks, markets are de-facto shut down. How long can any country survive this kind of inequity? So, yeah, this is a rough moment. I hope it is for the best. Everyone benefits from a more open and balanced market. And then, of course, there's one of the elephants in the room: Intellectual property theft. Going back to Kevin O'Learly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKkdor6_rw4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKkdor6_rw4 https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=567065763062114 https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=567065763062114 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGFWWqbDwuw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGFWWqbDwuw https://www.tmz.com/watch/kevin-o-leary-china-tariffs-04-09-2025/ https://www.tmz.com/watch/kevin-o-leary-china-tariffs-04-09-...

HFguy 1y ago
I think you do a good job of high-lighting the underlying problem. Which is not being discussed enough. And that the current situation can go on a long time but not forever.
pbronez 1y ago
> the elephants in the room: Intellectual property theft. Yup. China has been systematically stealing the IP of anything made in their country since forever. Companies kept falling for it because the potential market looked so big. Now BYD makes cars as good as Tesla and it's all #ShockedPikachuFace
- dmarlow 1y ago
  Doesn't Tesla have an open patent philosophy? I've heard Musk say that if someone builds a better electric car and it causes the end of Tesla, he's fine with that.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    He has said that, but I haven't seen any legal paperwork to back it up. Not that is matters. Cars, including electric cars have been around for 100 years. There are very little important patents he could have. Sure there is a lot you can patent, but the vast majority is details that are trivial for any competent engineer to work around just using known prior art. The important patents are likely in batteries which Tesla doesn't develop. Or chargers, but again the important details come with the battery. TESLA might have some patents on the NACS connector and similar things. Those are easy to work around, but you wouldn't want to.
  - achandlerwhite 1y ago
    Are their shareholders fine with that?
projectazorian 1y ago
> I am very much on the fence on this one. I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, based on having been in manufacturing across various industries for over thirty years, that the US and Europe have been on a path to loose nearly all manufacturing capacity within ten years, maybe twenty at best. I've now been around long enough to remember people saying this 10-20 years ago. Seems to be plenty of manufacturing still happening.
- xienze 1y ago
  > I've now been around long enough to remember people saying this 10-20 years ago. Seems to be plenty of manufacturing still happening. “Plenty” but still less overall than 10-20 years ago, 30, 40, 50 years ago. There’s a quite clear trend to zero here.
  - quickthrowman 1y ago
    This graph of US manufacturing output in gross dollars suggests otherwise: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/manufacturing-output#:~:text=U.S.%20manufacturing%20output%20for%202021,a%2011.55%25%20increase%20from%202020. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/uni... If you could explain why it’s trending to zero when the dollar value of American manufacturing outputs keeps rising, I’d appreciate it. There are plenty of other charts that contradict you on the St Louis Fed FRED website.
    - xienze 1y ago
      > gross dollars So, not inflation adjusted. Also doesn't capture the mix of what's being produced, i.e., a shift towards only manufacturing high value items versus being more broadly diversified and manufacturing things along a range of price points. In other words, a complete hollowing out of our manufacturing base. Your same link shows $1.38T in 1997. Which is $2.77T today. In other words, DOWN in inflation adjusted terms from nearly 30 years ago.
      - ianburrell 1y ago
dehrmann 1y ago
Why would the US and EU losing manufacturing be bad? > How long can any country survive this kind of inequity? What worries me more is that the US has been funding global military security through deficit spending funded by foreign investors (who got their dollars from US trade). We're cutting legs off that stool, so we might see more wars and a declining dollar, never mind fewer cheap imports.
- bluGill 1y ago
  > Why would the US and EU losing manufacturing be bad? Because if they can't make thing you can win a war - just stop all their trade and then invade. When they are limited to stick and stone while you have guns war is easy to win. Of course in reality the US and EU are not in danger of losing all manufacturing, and their military leaders are will aware of this and so put extra effort into keeping some important manufacturing in the country. Politicians are generally (but not always!) aware of this and try to be friends with others who can make things you don't make locally.
hnaccount141 1y ago
> In other words, the relationship with hundreds of countries has been very one-sided for a long time. US industry needs to export to thrive, but if countries like Turkey impose 140% tariffs on our autos and trucks, markets are de-facto shut down. These comparisons (and conclusions of one-sidedness) always leave the greatest benefit the US has enjoyed: access to a massive labor force willing to do work most Americans aren't[1] at wages lower than are Legal in the US. [1] https://www.cato.org/blog/americans-think-manufacturing-employment-greatfor-other-people https://www.cato.org/blog/americans-think-manufacturing-empl...
cduzz 1y ago
Whatever your hopes and dreams around domestic manufacturing, blanket tariffs capriciously imposed at random are unlikely to get any dream closer to reality, except perhaps the dream of total devastation of all manufacturing. Let's look at what an actual domestic manufacturer has to say about tariffs[1]? Oh, looks bad! Turns out, manufacturers import stuff, add value to it, and sell it for more money! Hopefully we'll get more cast iron plants in Cape Cod. I'm off to the mill! [1]https://www.vcstar.com/story/news/local/2025/04/09/trump-tariffs-haas-automation-oxnard-california/82983555007/ https://www.vcstar.com/story/news/local/2025/04/09/trump-tar...
- corimaith 1y ago
  While there are more peaceful ways of rebalancing trade, unilateral tariffs would be able to rebalance things on the long term. The problem is that alot of people in HN think in terms in export-driven economy, when in reality the majority of USA's economy is consumption, it's the largest consumer in the world. Loosing access to foreign markets dosen't mean as much to USA as it does to the rest of the world loosing access to USA. Long term, manufacturers will come back or be created to grab all those customers. But for the rest of the world, it's much harder for suppliers who lost a massive chunk of their customers to suddenly find new customers beyond what's already existing. Creating demand is notoriously harder than increasing supply. And it dosen't help that the majority of other major economies are also export-based, so unless if some are willing to run deficits (and they won't), there's literally nowhere else to go other than a global recession. Developing countries are far too poor and would essentially be turned into captive markets bereft of industrialization. I don't agree with the implementation of Trump's policies, but this is going right back to Keynes' concerns about limitations of global trade balancing, it's a long time coming, and much of the blame does come back to the surplus economies that doubled down on manufacturing rather than transitioning to consumer based economies.
  - cduzz 1y ago
    Balance trade? Trade isn't a single ledger that needs to be in balance. If you read that article about Haas automation, they say that they import cast iron and PCBs, presumably they import some chips and use some domestic chips, they put these all together and sell machine tools (big machines used to make machines, the exact sort of thing that trump et all are banging on about needing to be made in the usa, which last I checked, Oxnard california counts as "USA"). Nobody in the USA makes cast iron in the volume needed by haas; nobody in the USA makes PCBs at the price point needed by haas. Nobody's going to be able to start domestic production of either now, because they'd need to import all the materials from elsewhere to make the cast iron foundry, and nobody's going to take the chance that their multi million dollar investment isn't going to be ruined by trump changing his mind in a month. So whatever you think you're arguing for, the world's way more complex than you think it is. And this execution of whatever the plans are, has been so far beyond inept as to land in a different scale altogether.
apercu 1y ago
You lost me at Kevin O’Leary. He’s historically been a dishonest and unethical snake oil salesman and I doubt he’s changed. One of my career highlights was having him explain how much it will do for my career to do his project at a discount (I was helping a friend as a favor) and I told Kevin that it was just as likely to have the opposite effect.
- robomartin 1y ago
  > You lost me at Kevin O’Leary. That's an unreasonable position to take. What matters isn't who says something at all. It's if what the person says is true. And, in Kevin's case, what he is saying is 100% on point and correct. Aside from personal experience, I have met many entrepreneurs who got shafted by China's approach to business and intellectual property. One of them had to shutter his company barely six months after introducing their first product. The product was successful enough that it got cloned very quickly. They introduced a cloned product at half his price. Orders evaporated. He had to let go of his employees and close the business. Whether you like it or not, what O'Leary says in his videos is 100% accurate and true. Your experience with him is absolutely irrelevant and not worth discussing.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
formerly_proven 1y ago
Manufacturing investment in the US hit all time highs during Biden, by far.
Zamaamiro 1y ago
Kevin O'Leary is not a credentialed economist.
- robomartin 1y ago
  Thankfully one does not have to be a credentialed anything to be right. All you need is to present evidence for anyone to reproduce your claim. A ten year old kid not even out of elementary school could be absolutely correct if the evidence supports what is being claimed.
kmeisthax 1y ago
My only complaint with China's intellectual property theft is that they don't share. It's my genuine belief that the vast majority of intellectual property ownership is purely to draw a moat around a country's oligarchs. Copyright does not protect creators and patents do not protect inventors[0]. Trump's thinking is: - America used to have lots of tariffs in the 70s, and lots of jobs in the 70s, - But we got rid of the tariffs and the jobs moved, - So if I put the tariffs back the jobs will come back! Problem is, we're not in the same market we were in the 70s, and all those tariffs risk turning us into Brazil. More specifically the reason why the intellectual property system we have is fucked is because it's designed to let corporations move jobs to foreign countries while still maintaining maximum control over the end result. It's designed to facilitate neocolonialism. The "open and balanced" global market you're decrying was, until recently, heavily tilted to favor American ownership over everything. China and Mexico are there to castrate the unions: if you don't work for peanuts, we move the work to another country that will, and we don't worry about any of the business risk that entails because WIPO and Berne ensure none of the goods the other country makes get to compete with us unless we put our stamp on it. You know what would really break this system? If China, Canada, or some other country were to junk WIPO and DMCA 1201 and start up a national lab to develop and distribute jailbreaks for shitty disposable American tech. Practically speaking, America can't stop knowledge from entering the country, and it would spur a huge explosion of new American businesses to fix the shit our own oligarchs broke. In a world where you can't rely on intellectual property bullshit, outsourcing becomes a crapshoot, and it makes a lot more sense to pay workers what they're worth and focus on automation instead. [0] Yes, they can and have been used by creators in the past, but that's not what the system does today.
- D-Coder 1y ago
  > Trump's thinking is: Objection, your Honor! Assuming facts not in evidence!

HFguy 1y ago

I think you do a good job of high-lighting the underlying problem. Which is not being discussed enough. And that the current situation can go on a long time but not forever.

pbronez 1y ago

> the elephants in the room: Intellectual property theft. Yup. China has been systematically stealing the IP of anything made in their country since forever. Companies kept falling for it because the potential market looked so big. Now BYD makes cars as good as Tesla and it's all #ShockedPikachuFace

dmarlow 1y ago
Doesn't Tesla have an open patent philosophy? I've heard Musk say that if someone builds a better electric car and it causes the end of Tesla, he's fine with that.
- bluGill 1y ago
  He has said that, but I haven't seen any legal paperwork to back it up. Not that is matters. Cars, including electric cars have been around for 100 years. There are very little important patents he could have. Sure there is a lot you can patent, but the vast majority is details that are trivial for any competent engineer to work around just using known prior art. The important patents are likely in batteries which Tesla doesn't develop. Or chargers, but again the important details come with the battery. TESLA might have some patents on the NACS connector and similar things. Those are easy to work around, but you wouldn't want to.
- achandlerwhite 1y ago
  Are their shareholders fine with that?

projectazorian 1y ago

> I am very much on the fence on this one. I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, based on having been in manufacturing across various industries for over thirty years, that the US and Europe have been on a path to loose nearly all manufacturing capacity within ten years, maybe twenty at best. I've now been around long enough to remember people saying this 10-20 years ago. Seems to be plenty of manufacturing still happening.

xienze 1y ago
> I've now been around long enough to remember people saying this 10-20 years ago. Seems to be plenty of manufacturing still happening. “Plenty” but still less overall than 10-20 years ago, 30, 40, 50 years ago. There’s a quite clear trend to zero here.
- quickthrowman 1y ago
  This graph of US manufacturing output in gross dollars suggests otherwise: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/manufacturing-output#:~:text=U.S.%20manufacturing%20output%20for%202021,a%2011.55%25%20increase%20from%202020. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/uni... If you could explain why it’s trending to zero when the dollar value of American manufacturing outputs keeps rising, I’d appreciate it. There are plenty of other charts that contradict you on the St Louis Fed FRED website.
  - xienze 1y ago
    > gross dollars So, not inflation adjusted. Also doesn't capture the mix of what's being produced, i.e., a shift towards only manufacturing high value items versus being more broadly diversified and manufacturing things along a range of price points. In other words, a complete hollowing out of our manufacturing base. Your same link shows $1.38T in 1997. Which is $2.77T today. In other words, DOWN in inflation adjusted terms from nearly 30 years ago.
    - ianburrell 1y ago

dehrmann 1y ago

Why would the US and EU losing manufacturing be bad? > How long can any country survive this kind of inequity? What worries me more is that the US has been funding global military security through deficit spending funded by foreign investors (who got their dollars from US trade). We're cutting legs off that stool, so we might see more wars and a declining dollar, never mind fewer cheap imports.

bluGill 1y ago
> Why would the US and EU losing manufacturing be bad? Because if they can't make thing you can win a war - just stop all their trade and then invade. When they are limited to stick and stone while you have guns war is easy to win. Of course in reality the US and EU are not in danger of losing all manufacturing, and their military leaders are will aware of this and so put extra effort into keeping some important manufacturing in the country. Politicians are generally (but not always!) aware of this and try to be friends with others who can make things you don't make locally.

hnaccount141 1y ago

> In other words, the relationship with hundreds of countries has been very one-sided for a long time. US industry needs to export to thrive, but if countries like Turkey impose 140% tariffs on our autos and trucks, markets are de-facto shut down. These comparisons (and conclusions of one-sidedness) always leave the greatest benefit the US has enjoyed: access to a massive labor force willing to do work most Americans aren't[1] at wages lower than are Legal in the US. [1] https://www.cato.org/blog/americans-think-manufacturing-employment-greatfor-other-people https://www.cato.org/blog/americans-think-manufacturing-empl...

cduzz 1y ago

Whatever your hopes and dreams around domestic manufacturing, blanket tariffs capriciously imposed at random are unlikely to get any dream closer to reality, except perhaps the dream of total devastation of all manufacturing. Let's look at what an actual domestic manufacturer has to say about tariffs[1]? Oh, looks bad! Turns out, manufacturers import stuff, add value to it, and sell it for more money! Hopefully we'll get more cast iron plants in Cape Cod. I'm off to the mill! [1]https://www.vcstar.com/story/news/local/2025/04/09/trump-tariffs-haas-automation-oxnard-california/82983555007/ https://www.vcstar.com/story/news/local/2025/04/09/trump-tar...

corimaith 1y ago
While there are more peaceful ways of rebalancing trade, unilateral tariffs would be able to rebalance things on the long term. The problem is that alot of people in HN think in terms in export-driven economy, when in reality the majority of USA's economy is consumption, it's the largest consumer in the world. Loosing access to foreign markets dosen't mean as much to USA as it does to the rest of the world loosing access to USA. Long term, manufacturers will come back or be created to grab all those customers. But for the rest of the world, it's much harder for suppliers who lost a massive chunk of their customers to suddenly find new customers beyond what's already existing. Creating demand is notoriously harder than increasing supply. And it dosen't help that the majority of other major economies are also export-based, so unless if some are willing to run deficits (and they won't), there's literally nowhere else to go other than a global recession. Developing countries are far too poor and would essentially be turned into captive markets bereft of industrialization. I don't agree with the implementation of Trump's policies, but this is going right back to Keynes' concerns about limitations of global trade balancing, it's a long time coming, and much of the blame does come back to the surplus economies that doubled down on manufacturing rather than transitioning to consumer based economies.
- cduzz 1y ago
  Balance trade? Trade isn't a single ledger that needs to be in balance. If you read that article about Haas automation, they say that they import cast iron and PCBs, presumably they import some chips and use some domestic chips, they put these all together and sell machine tools (big machines used to make machines, the exact sort of thing that trump et all are banging on about needing to be made in the usa, which last I checked, Oxnard california counts as "USA"). Nobody in the USA makes cast iron in the volume needed by haas; nobody in the USA makes PCBs at the price point needed by haas. Nobody's going to be able to start domestic production of either now, because they'd need to import all the materials from elsewhere to make the cast iron foundry, and nobody's going to take the chance that their multi million dollar investment isn't going to be ruined by trump changing his mind in a month. So whatever you think you're arguing for, the world's way more complex than you think it is. And this execution of whatever the plans are, has been so far beyond inept as to land in a different scale altogether.

apercu 1y ago

You lost me at Kevin O’Leary. He’s historically been a dishonest and unethical snake oil salesman and I doubt he’s changed. One of my career highlights was having him explain how much it will do for my career to do his project at a discount (I was helping a friend as a favor) and I told Kevin that it was just as likely to have the opposite effect.

robomartin 1y ago
> You lost me at Kevin O’Leary. That's an unreasonable position to take. What matters isn't who says something at all. It's if what the person says is true. And, in Kevin's case, what he is saying is 100% on point and correct. Aside from personal experience, I have met many entrepreneurs who got shafted by China's approach to business and intellectual property. One of them had to shutter his company barely six months after introducing their first product. The product was successful enough that it got cloned very quickly. They introduced a cloned product at half his price. Orders evaporated. He had to let go of his employees and close the business. Whether you like it or not, what O'Leary says in his videos is 100% accurate and true. Your experience with him is absolutely irrelevant and not worth discussing.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

formerly_proven 1y ago

Manufacturing investment in the US hit all time highs during Biden, by far.

Zamaamiro 1y ago

Kevin O'Leary is not a credentialed economist.

robomartin 1y ago
Thankfully one does not have to be a credentialed anything to be right. All you need is to present evidence for anyone to reproduce your claim. A ten year old kid not even out of elementary school could be absolutely correct if the evidence supports what is being claimed.

kmeisthax 1y ago

My only complaint with China's intellectual property theft is that they don't share. It's my genuine belief that the vast majority of intellectual property ownership is purely to draw a moat around a country's oligarchs. Copyright does not protect creators and patents do not protect inventors[0]. Trump's thinking is: - America used to have lots of tariffs in the 70s, and lots of jobs in the 70s, - But we got rid of the tariffs and the jobs moved, - So if I put the tariffs back the jobs will come back! Problem is, we're not in the same market we were in the 70s, and all those tariffs risk turning us into Brazil. More specifically the reason why the intellectual property system we have is fucked is because it's designed to let corporations move jobs to foreign countries while still maintaining maximum control over the end result. It's designed to facilitate neocolonialism. The "open and balanced" global market you're decrying was, until recently, heavily tilted to favor American ownership over everything. China and Mexico are there to castrate the unions: if you don't work for peanuts, we move the work to another country that will, and we don't worry about any of the business risk that entails because WIPO and Berne ensure none of the goods the other country makes get to compete with us unless we put our stamp on it. You know what would really break this system? If China, Canada, or some other country were to junk WIPO and DMCA 1201 and start up a national lab to develop and distribute jailbreaks for shitty disposable American tech. Practically speaking, America can't stop knowledge from entering the country, and it would spur a huge explosion of new American businesses to fix the shit our own oligarchs broke. In a world where you can't rely on intellectual property bullshit, outsourcing becomes a crapshoot, and it makes a lot more sense to pay workers what they're worth and focus on automation instead. [0] Yes, they can and have been used by creators in the past, but that's not what the system does today.

D-Coder 1y ago
> Trump's thinking is: Objection, your Honor! Assuming facts not in evidence!