3 ms·

Yeah that’s what I thought too. I think people are find with some 50-100% hike of prices on ham radios, oscilloscopes, and even phones, if local production star

Yeah that’s what I thought too. I think people are find with some 50-100% hike of prices on ham radios, oscilloscopes, and even phones, if local production starts to appear.

analognoise 8mo ago
What lol no they’re not. None of those benefits of a price hike go to American workers. They get low wage factory jobs, not old school pension jobs, and all their stuff goes up in price? Laughable. I doubt Americans won’t even pay 5% more to get stuff made in the USA.
- markus_zhang 8mo ago
  Ah OK, so when do we see production coming back to North America? On the other hand, didn't TMSC and other manufacturers plan to open a few spots in the US?
  - mindslight 8mo ago
    Perhaps after the incompetent performative fascists are evicted, all of the structure fires they wantonly started have been put out, and there is some halfway-competent administration that appreciates the scale of the problem we are dealing with. Tariffs would have helped 20 years ago, but here they're basically just a wistful dementia echo of something that could have been. Applying a policy that's decades out of date merely further strangles American industry. This article is a great example if you actually examine the details of the situation - Digikey is an input to the types of domestic manufacturing that actually employs labor, yet blanket tariffs simply make them even less competitive.
  - phil21 8mo ago
    You don’t. Not with current lifestyles and general way of life people alive today would recognize at least. I lived through Walmart systemically walking through the Midwest and destroying every bit of competition in its path. People looooooved to talk about how other people should “just pay $5 more!” to a local retailer and stuff made in the USA. But it was always for other people to do. Never underestimate the American consumers cheapness. If they can get more junk for less, they will do so nearly every time. And this was in an era when there was still a large amount of manufacturing done in the US. The costs would no longer just be a minor 20% discount - they would be multiples since we lost both the capital investment in equipment and factories, the supply chains feeding them, and would have to spend a generation training up current high schoolers into skilled and semi-skilled manufacturing labor. Assuming anyone actually is willing to do those jobs these days. Buying local became something for performative rich folks to do. Everyone else excused themselves due to “need” of some sort. Consumer preference was revealed and catered to - and now without severe great depression level pain it’s not coming back.
AlotOfReading 8mo ago
You can buy US manufactured oscilloscopes from keysight. A 50% price hike on one of them is enough money to buy a new car, with enough left over for a few months of bay area rent. There are much better uses for that money than throwing it into the money furnace of tariffs, like paying employees or buying half a dozen lower-end scopes manufactured in Asia.
- markus_zhang 8mo ago
  If customers can afford a 50% price hike on lower end oscilloscopes, would that create a small domestic market? Like, I don’t really mind spending an extra 200 bucks on a 200 buck oscilloscope, or even an extra 300 bucks.
  - mindslight 8mo ago
    The comment you're responding to was literally pointing at the actual magnitude of prices for scopes that are merely US-branded. And for the lower end models you're talking about, they're not even anywhere near "Made in the US from US components". Siglent or Rigol are not going to be setting up manufacturing in the US to avoid tariff rates on finished products, and they certainly aren't going to do it when the inputs would be subject to tariffs as well. Your comments in this thread basically come across like you just read an economics 101 textbook and are now asking leading questions to continue your study. In reality, markets are computationally hard and path/structure dependent. Merely tweaking a few knobs to increase some incentive won't make something magically spring into existence. A lot of market "proponents" ironically miss this - if markets were not computationally hard, then centralized planning would also work!

Yeah that’s what I thought too. I think people are find with some 50-100% hike of prices on ham radios, oscilloscopes, and even phones, if local production starts to appear.

analognoise 8mo ago

What lol no they’re not. None of those benefits of a price hike go to American workers. They get low wage factory jobs, not old school pension jobs, and all their stuff goes up in price? Laughable. I doubt Americans won’t even pay 5% more to get stuff made in the USA.

markus_zhang 8mo ago
Ah OK, so when do we see production coming back to North America? On the other hand, didn't TMSC and other manufacturers plan to open a few spots in the US?
- mindslight 8mo ago
  Perhaps after the incompetent performative fascists are evicted, all of the structure fires they wantonly started have been put out, and there is some halfway-competent administration that appreciates the scale of the problem we are dealing with. Tariffs would have helped 20 years ago, but here they're basically just a wistful dementia echo of something that could have been. Applying a policy that's decades out of date merely further strangles American industry. This article is a great example if you actually examine the details of the situation - Digikey is an input to the types of domestic manufacturing that actually employs labor, yet blanket tariffs simply make them even less competitive.
- phil21 8mo ago
  You don’t. Not with current lifestyles and general way of life people alive today would recognize at least. I lived through Walmart systemically walking through the Midwest and destroying every bit of competition in its path. People looooooved to talk about how other people should “just pay $5 more!” to a local retailer and stuff made in the USA. But it was always for other people to do. Never underestimate the American consumers cheapness. If they can get more junk for less, they will do so nearly every time. And this was in an era when there was still a large amount of manufacturing done in the US. The costs would no longer just be a minor 20% discount - they would be multiples since we lost both the capital investment in equipment and factories, the supply chains feeding them, and would have to spend a generation training up current high schoolers into skilled and semi-skilled manufacturing labor. Assuming anyone actually is willing to do those jobs these days. Buying local became something for performative rich folks to do. Everyone else excused themselves due to “need” of some sort. Consumer preference was revealed and catered to - and now without severe great depression level pain it’s not coming back.

AlotOfReading 8mo ago

You can buy US manufactured oscilloscopes from keysight. A 50% price hike on one of them is enough money to buy a new car, with enough left over for a few months of bay area rent. There are much better uses for that money than throwing it into the money furnace of tariffs, like paying employees or buying half a dozen lower-end scopes manufactured in Asia.

markus_zhang 8mo ago
If customers can afford a 50% price hike on lower end oscilloscopes, would that create a small domestic market? Like, I don’t really mind spending an extra 200 bucks on a 200 buck oscilloscope, or even an extra 300 bucks.
- mindslight 8mo ago
  The comment you're responding to was literally pointing at the actual magnitude of prices for scopes that are merely US-branded. And for the lower end models you're talking about, they're not even anywhere near "Made in the US from US components". Siglent or Rigol are not going to be setting up manufacturing in the US to avoid tariff rates on finished products, and they certainly aren't going to do it when the inputs would be subject to tariffs as well. Your comments in this thread basically come across like you just read an economics 101 textbook and are now asking leading questions to continue your study. In reality, markets are computationally hard and path/structure dependent. Merely tweaking a few knobs to increase some incentive won't make something magically spring into existence. A lot of market "proponents" ironically miss this - if markets were not computationally hard, then centralized planning would also work!