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It has been this way for 10 years already. Nobody's complaining about China anymore in the mass media or hollywood, the whole western economy relies on china's
by camus2 13y ago
It has been this way for 10 years already. Nobody's complaining about China anymore in the mass media or hollywood, the whole western economy relies on china's manufacturing capabilities.
Good for china , bad for most of us, because there is a hidden cost to all these cheap stuffs , it's called debt.
We could build stuff so people can actually afford it, instead of working at McDonalds or Walmart for a minimum wage, but it's not profitable enough in a world of short term profit.
- icebraining 13y agoWe could build stuff so people can actually afford it What "stuff" are you talking about? Manufacturing? Because the US actually makes a lot of "stuff", it just doesn't need people to do it, thanks to a lot of engineers like us who have automated it to hell.
- LekkoscPiwa 13y agoexamples? Could you list 5 products with "made in the USA" label that are world wide famous and sold globally?
- xradionut 13y agoDoes that include mass media, software or weapons systems?
- wtvanhest 13y agoPlease take a look at this link. It is definitely "biased" but still accurate. The US is still a major manufacturing hub. Manufacturing makes up 11.9% of US GDP. http://www.nam.org/Statistics-And-Data/Facts-About-Manufacturing/Landing.aspx http://www.nam.org/Statistics-And-Data/Facts-About-Manufactu...
- selectodude 13y agoBoeing 777, Tesla Model S, Microsoft Windows, Intel Core i7, Caterpillar construction equipment. That's just 5 I could think of off the top of my head. Tried to mix it up with regards to industries too.
- randall 13y ago+ New Mac Pro and some iMacs.
- busterarm 13y ago"Made in the USA" often means "Assembled in the USA". [1] http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2008-03-01/business/36793441_1_faa-airliners-parts-supplier http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2008-03-01/business/36793... [2]http://cagematch.dvorak.org/index.php?topic=3751.0 http://cagematch.dvorak.org/index.php?topic=3751.0 And last I knew, Intel did a lot of its chip work in Mexico, though the supply chain issues they had (counterfeits) may have changed that.
- selectodude 13y agoThat's just the same article on two different websites, stating that a handful of parts on the 777 are manufactured overseas, and the FAA/Boeing needs to do better at QC. And Intel's 22nm chips are made in Chandler, AZ.
- busterarm 13y agoSure, I'm just saying that you'll be hard pressed to find a product that doesn't have components manufactured overseas. Even/especially the ones that proudly claim to be "Made in the USA". It doesn't reflect the reality of the global market. Hell, I know a guy with a gun business who gets all of his parts manufactured overseas, but he's allowed to put "Made in the USA" on them and it's a huge selling point to his customers just because he assembles them in his warehouse himself.
- saryant 13y agoThe Toyota Tundra is built in San Antonio, TX.
- swamp40 13y agoI heard a story recently about a Caterpillar vehicle being made in Mexico. Headquarters couldn't figure out why the BOM was costing so much, so they flew an engineer down there to figure out what the problem was. Turns out most of the locally sourced parts and raw materials were being purchased at a significant premium - from friends of some of the local managers.
- angersock 13y agoPick an oilfield tool, and it was probably made from scratch in the US.
- berntb 13y ago>> Good for china Let me fix that for you: "Good for the communist party leaders, bad for China and the majority of Chinese people" This is selling the democracy movement down the river. :-(
- JackFr 13y agoSo China gets little scraps of paper with numbers written on them, and we get iPods and Nikes. I don't think it's quite as obvious who's winning and who's losing... I seem to have heard this exact same thing 25 years ago with Japan (that is @camus2's comment, not the FA). At least when Japan was our counterparty they bought real estate and companies and were not so foolish as to buy Treasury bonds.
- saryant 13y agoWRT to Japan holding US debt, I'm not sure that's correct. http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/mfh.txt http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/ti...
- JackFr 13y agoI can't find any statistics -- my impression was that the US capital account surplus with Japan was more diversified than that with China (though Japan would still hold a substantial chunk in US treasuries.) As I can't find any stats to back that up, I guess I'll leave it as my possibly untrue impression...
- peterjancelis 13y agoYou have it backwards. The US and Europe can source their cheap products from many locations in Asia, while China is very reliant on the EU and US economies to keep buying their stuff. China is not 1,1 billion new consumers. It's a 200 million people extension of the western economy with 900 million people in Africa level poverty. And despite this massive human surplus wages keep rising because even assembling an iPhone is relatively hard. And soon other Asian countries will start doing it cheaper. If that happens, China has a huge industrial plant with no internal market to afford it. Also, the average profit of Chinese exports is just 1.7%. So basically the Chinese made massive investments based on a projection of export demand that lasts long enough for sustainable internal demand to catch up. When the discount rate turns out to be a bit higher than expected, the house of cards falls. Think of China as the Groupon of nations. The smart Chinese elite is also buying foreign assets as fast as they can. Like insider stock trades, when a management of a country starts divesting, that's a sign of troubles, not of wealth. This is not to say the Chinese elite was wrong to grow via market liberation and exports. What I do say is that the bulls on China conflate revenues with profits, and activity with lasting competitive advantages. It also means the Chinese are buying US debt not to enslave the US (hard to do that with zero procent interest rates!), but as a favor to their largest client base.
- nealabq 13y agoAutomation is a big unknown facing Chinese manufacturing. Eventually the West will have robotic lines that can manufacture iPhones cheaper than Chinese laborers. When, and what happens next, is anyone's guess.
- jl6 13y agoThen neither the West nor East will have jobs and millions more will join the ranks of "human surplus"...
- chris_mahan 13y agoRobots don't buy iPhones, or pay for data plans from Verizon and AT&T.
- crdoconnor 13y ago>Good for china , bad for most of us, because there is a hidden cost to all these cheap stuffs , it's called debt. It's not bad for the US because China owns treasuries. They never gave China any leverage over the US. It's bad because buying those treasuries pushed the value of the dollar up and the yuan down. That's why the pearl river delta is the richest conglomeration of manufacturing industries in the world, and factories are being closed left, right and center in the US. And one day it will be as hard for the US to bring that manufacturing base home as it was for China to build it up in the first place. That's when the US is really screwed.