[npiano]

A genuine question, presuming no correct answer: what is to be done about it? China is reportedly on track to run more than 50% of global manufacturing by 2030, if the World Bank is correct. What would you do to act against this? Is doing nothing acceptable?

[tonyedgecombe]

Start by realising this is going to take decades to reverse.

Given the timescale any solution will require cooperation across political parties. You can’t start something that will get undone in four years.

Then accept it won’t make much difference to the inhabitants of bumfuck USA. Automation is what took their jobs.

Start at the top of the food chain and gradually work down. If America can make cars but not car tyres then implement gradually increasing tariffs on imported tyres. 1% this year, 2% next and so on. Pretty soon you have a car tyre industry again.

Know when to stop, just like it doesn’t make sense for a banker to clean their own house it doesn’t make sense for a rich country to be making tee shirts.

Of course this won’t happen because of the American political system.

[Jensson]

> Then accept it won’t make much difference to the inhabitants of bumfuck USA. Automation is what took their jobs.

If automation took those jobs then why aren't all those automated factories in USA?

[testing22321]

If it doesn’t make sense to make t-shirts, why does it make sense to make tires?

They’re an environmental nightmare and very, very thin margins.

[bluGill]

I would act against China - because China is making political moves that I do not like. (they are supporting Russia in Ukraine, they are building up to invade Taiwan, they are supporting terror in the middle east...)

By acting against China that means I applaud moving manufacturing to Vietnam. I want to help Botswana grow - and I wish there were more countries in Africa I could name that seem to be on a good path (I cannot name the majority of countries in Africa, the ones I can are because they are in the news for bad things happening. I'm not even sure Botswana - I mostly know about them because last time I brought up Africa someone from there said their country was an exception).

Overall the world is better off with a lot of trade. Comparative advantage is real. There are things I can do that I don't want to become good at. However we also need to be aware that not everyone in the world is the friend of freedom and some must be cut off lest they grow. Nobody is perfect though, so you can't cut off everyone.

[mosburger]

There are plenty of countries in East Africa ripe for this, unfortunately China is beating us there, too. Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania ... all are pretty well positioned right now for development, but rn China is mostly the one doing it.

(Source - worked in int'l remittances w/ African receiving countries)

[bilbo0s]

By acting against China that means I applaud moving manufacturing to Vietnam

and

last time I brought up Africa someone from there said their country was an exception

Making what are essentially strategic decisions in this "shoot from the hip" fashion is what lands us repeatedly in these situations. By way of illustration, let me try one from the 1980's out on you:

"By acting against Iran that means I applaud men like Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden"

(In fairness to the americans who made that colossal blunder, I'll assume that, to them, it seemed a good idea at the time. They were simply not long term thinkers. So no one ever asked, "Hmm, what comes next though?")

We, as a people, need to start thinking a bit further ahead than the ends of our noses.

[constantcrying]

What would prevent Vietnam or Botswana do make political moves 20 years down the line? Surely it is not their economic reliance on you, as China clearly demonstrates.

I see exactly zero point in repeating the example of China again. Why would the outcome be different? Vietnam is another Communist pseudo-dictatorship. Why is this one so different that it won't support Russia?

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Yeah, there's no painless answer. China is not a democracy. They can force millions of people to endure terrible working conditions, pollution, corruption, and abuse, and take a very long view. The US can't do this.

[themaninthedark]

Why do the working conditions need to be terrible?

Why does there need to be corruption and abuse?

Why do they have to expose their workers to pollution?

As far as I know, none of those things are required for manufacturing.

[constantcrying]

>What would you do to act against this?

Bloc building. Europe has countries which do lots of manufacturing. Use those to gradually reduce reliance on China by slowly restricting Chinese access to the Bloc market and build up supply chains inside the Bloc.

Making everything in the US can not be done without a very severe decline in living standards.

>Is doing nothing acceptable?

How high is your desire to learn Chinese?

[corimaith]

Under normal circumstances, when a country is running a massive surplus, their currency should appreciate, weakening their exports and thus recalibrating trade balance back to zero. That isn't happening right now, because China (and other surplus nations like Germany and Japan) relies on buying massive amounts of US treasuries to weaken the Yuan. That's one of the reasons why the US dollar is the reserve currency. It has to be, because only the US has an economy large enough to provide high-yield, low-risk treasuries and is willing to do so.

Trump's tariffs would theoretically rebalance trade on the long term, albeit in a highly destructive manner. But the more diplomatic solutions as proposed by other commentators like Catherine Tai, Yanis Varoufakis or Michael Pettis would be the introduction of capital controls to stem the demand for US treasuries, or better, the reintroduction of Keynes' proposal of the International Clearing Union back in 1945. The ICU's role would be to actively balance global trade surpluses via the international currency bancor, of which would have fixed control of FX rates rather than relying on FX markets to punish surplus nations and help deficit nations respectively. As for nations outside the Union, they would just get treated similar to the USSR.

[smcl]

I think they should want to do something - it's just that torpedoing your ties with your closest allies and trade partners then lighting the stock market on fire is maybe not that thing. China spent decades building up their supply chains, infrastructure and manufacturing capacity and had support for this at state level.

If the US sees it as a threat and wants to do something it should maybe look to what China has done. Because tbh what Trump did re Tariffs is pretty close to "nothing" all things considered.

They won't though because as soon as you have someone saying "look, let's just put together a staged plan so that in, say, five years we'll produce X% more electronics domestically..." you'll have a Republican shrieking about "five year plans" and how the USA is becoming communist

[pjc50]

A great analyst once taught me the response question: "yes, and so what?" What's so magic about manufacturing as opposed to all the higher value work of the US economy? Have people not noticed that the average American is still richer than the average Chinese person by a long way, and (yes, painfully) more so than the average European?

If you're going to talk wars, then .. US military manufacturing is still the world leader yet again. Plus the nukes.

[bluGill]

Here is a what: there are a lot of Americans (and similar for Europe) who did not go to college, and their kids are not going to college. Of they went to college but got a degree that doesn't have good job prospects. These people would be better off with manufacturing jobs than what they can find. This is probably a minority, but it is a large enough minority to swing elections and thus important.

[XorNot]

A lot of the war stuff gets framed in very odd terms. If you want a local defence industry then pay for it. Enforce component sovereignty requirements... Which everyone already does. Then actually react to reports which call out the gaps and pay to close them.

This bizzare "we'll bring back manufacturing and be ready all the time" thing seems to imagine you'll just turn the local widget maker over to knocking out high temperature stealth composites for hypersonic missiles real quick.

Which is of course the story of a lot of American manufacturing: it's hard to get a hobby run of PCBs because all the PCB makers are optimized for large orders for defence procurement (and the clearance, supply line and stuff requirements that brings).