[morbusfonticuli]

This reminded of the YouTube guy of "Smarter Every Day" who tried to manufacture a a grill brush completely in USA and still be competitive in the marketplace (i.e. China) [0].

It turned out that USA / "the west" lost the engineering knowledge to manufacture "stuff" (in this case injection molding and other procedures): Nowadays, we simply create the plans and schematics (e.g. CAD files) and let the Chinese do the building.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY

[TheJoeMan]

Slightly more nuanced, I think we no longer have domestic industries making the components for the machines that make stuff. Many machine shops have Haas mills, but lots of Haas's suppliers are overseas. Regarding injection molding, we actually have better suppliers for the prototyping phases such as https://www.protolabs.com/ .

[RataNova]

What China really has is not just cheap labor but dense, living industrial ecosystems