[apercu]

Jebus. “It’s hard to manufacture in the US.”

Yes.

That’s what rebuilding capability looks like.

China built dense supply chains over decades. Of course iteration was faster.

Hard isn’t a reason not to do it.

It’s what happens when you’ve optimized for margin and optics and performance instead of resilience.

[nutjob2]

No, it's local manufacturing theater.

The US does a lot of manufacturing, second only to China, but not low margin stuff that isn't economic.

Trying to "bring back" that sort of thing is idiotic and is entirely performative and induced by the current incompetent administration.

China is a genuine threat but the right solution is to move it to other friendlier countries instead of losing money trying to do it in the US.

Stupid is a reason not to do it.

[deaddodo]

This is the part that blows my mind. People seem to think the US is incapable of and does no manufacturing. It is the second largest manufacturer[1], and has a capacity about 65% of what China does. Which is 350% of the next largest manufacturing country.

What they stopped manufacturing was menial and low-end product; because it's not price-effective to have 100 Americans sit on an assembly line and solder SMT components for $7-18/hr. Instead, those potential workers pivoted into service jobs and office work.

1 - https://www.safeguardglobal.com/resources/blog/top-10-manufa...

[WillPostForFood]

The US manufacturing situation is much worse than you suggest, and is top heavy with low margin boring industrial stuff. Largest sector for US manufacturing is Chemicals, which includes fertilizer, petrochemicals, pesticides, and some pharma. The second largest sector is Tobacco, Food, and Beverages.

I think some more "low margin" computer and chip manufacturing would be healthy.

[dartharva]

Common rhetoric says the US's grassroots economics and job market have been consistently sinking to the point that falling back to that kind of "low margin" manufacturing is back to being feasible. Is that false? Are US wages still too high for that?

[AngryData]

It is apparently economic to do so in China and apparently any other place you want to outsource it to. Does smaller and one-off productions have as high of margins as high speed automated stamping machines running 24/7? No. But that doesn't mean it isn't profitable at all.

And quite frankly, who gives a fuck if top owners and investors get maximum returns, boo hoo they got 4% return instead of 8%, that is still far better than the average working class's deal. Our entire problem is a suffering middle and lower classes that need decent work, they will still be happy even if the product they make is a bit lower margin because they are paid hourly, not paid by dividends and stock options which is where all the higher margins profits go. Average citizens pay has not correlated with increased company profits, and increased company profits isn't what makes society stable, so the investor class is going to have to suck it up and take the hit unless they want their entire house of cards to collapse.