Returning manufacturing to our nation is the most important step we can take to balance China’s growing influence and power, both economic, military and political
I had a job launching new products to our local factory. We couldn’t sell our products to China because of national security issues. One day our CEO asks us to help move the manufacturing to Malaysia.
Most of our best engineers started their careers on the factory line and advanced to design positions. We all thought it was a terribly short sighted decision because where would we develop the next generation of engineers.
Our CEO said we needed to move manufacturing offshore to stay competitive. I reminded him that our main competitor in Germany didn’t offshore their products and their employees had a high standard of living so maybe we didn’t have need to offshore after all.
He told us that the shareholders expected higher returns and we had to move the factory.
I mentioned that our German competitor had workers on the board of directors and were ok sacrificing some profits for the good of the community. I asked if I could organize a union on our electronic bulletin board to discuss the issue with coworkers. Since they allowed bowling leagues and other employee groups to use the bulletin board, this seemed like a reasonable request. As reasonable as asking employees to move their factory overseas.
You can guess the rest of the story. But the moral is that companies will violate labor laws if it is profitable.
This commentary shows how ignorant people are about manufacturing of all kinds in the United States. When American companies decide to move production outside of the country they move capital and technology and expertise as well. When chip companies decided that RAM modules were not profitable enough they let the Japanese and then the Taiwanese companies develop the expertise which they then applied to more complicated designs. The Taiwanese company TSMC is the world's largest chip fab company in the world. Their chips go into a HP laptop or a Ford car and the consumer does not get to choose to have made in USA chips.
My company tried to get a U.S. manufacturer to build a new cutting tool and after 6 months I gave up as all the companies were not able to get loans from their banks to buy the tooling that was needed. In China the government provides the loans for manufacturing businesses of all sizes.
The expert tool makers retired decades ago and their replacements were not hired as the jobs moved to Mexico or China or Taiwan. There is no one to train the next generation and this applies to software companies and construction companies as well. Just in time for parts does not work particularly well as we see now with the supply chain problems but it is a complete failure with the approach of American business people to hire contract workers to avoid medical insurance and worker's comp insurance and pension plan costs.
In California more than 50% of the skilled workforce in construction consists of people who were born in Mexico. In some trades it is close to 100% and one needs to be bilingual to manage projects of any size.
The reality is that people are happy to buy products made overseas and shop at Wal-Mart and Home Depot and Harbor Freight to save a few buck. We have disposable products made by disposable people with our anti-union and anti-worker attitudes that have resulted from years of brainwashing by the corporate controlled media and men like Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson. Small wonder that the elites attack critical thinking programs in our schools.
“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” -Elie Wiesel, writer, Nobel laureate (30 Sep 1928-2016)
What role do multinational corporations play in this? Why don’t we have laws and regulations in place to mitigate the exportation of jobs and technology overseas? How is it that these companies are incorporated at the state level? We need a comprehensive approach at a federal level. Personally I believe that multinational corporations should not be allowed. As we’ve seen repeatedly, they operate in the majority against our national interests.
China wins the prize, but I have to give an honorable mention to Japan and India.
I remember a middle-school teacher asking us, if you were being scammed when buying a violin, what would it say inside. She was going for "Stradivarius", but I blurted-out "Made in Japan". She was not amused and neither was my Dad. He was a WWII veteran and factory worker.
Anyhoo, it doesn't matter on their end. The point is that we once again let business run America. They will always try to, and we must not give-up the fight.
And oh, I tried to buy American autos, but then the parts-reality (where they came from) killed that notion. Because of my concern for the environment, Japan got the last laugh. You could not pry my hybrid out of my cold-dead-hands. It gets 50 miles to the gallon. Next stop, an affordable electric car that I hope is made in America.
Speaking of buying American, let's buy American oil, or quit giving it away. The cheapest way to move to zero emissions is pull the carbon out of methane and have clean burning Hydrogen.
We can do this and have almost free fuel. It takes energy to remove the carbon, so it doesn't make sense if you burn fossil fuel to clean fossil fuel, but today we can use solar and wind and get hydrogen gas for about the equivalent of $5 a BBL.
Wait, methane isn't free. Nope, we give our oil to oil companies and they sell it back for about $100 per BBL. There is a simply solution. We the people hire an oil company to develop our oil and gas, but we don't GIVE them the oil and gas, we pay them to get it for us, plus a nice profit. It's simple, instead of our normal giveaway, we use the drilling contract oil companies happily sign everywhere else on the planet, which pays them a capped amount, generous, but capped.
What does that do to cost. Well, golly, what does oil cost? The answer is in the latest issue of World Oil. I'll quote, then explain.
"...... look at the development in total development capex per boe for new conventional projects, which measures how costs have developed for new offshore projects.
Apart from 2020, the metric has been about $5.5 per boe since 2017. This year the value is expected to increase to almost $8 per boe.....".
So, we are giving our oil and gas away and they are marking it up from $5.50 to $100. That's a serious mark up. If we hire them to do it for us, we can have Hydrogen for the equivalent of $20 a BBL, or 20% of what we pay now.
If we want to be more hands off, block all exports and price oil and gas by US free market, not the planetary market. That would drop it just as much.
“waivers like jelly beans”! Right on target. Or is that “Target”? That combined with the latest inequality statistics means we don’t have a hill to climb but a sheer cliff. You have been an entrepreneur for many years, I know, but I think it is time for you (and Bernie and Sherrod Brown and the Squad) to start moving drastically to call for 40-50% taxes on the super-rich and for 10-15% annual cuts in the Department of Offense’s budget.
ps had to vent — just saw another lament, ‘the inflation!’. ( this was PBS, but it’s all over )
War profiteering is not ‘inflation!’
How many rate increases will stop Putin’s war, and temporary pricing power? And what about our wonderful trustworthy allies, the house of Saud?
If I stop for gas, and a guy there takes my wallet by force, when I get home I’m not going to say, ‘Honey, I stopped at the gas station, you wouldn’t believe the inflation!’
More substantially, perhaps, the USA has again become self sufficient in oil production, for better and worse.
Most of that oil, I suspect, could not be economically shipped abroad. If that is so, please tell me why that oil can be priced at world market prices, as if it is easily fungible, and why we haven’t intervened to stop that anti-American behavior?
best luck to US — b.rad
ps Powell and the Fed are engaging in election interference; nothing else makes sense to me, except moronic blind copying of the worst of Greenspan and Volcker, not sure which is more disturbing . . .
One of the most confusing things, to me, is an old estimate that China's part of the iPhone was about $8, out of a cost of $240. Assembling the iPhone in the USA should not add that much to the cost. The market power, in the largest market, for selling a foreign product in that market but claiming it is ‘made’ ( assembled ) in China, could be considerable, but I haven’t heard that.
Nevertheless, I believe that we should make at least half of essential goods here, with the ability to scale. The comment that engineering follows manufacturing I have heard over my career, and believe. Never mind that the inconvenience and costs of communicating from Cupertino to China, the delays and inefficiencies, are massive, plus extra shipping costs and delays, just don’t add up. Plus geopolitics.
Sorry to miss your Zoom this morn, Day 6 of Covid quarantine, slept right through. Very mild symptoms, but becoming near catatonic through confinement, bless the care from my wife — best luck to US, b.rad
He is very BEARISH about China, even predicting they may break apart by the end of this decade. He says manufacturing is quickly coming back to North America out of necessity, due to the collapse of China.
He has several reasons for these predictions. It is better for me to put links here so you can hear them yourself, rather than for me to summarize them in this comment:
You. Are. So. Smart. This article was illuminating. And totally made sense
Maybe if I keep reading, I'll be smarter too.
Thanks.
I had a job launching new products to our local factory. We couldn’t sell our products to China because of national security issues. One day our CEO asks us to help move the manufacturing to Malaysia.
Most of our best engineers started their careers on the factory line and advanced to design positions. We all thought it was a terribly short sighted decision because where would we develop the next generation of engineers.
Our CEO said we needed to move manufacturing offshore to stay competitive. I reminded him that our main competitor in Germany didn’t offshore their products and their employees had a high standard of living so maybe we didn’t have need to offshore after all.
He told us that the shareholders expected higher returns and we had to move the factory.
I mentioned that our German competitor had workers on the board of directors and were ok sacrificing some profits for the good of the community. I asked if I could organize a union on our electronic bulletin board to discuss the issue with coworkers. Since they allowed bowling leagues and other employee groups to use the bulletin board, this seemed like a reasonable request. As reasonable as asking employees to move their factory overseas.
You can guess the rest of the story. But the moral is that companies will violate labor laws if it is profitable.
This commentary shows how ignorant people are about manufacturing of all kinds in the United States. When American companies decide to move production outside of the country they move capital and technology and expertise as well. When chip companies decided that RAM modules were not profitable enough they let the Japanese and then the Taiwanese companies develop the expertise which they then applied to more complicated designs. The Taiwanese company TSMC is the world's largest chip fab company in the world. Their chips go into a HP laptop or a Ford car and the consumer does not get to choose to have made in USA chips.
My company tried to get a U.S. manufacturer to build a new cutting tool and after 6 months I gave up as all the companies were not able to get loans from their banks to buy the tooling that was needed. In China the government provides the loans for manufacturing businesses of all sizes.
The expert tool makers retired decades ago and their replacements were not hired as the jobs moved to Mexico or China or Taiwan. There is no one to train the next generation and this applies to software companies and construction companies as well. Just in time for parts does not work particularly well as we see now with the supply chain problems but it is a complete failure with the approach of American business people to hire contract workers to avoid medical insurance and worker's comp insurance and pension plan costs.
In California more than 50% of the skilled workforce in construction consists of people who were born in Mexico. In some trades it is close to 100% and one needs to be bilingual to manage projects of any size.
The reality is that people are happy to buy products made overseas and shop at Wal-Mart and Home Depot and Harbor Freight to save a few buck. We have disposable products made by disposable people with our anti-union and anti-worker attitudes that have resulted from years of brainwashing by the corporate controlled media and men like Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson. Small wonder that the elites attack critical thinking programs in our schools.
“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” -Elie Wiesel, writer, Nobel laureate (30 Sep 1928-2016)
What role do multinational corporations play in this? Why don’t we have laws and regulations in place to mitigate the exportation of jobs and technology overseas? How is it that these companies are incorporated at the state level? We need a comprehensive approach at a federal level. Personally I believe that multinational corporations should not be allowed. As we’ve seen repeatedly, they operate in the majority against our national interests.
China wins the prize, but I have to give an honorable mention to Japan and India.
I remember a middle-school teacher asking us, if you were being scammed when buying a violin, what would it say inside. She was going for "Stradivarius", but I blurted-out "Made in Japan". She was not amused and neither was my Dad. He was a WWII veteran and factory worker.
Anyhoo, it doesn't matter on their end. The point is that we once again let business run America. They will always try to, and we must not give-up the fight.
And oh, I tried to buy American autos, but then the parts-reality (where they came from) killed that notion. Because of my concern for the environment, Japan got the last laugh. You could not pry my hybrid out of my cold-dead-hands. It gets 50 miles to the gallon. Next stop, an affordable electric car that I hope is made in America.
Speaking of buying American, let's buy American oil, or quit giving it away. The cheapest way to move to zero emissions is pull the carbon out of methane and have clean burning Hydrogen.
We can do this and have almost free fuel. It takes energy to remove the carbon, so it doesn't make sense if you burn fossil fuel to clean fossil fuel, but today we can use solar and wind and get hydrogen gas for about the equivalent of $5 a BBL.
Wait, methane isn't free. Nope, we give our oil to oil companies and they sell it back for about $100 per BBL. There is a simply solution. We the people hire an oil company to develop our oil and gas, but we don't GIVE them the oil and gas, we pay them to get it for us, plus a nice profit. It's simple, instead of our normal giveaway, we use the drilling contract oil companies happily sign everywhere else on the planet, which pays them a capped amount, generous, but capped.
What does that do to cost. Well, golly, what does oil cost? The answer is in the latest issue of World Oil. I'll quote, then explain.
"...... look at the development in total development capex per boe for new conventional projects, which measures how costs have developed for new offshore projects.
Apart from 2020, the metric has been about $5.5 per boe since 2017. This year the value is expected to increase to almost $8 per boe.....".
So, we are giving our oil and gas away and they are marking it up from $5.50 to $100. That's a serious mark up. If we hire them to do it for us, we can have Hydrogen for the equivalent of $20 a BBL, or 20% of what we pay now.
If we want to be more hands off, block all exports and price oil and gas by US free market, not the planetary market. That would drop it just as much.
Why aren't we doing this?
“waivers like jelly beans”! Right on target. Or is that “Target”? That combined with the latest inequality statistics means we don’t have a hill to climb but a sheer cliff. You have been an entrepreneur for many years, I know, but I think it is time for you (and Bernie and Sherrod Brown and the Squad) to start moving drastically to call for 40-50% taxes on the super-rich and for 10-15% annual cuts in the Department of Offense’s budget.
ps had to vent — just saw another lament, ‘the inflation!’. ( this was PBS, but it’s all over )
War profiteering is not ‘inflation!’
How many rate increases will stop Putin’s war, and temporary pricing power? And what about our wonderful trustworthy allies, the house of Saud?
If I stop for gas, and a guy there takes my wallet by force, when I get home I’m not going to say, ‘Honey, I stopped at the gas station, you wouldn’t believe the inflation!’
More substantially, perhaps, the USA has again become self sufficient in oil production, for better and worse.
Most of that oil, I suspect, could not be economically shipped abroad. If that is so, please tell me why that oil can be priced at world market prices, as if it is easily fungible, and why we haven’t intervened to stop that anti-American behavior?
best luck to US — b.rad
ps Powell and the Fed are engaging in election interference; nothing else makes sense to me, except moronic blind copying of the worst of Greenspan and Volcker, not sure which is more disturbing . . .
One of the most confusing things, to me, is an old estimate that China's part of the iPhone was about $8, out of a cost of $240. Assembling the iPhone in the USA should not add that much to the cost. The market power, in the largest market, for selling a foreign product in that market but claiming it is ‘made’ ( assembled ) in China, could be considerable, but I haven’t heard that.
Nevertheless, I believe that we should make at least half of essential goods here, with the ability to scale. The comment that engineering follows manufacturing I have heard over my career, and believe. Never mind that the inconvenience and costs of communicating from Cupertino to China, the delays and inefficiencies, are massive, plus extra shipping costs and delays, just don’t add up. Plus geopolitics.
Sorry to miss your Zoom this morn, Day 6 of Covid quarantine, slept right through. Very mild symptoms, but becoming near catatonic through confinement, bless the care from my wife — best luck to US, b.rad
I have been VERY concerned about this issue for several years.
Then, earlier this year, I found the arguments of Peter Zeihan, https://www.youtube.com/c/ZeihanonGeopolitics/videos , who I call a "strategic forecaster".
He is very BEARISH about China, even predicting they may break apart by the end of this decade. He says manufacturing is quickly coming back to North America out of necessity, due to the collapse of China.
He has several reasons for these predictions. It is better for me to put links here so you can hear them yourself, rather than for me to summarize them in this comment:
late 2021: Chinese Challenges on the Horizon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMgD_iCdcmA&ab_channel=ZeihanonGeopolitics
late 2021: China Demography Update:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY_zsc0wf1Y&ab_channel=ZeihanonGeopolitics
China, COVID, and Manufacturing - 12/21/2021 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj00flkpAGw&ab_channel=ZeihanonGeopolitics
China, Oil, and the Ukraine War -Mar 8, 2022 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AZx6gajU1M&ab_channel=ZeihanonGeopolitics
In Shanghai, COVID Rattles the Chinese System -Apr 14, 2022 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsP0RobLqfc&ab_channel=ZeihanonGeopolitics
Tianjin, COVID, and Losing Chinese Labor -May 21, 2022 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRLnFOVGtfg&ab_channel=ZeihanonGeopolitics
China and Taiwan -May 31, 2022 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EasV08JkxJk&ab_channel=ZeihanonGeopolitics
Beijing Doubles Down on Zero COVID...and Lockdowns -Jun 28, 2022 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR2jwJF9uB0&ab_channel=ZeihanonGeopolitics
China: Balancing a Floundering Russia and Angry Americans -Sep 17, 2022 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKQQdjtcr2c&ab_channel=ZeihanonGeopolitics