On Wed, 1 Apr 2020 16:53:34 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

On 4/1/2020 4:37 PM, wrote:
On Wed, 1 Apr 2020 13:39:59 -0400, Keyser Soze wrote:

On 4/1/20 11:45 AM, wrote:
On Wed, 1 Apr 2020 08:09:02 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

If the USA really clamps down on its reliance on Chinese
manufactured items (as it should) the Chinese economy
could be in for a free-fall. If it does, there's no
turning back. The Chinese Communist government opened
a Pandora's box about 30 years ago when they started
embracing their government controlled version of
capitalism and "free markets". Once a significant
portion of their population start benefiting from
this, there's no way to close the Pandora's box
again.

===

It's important to remember that the western world has become more or
less addicted to buying cheap manufactured goods from China. That is
a major reason why we have enjoyed low inflation for the last 30 years
or so. China has become the low cost producer for just about
everything we consume and it will be extremely difficult to unwind
that without major disruptions to our economy and standard of living.
China has many millions of people willing to work at low wage factory
jobs and we do not.


Corporations here offshored manufacturing to countries paying near-slave
wages and in the process increased their profit margins by hundreds of
percentage points on many items. American workers want decent wages and
benefits, and these are disappearing. You aren't going to see serious
levels of manufacturing that went offshore coming back here and, of
course, for the most part, we don't have the technology anymore to do
most of the work.

The American consumer is as much to blame as the corporations. They
are just giving us what we want. When there was a choice, in the 90s,
people voted with their wallets and bought the cheaper offshore goods
leaving the American made stuff sitting there. With no market for
American made stuff, the factories moved or closed. Clinton made it
financially advantageous with trade policies and multinational
agreements like NAFTA and GATT. We actually rewarded companies who
moved offshore.
We also accepted lower quality with that lower cost.
IBM (Gerstner) called it "Market Driven Quality". I still have the
hat.
http://gfretwell.com/electrical/mdq.jpg
They went from emulating Sony to emulating WalMart (absolutely true).
We went from quality circles and 6 sigma to "give nothing more than
they are willing to pay for". Unfortunately for guys like me, we found
out they were not willing to pay for quality and I was unwilling to do
a ****ty job.



That be all true but if there is anything to be learned from this
covid-19 thing, we need to pay attention to the items we rely upon
others to make and sell to us.

Anything to do with national security should be made here with
some licensing authority for other "friendly" nations or allies.

Same with pharmaceuticals. They need to be made here. It
friggin' amazes me that the VA buys most of it's medications
from China.

China and others can make television sets, cheap computers and
cell phones if they want. Some car parts also. They are not
a threat to national security.

No argument from me. It used to be that any critical military part had
to be made here. That was the excuse they made for some of the DoD
budget. It is true that a big part of our DoD budget goes to white
collar jobs and a lot of high paid manufacturing jobs. It is the
little widgets that seem to come in from offshore. When it was just
dumb chips there was only the sourcing issue but as chips became
smarter (on board software), we should be concerned about what is in
there.