Made in USA: Bringing manufacturing jobs back to the homeland

There is a tiny fact that you overlook; at the current time, on most products, the cost of doing business is higher in the US than in China or Vietnam or wherever.

Why do you suppose so many US companies seek labor and supplies from outside of the US? Can't you fathom that many of these businesses would do more or all of their production in the US if it was AT ALL possible? Or do you think this is some liberal conspiracy?

Your president doesn't like to talk about another fact that about 60% of Americans live pay check to pay check...and this is based on them buying current imported goods at lower prices...so how will this work when you force higher prices for US made products?

This IS NOT an issue about left and right although you think so. This is about operating businesses in a competitive and profitable fashion in a global marketplace.

BTW; how many people do you know who will wear the same hoodie for 30 years?

 

I notice you didn't respond to my environmental and carbon footprint points and question which was 90% of my post.

 

Virtually all welfare already requires the recipient to work.

 

I can't respond to something I, or you, cannot quantify...

 

Pretty simple really. Produce one hoodie in 30 years or half a dozen hoodies in 30 years. Which version is more environmentally sound and has the smaller carbon footprint? It's first grade math and you are doing nothing but running from the question like every other liberal has done in this thread

 

Well, we have additional $10's of billions going into the US Treasury with price inflation so tame that it is remarkable, so your claim of unusual consumer price inflation due to the tariff revenue flowing to the US Treasury appears to be unfounded.



Tariff income has doubled during the Trump presidency without any unusual consumer price fluctuation.

So while we have no unusual price inflation, $Billions in tariff revenue flowing into the treasury, China on the other hand:

UNEXPECTEDLY? China’s exports fall unexpectedly in August, as trade war continues to slam industrial economy.

Furthermore, the much-reported 3.8 per cent depreciation of the yuan in August failed to stop the decline in exports – despite Washington’s fears that it was being used to give China’s exporters an unfair advantage.​

It is a far cry from the double-digit expansion that characterized the export machine that powered the Chinese economy for more than two decades.​

The weak export figures will put further pressure on China’s already slowing economy. The central bank on Friday said it would cut the amount of cash banks must hold as reserves to the lowest level since 2007 in a bid to inject liquidity into the economy and stimulate demand.​

Keep in mind, that even includes trade with American businesses that were front-loading their orders from China in the weeks before the new tariffs kicked in.

The consumer-driven economy China needs to develop to replace slowing export growth requires a kind of consumer-driven country which Communism struggles to deliver. No wonder they are suddenly eager to come back to America for further negotiations with Trump rather than trying to wait him out in the hopes he isn't re-elected.

 

Well, I could argue that paying American workers produces more carbon than paying Honduran workers. I would also say that the hoodie in the landfill is a carbon sink.

 

If manufacturing doesn't die from without, it will die from within. By the time you succeed in getting manufacturing back onshore robotics will take it right back.

 

Robots are the future of manufacturing and that's why we have a good shot at competing with low labor cost countries. Even with robotics US based companies will still employ office staff and robot technicians and keep tax dollars here.

 

You could argue that but you'd lose. Cotton has to be grown and manufactured for every hoodie and transported to the factory. Then the manufacturing process and then the transportation of the finished product. The average size container ship consumes $4000.00 worth of fuel a day crossing the ocean. Also keep in mind the lax pollution standards for manufacturing in these third world countries.
It's painfully obvious making a product once in thirty years in America is more environmentally sound than making it half a dozen times in China and any attempt to wiggle out of that is really kind of pathetic. Fact is the left in here knows that but considers jobs coming home as some kind of political defeat since their god obama said it couldn't happen. Fact is they would rather continue to purchase cheap crap from China than reduce their carbon footprint and general pollution in the world. Fact is they talk the talk but don't walk the walk.

 

This is true, but there's no sugar-coating the fact that factories with 50 workers on $40,000 will be replaced by 6 engineers on $250,000. Office staff won't cut the mustard.

This has a big upside too - prices will drop considerably. But as with all economic change some people will be left out in the cold. Avoid certain industries.

China has a comparative advantage due to low labor costs resulting from poor conditions, low pay, and the general life and times of living in an authoritarian state which forbids fair elections and constantly surveils the populace.

Automation will wipe out the comparative advantage (nobody cares about exploiting basic robotics [I feel I might regret this statement when our machine overlords take over :/ ]), but it will also wipe out the advantage full stop. At least for manufacturing workers.

Personally I think it would be better to replace the entire Federal (and international) bureaucracy with a negative income tax, but I acknowledge the issues around this and am uneasy in my support.

 

Mechanization is reality in manufacturing and labor jobs have and will decline. Industries employ a very large staff in corporate these days doing computer jobs, advertising , clerical work etc and remember everything manufactured needs a warehouse and shipping and receiving departments. There's also the spinoff support industries not to mention trucking jobs. Better to have these jobs here than overseas for both financial and environmental reasons.

 

We have still lost far more jobs every year than are now coming back.

And as much as Republicans want to blame "regulations" on those jobs being lost, the fact is that well over 70% of all jobs lost over the last 20 yars, especially in the mining industries, have been because of automation. Companies find it more cost effective (in other words, they can maximize their own profits) to use machines to do the work and get rid of their human workforce. These jobs won't come back, unless people decide to boycott those companies and only buy from non-automated businesses.

 

Mining jobs have gone overseas in large part due to very restrictive environmental standards here that other countries don't have to adhere to. This has been a huge flaw in all our trade deals and has made us lose numerous industries.
As far as automation goes "you can't stop progress". That's happening in all industries. It's more efficient and has to be done to compete in the world market. I spent my life in the logging industry and watched it go from mostly men on the ground doing hard labor in dangerous conditions in all types of weather to what it is today which is guys calling themselves loggers showing up to work in shorts and tennis shoes to sit in their air conditioned in summer heater in winter machines where one man does the work of several back in my day. We used to figure a load per man per day was good production tractor logging but now a four man industrialized crew moves twenty loads a day. Times change and this new way is more efficient and not the man killer the old ways were but I'm glad I put my time in back when logging was logging.

 

Are you saying that protecting the environment is a huge flaw? Because I'm willing to trade a few mineral-extraction jobs for clean air and water.

 

Not at all. I'm saying other countries should have to adhere to the same environmental standards we do before we import the products from them that were once manufactured here. Guess I wasn't clear enough on that. My error

 

That would mean not trading with China, India and Mexico too.

 

Absolutely. They should have to meet our environmental standards especially with industries that left here and went there to avoid compliance with our environmental regulations. That's a glaring flaw in our trade deals that has led to the "giant sucking sound" There's a mine right down the road from me that moved production to South America because they couldn't compete with mines there that didn't have to meet the same standards and the town the mine relied on that was prosperous and a great place to live is now boarded up buildings and run down houses full of welfare meth heads

 

Rare earth jobs have gone overseas (because American tech and medical companies chose to buy from the chinese because the chinese charged less (because they pay their workers pennies on the dollar) than American mining companies do.

But things like goal and other things that are more abundant in the US simply automated.

 

Automation is fine and allows us to compete with cheap labor in emerging countries. US companies are losing due to lax environmental standards overseas though. A good example is black chrome leather used to make the best work boots. I was in a boot repair shop once and the guy told me you can't get good leather in America anymore. I laughed and said what, something wrong with our cows? He told me our chrome leather plants had all shut down and gone overseas because the strict environmental standards here made it unprofitable and they couldn't compete with other countries that dumped waste from the process into rivers. Now our companies are dumping toxic materials into rivers around the world instead of doing it cleanly here as they would if other countries had to meet our environmental standards before they ship their leather to the US. Boots would be more expensive but we'd have a healthier environment worldwide.

By the way men still are needed to run those underground mining machines and it's still tough dangerous work

 

The real reason they werent sent overseas is because of the fact that Chinese workers work 15-20 hour days with little or no break times or benefits for bare a dollar an hour.

Free trade with China was a mistake from the start. We should only have free trade with nations whose wages, labor protections, and enviromental policy are on par with our own. And we should ban the importation of any products made in sweatshops, with the importing companies being required to prove that the products were not made in sweatshops.

We should also require that any US companies operating outside of the US offer their foreign workers the same wages and benefits that they are required to in the US, and if they refuse, they are barred from important those products back into the US.

 

I don't argue politics and as long as you are focused on YOUR opinion that I am a liberal you are just wasting my time...

 

Tariff monies in the government's hands has nothing to do with anything?! Tariffs are being paid by US companies who import goods. All of these US companies are either okay with less profits and/or they are raising their prices to consumers...this is a FACT. You can Google any number of articles that precisely specify increases in consumer prices due to tariffs. https://www.fxstreet.com/news/us-inflation-pressures-are-building-ing-201909121343

Trade wars hurt everyone...

 

News flash; those foreign companies manufacturing for Apple and US auto companies, etc. have automation and robotics as well. If you knew more about design and manufacturing you would realize that much of the stuff produced today cannot be produced without automation and the latest technologies...

 

You, and me, and everyone else, enjoy the lives we have today because of technology and automation and robotics, etc. For those who believe automation and robotics and technology are evil, they should try to quantify how different our lives would be without them...