←back to thread

842 points putzdown | 9 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
Show context
pjc50 ◴[] No.43692988[source]
> China generates over twice as much electricity per person today as the United States. Why?

This appears to be completely wrong? All the stats I can find say that the US has about 4x the per capita electricity generation of China.

Other than that it seems to be mostly good points, especially the overall one: you cannot do this overnight.

> If you’re building a new factory in the United States, your investment will alternate between maybe it will work, and catastrophic loss according to which way the tariffs and the wind blows. No one is building factories right now, and no one is renting them, because there is no certainty that any of these tariffs will last

Policy by amphetamine-driven tweeting is a disaster.

> 12. Enforcement of the tariffs will be uneven and manipulated

Yup. The 145% level seems designed to create smuggling, and the wild variations between countries to create re-labelling. It's chicken tax trucks all over again.

> This is probably the worst economic policy I’ve ever seen

Per Simpsons: this is the worst economic policy you've seen so far. The budget is yet to come.

> If American companies want to sell in China, they must incorporate there, register capital, and name a person to be a legal representative. To sell in Europe, we must register for their tax system and nominate a legal representative. For Europeans and Chinese to sell in the United States, none of this is needed, nor do federal taxes need to be paid.

This is .. not a bad idea, really. It would probably be annoying for small EU and UK exporters but less so than 10% tariffs and even less so than random day of the week tariffs. Maybe one day it could harmonise with the EU VAT system or something.

(also I think the author is imagining that sub-par workers, crime, and drugs don't exist in China, when they almost certainly do, but somewhere out of sight. Possibly due to the internal migration control of hukou combined with media control?)

replies(11): >>43693137 #>>43693301 #>>43693319 #>>43693410 #>>43693431 #>>43693454 #>>43693553 #>>43693635 #>>43704244 #>>43705580 #>>43706047 #
like_any_other ◴[] No.43693410[source]
> Other than that it seems to be mostly good points, especially the overall one: you cannot do this overnight.

It's annoying Americans were given only two choices - offshoring is great and let's keep doing it, and, as you say, the opposite, meth-fueled let's bring back manufacturing overnight. The kind of slow and steady protection and promotion of home-grown industry that China and most of Asia so successfully used to grow their economies was completely absent as even a talking point.

replies(16): >>43693491 #>>43693509 #>>43693565 #>>43693767 #>>43694052 #>>43694176 #>>43695172 #>>43698484 #>>43704057 #>>43704570 #>>43704866 #>>43705785 #>>43706157 #>>43706354 #>>43707310 #>>43713322 #
rickdeckard ◴[] No.43693767[source]
The weird part for me is this: While the economy was evolving, Production was offshored from US for cost-reasons, but also in part to focus on higher-skill labor in US, delegating the low-skill mass-production to China.

Over time, China also developed mid/high level skills, complemented their low-skill production offering with it and now competes in new industries, new tech, etc.

So...to compete with China, the country with 4x the US-population, the solution is that low-skill labor needs to return to US....?

Shouldn't instead the focus be to again foster mid/high-skill labor, moving the part that is offshored again towards low-skill labor...?

replies(5): >>43693839 #>>43694006 #>>43694231 #>>43695345 #>>43713358 #
1. _bin_ ◴[] No.43694231[source]
Trump et al. really run a motte-and-bailey argument here. They woo reasonable people who agree that critical industries: food, energy, defense-adjacent, metals, etc. - must have substantial capacity on-shore or at least very near. They then flip to what amounts to massive handouts for his rust belt base, basically saying we should make everything here.

The obvious answer is this:

1. it doesn't matter if our t-shirts are made in Bangladesh.

2. it does matter if our stuff is made in an enemy nation (china).

3. U.S. labor is too expensive to move back to mass manufacturing the way we used to do it, c.f. baumol's cost disease.

4. offshoring and illegal labor have suppressed investment in automation and manufacturing technology for decades, which will be painful to undo.

The sensible outcome of these facts is

1. Focus on moving everything out of china to other cheap countries with reasonable levels of human capital.

2. Focus on re-shoring critical industries.

3. Launch moonshot investments into robotics and automation. Bringing back a big chunk of manufacturing is sustainable; bringing back jobs is not.

4. Invest in large-scale roll-out of SMR energy so we have reliable power for this new industrial build.

replies(4): >>43703146 #>>43704752 #>>43706669 #>>43708837 #
2. deadfoxygrandpa ◴[] No.43703146[source]
china isnt an enemy nation unless we decide we want to fight them
replies(1): >>43705577 #
3. myrmidon ◴[] No.43704752[source]
Completely agree with your main point.

I do disagree somewhat with point 4. I think this is frequently overstated:

Building and operating automated factories is just as wage-dependent as anything else (just the coefficients are a bit smaller). You still need engineers, construction crews, supervisors, repair crews, etc. (and those could all be doing something more profitable as well).

You can see this very clearly in the EU, where there is a pretty smooth wage-gradient, and even the super highly automated automotive manufacturing has moved down that gradient towards Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, despite language/culture barriers.

> Bringing back a big chunk of manufacturing is sustainable; bringing back jobs is not.

I think a decent sized manufacturing industry is a realistic goal long term. But longer term US global supremacy in it is not even a realistic goal to begin with, because not only are you gonna fight against the wage gradient now, you are also gonna face the fact that the US is only ~5% global population, and manufacturing will naturally drift towards the very biggest markets for its goods, which the US probably won't be in half a century or so, simply because of demographics and economical growth in China/India generally.

4. pixl97 ◴[] No.43705577[source]
Or, if they decided to take lands belonging to allies.

Though after this administration I'm not sure we'll have any allies left.

replies(1): >>43705662 #
5. seanmcdirmid ◴[] No.43705662{3}[source]
If Trump’s term ends with NATO still intact I’ll be surprised.
replies(1): >>43706681 #
6. hcknwscommenter ◴[] No.43706669[source]
So basically, Biden's CHIPS act plus infrastructure (energy, roads, etc.) investments (e.g., solar and wind and battery part of Biden's IRA plus additional baseload). Yeah, we had all that going under the previous administration, and the current administration is distracting us from their dismantling of these sensible investments and incentives by strangling the entire global economy. Is it still "fringe" to think Trump is a foreign asset?
7. mr_toad ◴[] No.43706681{4}[source]
If the US left NATO the remaining members would have even more incentive to stick together.
replies(1): >>43711731 #
8. danans ◴[] No.43708837[source]
> 3. Launch moonshot investments into robotics and automation. Bringing back a big chunk of manufacturing is sustainable; bringing back jobs is not.

Absent sufficient jobs, or some other arrangement for the masses that provides both material comfort and some sense of purpose, you'll never get to the automation because you will likely have a revolution first.

9. seanmcdirmid ◴[] No.43711731{5}[source]
Ya, but not being intact doesn’t mean completely destroyed. I just don’t think the Europeans will ever trust the USA enough again to let them have a close relationship, even if Trump’s presidency ends with the US still a democracy.