America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufacturing Back – Molson Hart
https://www.molsonhart.com/blog/america-underestimates-the-difficulty-of-bringing-manufacturing-back
Extremely interesting article, here’s just a few tidbits –
In short, manufacturing in the United States is so expensive and our supply chain (we’ll explain that next) is so bad that making that iPhone in the United States without that 54% tariff, would still cost more than in China with 54% tariff. Since it still costs less to make the iPhone in China, both Apple and consumers would prefer it be made there, so it will, and not in the USA.
The world buys semiconductors from Taiwan, not just because its relatively inexpensive (but more expensive than China) labor and excellent supply chain, but because they know how to make the best semiconductors in the world. Even with infinite money, we cannot duplicate that, because we lack the knowhow.
Paving more roads, modernizing our seaports, improving our airports, speeding up our train terminals, and building power plants in the costliest nation in the world to build is a huge undertaking that people are not appreciating when they say “well, we’ll just make it in America”.
It takes at least, in the most favorable of jurisdictions, 2 years (if you can get the permits) to build a factory in the United States. I know because I’ve done it. From there, it can take 6 months to a year for it to become efficient. It can take months for products to come off the assembly lines. All this ignores all the infrastructure that will need to be built (new roads, new power plants, etc.) to service the new factory.
There are over a billion people in China making stuff. As of right now there are 12 million people looking for work in the United States (4% unemployment).
Sadly, a lot of the knowhow to make products is outside of this country. Grant manufacturing visas, not for labor, but for knowhow. Make it easy for foreign countries to teach us how they do what they do best.
People can simplistically be divided into three buckets: those of verbal intelligence, those of mathematical intelligence, and those of spatial intelligence. Without a vibrant manufacturing industry, those with the latter type of intelligence cannot fulfill their potential. This is one reason why so many men drop out, smoke weed, and play video games; they aren’t built for office jobs and would excel at manufacturing, but those jobs either don’t exist or pay poorly.
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