• Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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    2 months ago

    It has been started. It is happening. But it will take a very, very long time before the West will be able to rely on themselves and not China for important manufacturing.

    • ravhall@discuss.online
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      2 months ago

      I don’t recall hearing anything recently about a push to manufacture inside the states. Just a lot of pushing to places like India.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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        2 months ago

        There’s a little bit here and there. There were some federal laws to incentivize microchip manufacturing in the U.S., but it’s not really an overall thing.

          • nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            2 months ago

            I like how you’re making light of microchips so small only a handful of plants in the world can make them but yeah no big deal. But also lots of renewable energy plants, and companies, those are very ubiquitous.

            • ravhall@discuss.online
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              2 months ago

              I’m saying that “made in USA” is not a label I see very often. And each one of those American owned companies should make an effort to put that label on their products.

      • bluGill@fedia.io
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        2 months ago

        There has always been a push to manufacture in the states. The first buy American law dates back to 1933 (or at least the first I found with a quick search - feel free to correct me if you know more). George Washington wore a suit from New England at his inauguration to encourage American manufacturing. Things have been moving elsewhere for a long time, but there is still a push to build in the US, and new manufacturing in the Us is created all the time.

          • bluGill@fedia.io
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            2 months ago

            Created faster than lost overall. There is more total manufactured in the US than at anytime in history. However population is up even more than production and jobs in factories are down by an order of magnitude (because of automation) and so it seems like we are producing less.

            • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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              2 months ago

              If you’re producing less per capita, and consuming more per capita, you’re producing less overall for the purposes of the discussion around relative pain of cutting off Chinese imports.

              • bluGill@fedia.io
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                2 months ago

                That sounds like a “how to lie” with statistic fact. You can use per capita or total production numbers to make different arguments.

                • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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                  2 months ago

                  No, it’s focusing the conversation.

                  We’re talking about the relative pain of cutting off Chinese imports or getting into a trade war with them. In that context, the fact that we import far more from them then we produce domestically compared with decades ago means that it will be more painful to do so now than it would have been decades ago.

                  The reality is that while there is a tiny ‘buy American’ push from some people, the vast majority of the American economy and regulations are setup to allow private capital to trade freely abroad and import at will. And it was done intentionally so that rich people could benefit from cheap overseas labour, furthering wealth inequality when middle class factory workers lost their jobs to increase corporate profits with cheaper overseas factories.

        • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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          2 months ago

          The series of free trade agreements the US negotiated with everyone they could would say otherwise.

    • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      It has not been started in any serious way. There is basically no incentive to manufacture most goods in the US.