ATL Bear said:
Adriacus Peratuun said:
ATL Bear said:
Adriacus Peratuun said:
ATL Bear said:
Low skill manufacturing isn't coming back. And even if it did it would be low wage work and serve no economic purpose other than higher prices and increased worker risk for low pay. That was the preponderance of the oft sighted 60,000 - 90,000 factory loss (heck of a range there BTW).
Bringing manufacturing back is a capital not labor exercise, and the type of manufacturing we need is not only skilled labor, but highly skilled labor which is not only in short supply, but requires a reorientation of our education and training matrix domestically to address the short and long term lack of resources. That's before we even address the scale required to mass produce like our global competitors, the deregulation required to even contemplate it, and the supply chains necessary to execute.
Manufacturing employment beyond engineering, IT, and specialty technicians is on the bullet train of obsolescence. Why we would go to war with the world economically to try and protect it is beyond me. Don't protect, create and innovate. That's what always made us better.
Questions:
1) for people whose basic skill set aligns with manufacturing work and not "create & innovate", what exactly are they to do for employment?
2) if the USA can cost effectively run automotive assembly plants, why can't it also run automotive component manufacturing? HVAC manufacturing [easily brought back]? Similar?
3) is the USA's national defense better by destroying the manufacturing base?
4) why did the USA create an economic environment that lead to offshoring tech manufacturing?
5) how many items do you own that are created by basic manufacturing skills? Cars, HVAC, appliances, etc.?
6) how many items do you that utilize tech manufacturing? Phones, cars, computers, pads, etc.
7) how often do you make phones calls, utilize the internet, etc.?
Throwing shade on manufacturing as part of a balanced economy is very 1990s.
These questions rely heavily on simplified assumptions (political narratives), false binaries, and an outdated understanding of how manufacturing fits into a modern economy.
1) For people whose basic skill set aligns with manufacturing work and not "create & innovate," what exactly are they to do for employment?
First I'd say make some effort to up-skill, but second with a long term unemployment rate of 3-5%, I'd say keep working as they are now. The myth of suffering is greatly overstated. Of course you're assuming manufacturing jobs are inherently accessible to the "basic skill set." That may have been true in 1955, but today's advanced manufacturing jobs require technical proficiency, digital fluency, and adaptive learning. The path forward isn't protecting jobs that no longer exist, it's expanding access to training, apprenticeships, and skilled trades that align with the demands of high-tech industry. Protecting obsolete roles keeps workers trapped in economic limbo. Empowering them through modern upskilling creates mobility.
2) If the USA can cost-effectively run automotive assembly plants, why can't it also run component manufacturing? HVAC manufacturing [easily brought back]? Similar?
Because assembly and component production are not the same thing. Assembly plants often benefit from logistics advantages, market proximity, and automation, making them viable in the U.S. Components, on the other hand, are part of a global, just-in-time supply chain with cost sensitive parts often manufactured at scale abroad. Simply asking "why not?" ignores economies of scale, labor intensity, material costs, regulatory burdens, and existing supplier networks. We can't rebuild the entire system by fiat.
3) Is the USA's national defense better by destroying the manufacturing base?
This is a straw man. No one is arguing for the destruction of the manufacturing base. The argument is to modernize it, invest in defense critical industries, dual use technologies, and resilient supply chains. Protecting commodity production like textiles or toaster ovens has nothing to do with national defense. Strategic reshoring of pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and rare earths? Absolutely. But conflating that with blanket manufacturing protection is lazy geopolitics.
4) Why did the USA create an economic environment that led to offshoring tech manufacturing?
Because multinational corporations pursued profit and efficiency in a globalized system we helped architect. This wasn't some deep-state plot, it was the logical output of comparative advantage, currency dynamics, foreign labor markets, and demand for lower consumer prices. The solution isn't isolationism, it's building a domestic ecosystem that's attractive to high-end production, which includes stable policy, workforce investment, deregulation, and competitive tax and infrastructure systems.
5) How many items do you own that are created by basic manufacturing skills? Cars, HVAC, appliances, etc.?
Plenty. But owning them doesn't mean they need to be made here, or that we benefit from doing so. Global specialization allows the U.S. to lead in innovation while importing goods that are lower margin and labor intensive. There's a difference between using a product and needing to produce it locally. It's called economic efficiency, and it's a feature, not a flaw.
6) How many items do you own that utilize tech manufacturing? Phones, cars, computers, pads, etc.?
All of them, and this actually supports my point. These are the types of manufacturing that are capital-intensive, IP driven, and require high-skill labor, the very sectors we should be focused on strengthening. Trying to preserve low wage, low skill production to satisfy a nostalgic vision of factory floors doesn't move us forward. Investing in these tech heavy industries, supply chain resilience, and workforce capability does.
7) How often do you make phone calls, utilize the internet, etc.?
Constantly, which proves my point. Our economy is increasingly digital, decentralized, and service oriented. That doesn't mean we don't need manufacturing, but it means we need the right kind of manufacturing, embedded in future facing industries, not revived mid-century models. BTW, China's economy has been maturing in this direction as well. Less manufacturing employment and greater service orientation.
As for your "1990s" jab, if anything's outdated, it's the belief that manufacturing = national greatness and that trade protectionism can reverse 40 years of structural, capital, and technological change. The real danger is not moving forward and doubling down on a vision of the past that no longer maps to economic reality. Making the working and middle class pay for that folly through tariffs is downright 1890's.
You are basically making the same arguments that have been made for 30 years and have proven to be erroneous in practice. Real world trumps [pun intended] theoretical economics.
How many decades of a failing imbalanced economy are necessary for you to admit the error?
Or it simply, "I am a winner in the new economy, screw those other folks. Let them eat cake."?
Your arguments are similar to defense spending choices that focused on big ticket projects and left the USA vulnerable to the uglies of real world conflicts.
As an aside, you are arguing against economic choices that pick winners while ignoring the fact that prior choices created the current winner & loser lists.
It doesn't take much time in the Rust Belt v. SFO/Austin to see the real world impact on people who lives were upended v. the lives of the people throne on the trash heap.
Before pretending moral superiority, send some time in Akron, Dayton, Scranton, etc.
And if pure Free Trade is the answer, why aren't we 30 years into bliss by this point?
Hint: pure free trade will never work when 99% of the players are cheating.
Let's set the record straight, emotional appeals and references to decaying Rust Belt towns don't make for a policy. They make for political theater, and worse, they paper over the fact that the "solution" being pushed here boils down to higher prices for the middle class in exchange for chasing a nostalgic fantasy of manufacturing that no longer exists.
You accuse me of repeating 30 year old economic theory. Ironic as you're pushing a 100-year-old economic myth, one where factories hum with workers and tariffs create middle-class prosperity. That world is gone. Modern manufacturing is capital intensive, automated, and requires highly specialized labor. The jobs you're romanticizing low-skill, high-pay, low education don't exist anymore in a competitive global economy. No tariff is going to bring them back. And pretending otherwise is not economic strategy, it's economic cosplay.
You say free trade failed. No, it didn't fail. If anything it was our domestic policy that failed. We liberalized trade and then gutted vocational training, underinvested in infrastructure, got into climate and environmental regulation insanity, and leaned into labor union and "victim" employment restrictions. We even had our own internal "state-sourcing" that hurt the rust belt as factories moved to more favorable Southern locales to avoid those competitive handcuffs. That's not on "theory", that's on decades of short-sighted, cowardly policymaking, from both parties and at all levels. But don't confuse that with a call to abandon trade itself, or to pretend that raising tariffs is somehow a moral or strategic answer. It's neither.
And here's the part you really don't address: tariffs are a tax. They don't fall on China or Mexico, they fall on Americans, and disproportionately on the working and middle class Americans you claim to champion. You're asking those very people to pay more for cars, appliances, clothing, and food to finance a failed experiment in industrial resurrection, and worse a small segment of the employment population. That's not justice. That's economic sabotage, packaged in populist rhetoric.
You offer no serious plan, just grievance and a tired narrative. No investment strategy. No training programs. No innovation policy. Just "make stuff here" and punish those who don't. If that's all we've got, then we've already lost.
And here's the kicker, you call this a failed system, but this "failure" has produced the largest, most advanced economy in human history, one that has added trillions to GDP, lifted hundreds of millions into prosperity, and made the U.S. dollar the anchor of the global financial system. It's the only reason Trump has any leverage to wield tariffs at all. Without this open, globally integrated economy, the U.S. wouldn't have the consumer base, the technological dominance, or the capital market gravity to make anyone flinch at our trade policy. You're attacking the very engine that gives us power. And you completely ignore that we dominate the globe in services and are a significant net exporter of such. Is that failing?
The answer to decades of disinvestment and regional inequality isn't to light the global economy on fire and hope the smoke turns into jobs. The answer is to invest in the future, not resurrect the past. That means building modern infrastructure, upskilling workers, deregulating, decentralizing innovation, and yes, competing and aligning globally, not retreating behind tariffs and pretending we're doing something brave.
If your best pitch is "it hasn't worked in 30 years," (while imperfect, is a lie to classify as not working at all), at least then maybe it's time to stop proposing the same failed response in reverse. We don't need protectionism. We need performance.
Amazed how you can wrap valid points within a completely warped narrative.
Does the USA need to vastly scale back regulations? Yes
Increase educational opportunities? Yes
Fix broken trade unionism? Yes
You chest beat over a strong service economy.
Ever try to drive a car with 3 great engines and 2 solid transmissions, but no chassis, steering wheel, wheels, brakes, tires, etc.?
You are selling the "we can be a one trick pony" narrative assuming that such positioning can never fail.
News Flash: all systems eventually fail. Every single one.
Delaying failure is based on resiliency. Resiliency is based on diversity.
All the eggs in one basket is great until you drop the basket or someone knocks it over.
What happens in your world when the rest of the globe that makes stuff decides they are tired of paying for the USA service economy? You are building a one legged stool and being willfully ignorant to the dangers because it won't fail in your lifetime.
And you are turning a blind eye to Americans suffering by the decisions that enriched you. Maybe our policy should be to take your gains to educate those people that lost jobs to policies that enriched you. Send us your address and we will send you a bill.
Your "the answer to failure is tripling down on the same policies" is insanity.
Absolute free trade will never work because it is human nature to cheat, lie & steal.
Same reason communism is nonsense.
A healthy checks & balances system…….including tariffs…….is necessary to counterbalance the lying, cheating & stealing that other countries will inevitably engage in.
American free trade purists are basically pimping the rest of society.
The people that want basic protection aren't misinformed. They see you for what you are.
The problem isn't the need for working harder, or smarter, or……as you post….performance.
The problem is too much back house and not enough front house. It is a lack of systemic fairness.
It is people in cubicles and at keyboards thinking that they add far more value than they do.
It is a system that takes 2 step processes and makes them 100 step nightmares.
2 out of 3 industries that were offshored are operationally financially competitive absent the government millstones and unfair trade practices. Not all, but about 2 of 3.
Tariffs to make trade more fair is a great idea.
Tariffs to help industries return home to operate in a competitive environment is difficult but worthwhile.
Pretending that our trade partners will magically stop lying, cheating & stealing is naive.
