> Everyone thinks China leads the world in manufacturing because of labor costs. Ha, no. China's far richer now. It started out as the labor costs, but now it's the vertical integration
The US is behind China on key manufacturing sectors, but over the last few years this is changing in a big way. And I agree that China no longer has the labor cost advantage, but that also means that the US has a good chance to catch up now.
The last few years have seen an absolutely unprecedented boom in factory construction in the US. A lot of those are for green energy, but because green energy somewhat politically incorrect in the rural red areas where these go, there's not much local news about them.
So sure for plastic and PCBs, the US is not competitive and hasn't cared to be for a long time. But for emerging technologies like green energy, we have it in us to recapture the sector.
And maybe the needs of these other sectors will push local suppliers to want to be competitive, if the volumes are large enough. Because if there is a big enough customer, they can be competitive. But if a persons new project is not big enough to move the needle for a company in the US, why would they change their practice for PCB production?
I like the optimism, and it is true that the US invested a lot in battery and solar manufacturing, but outside that there has been no real growth or negative growth in the other manufacturing sectors. And even in battery and solar production we're a small fish. Even the wildest interpretations of the “Inflation Reduction Act” don’t claim to change this. I said more downthread, but US battery production actually fell to third recently, between Poland and Hungary.
At the end of the day, having one or two highly specific sectors with growth is basically nothing. It’s one or two drops in one or two buckets and there are thousands of buckets and modern manufacturing relies on those buckets being literally right next to each other. US lawmakers will throw a few bucks to the sexiest and trendiest buckets but what we really need is the least sexy parts; the business logistics and the suppliers, the raw materials, the moldmakers, etc. In 2024, the cheapest way to get aluminum stock or untold many other essential supplies quickly delivered to your business is to pay consumer prices for a million individually wrapped units at Amazon and then pay an employee to unbox them. What we need is broad and large scale vertical manufacturing if we want to be competitive and that is obvious to anyone who manufactures in the US.
Well the factories are just getting completed now, downstream effects wouldn't be expected until later.
This is like people saying for the past decade that solar will never be anything because it was <1% of energy production.
Predicting the future based on position only works if the velocity growth is the same for all points. I don't think that will be the case. Unless we just give up, and actively choose not to compete.
The US is behind China on key manufacturing sectors, but over the last few years this is changing in a big way. And I agree that China no longer has the labor cost advantage, but that also means that the US has a good chance to catch up now.
The last few years have seen an absolutely unprecedented boom in factory construction in the US. A lot of those are for green energy, but because green energy somewhat politically incorrect in the rural red areas where these go, there's not much local news about them.
https://www.volts.wtf/p/how-is-new-clean-energy-manufacturin...
So sure for plastic and PCBs, the US is not competitive and hasn't cared to be for a long time. But for emerging technologies like green energy, we have it in us to recapture the sector.
And maybe the needs of these other sectors will push local suppliers to want to be competitive, if the volumes are large enough. Because if there is a big enough customer, they can be competitive. But if a persons new project is not big enough to move the needle for a company in the US, why would they change their practice for PCB production?