[WheelsAtLarge]

Bringing back manufacturing to the US will be extremely hard.

1) US citizens want top dollar for their labor and the lowest price for the product. 2 opposing forces.

2) The US has lost the experienced labor force that's needed

3) Regulations make it very expensive to start and maintain a factory.

4) The median age in the US is over 38 yrs old. Way past the education and career-building ages.

5) The US has started to limit immigration so importing the talent will not happen.

6) Capitalism rules in the US. And Capitalism says build it at the lowest price possible. Which rules out the US.

7) As the US population ages, more of the country's resources will be focused on health care and the care of the elderly and less on creating a manufacturing workforce.

8) Robotics is not always the cheapest form of manufacturing. Building it outside US will still have its advantages.

It's not impossible but it will take a few generations and a consistent US policy to do it.

[magicsmoke]

The article is about semiconductor manufacturing. That's not a labor intensive manufacturing industry where the US workforce has a disadvantage in.

[WheelsAtLarge]

That's not necessarily correct. True the US is a top manufacturer but a lot of key personnel are imported from other countries since they can't be found in the US.

https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2019-H1B-Visa-Category.as...

[jcranmer]

If you look at the data, you'll notice that the dominating H1-B visa category is some variation on the IT workers. You'll also notice that many of the largest companies are Indian offshoring companies. So the number of visas there aren't reflective so much of a skills shortage in the US as a desire to hire foreign people for cheaper.

[mydongle]

It seems so unsustainable to avoid training your own people and instead exporting these valuable skills to people in other countries which are not guaranteed to be friendly with us forever.

[WheelsAtLarge]

True, but that's been the argument against outsourcing manufacturing for 40+ years. Yet, it is still being done.

I think the best the US can do, right now, is to import from countries where it has some clout and can better control manufacturing. It's crazy to think that a big chunk of your products are being manufactured in China, a country that is competing against you.

[Barrin92]

>True, but that's been the argument against outsourcing manufacturing for 40+ years. Yet, it is still being done.

And it's generally made the world a better place. Even current conflicts don't even remotely compare to the Cold War. Some historical perspective may be needed but the world is better off if it engages in trade and specialisation. Nobody gains from the US retreating into a new era of isolation.

[remarkEon]

Missing the /s?

The entire world now has single points of failure because of this kind of specialization. Sure, it makes certain classes lots of money but it forces others into poverty and when bad things happen suddenly your supply for critical goods is cut off. To say nothing of the geopolitical consequences here, where letting so much of high tech manufacturing accrue in one country presents tremendous risk if anything goes sideways.

[jmeister]

Parent is talking about outsourcing in general.

You are talking about risk from concentrating supply chains in a single (foreign) country.

[magicsmoke]

What happens when policy makers learn about comparative advantage in undergraduate economics but don't realize it only illustrates a snapshot in time.

[wbl]

I assure you California is not losing against France in winemaking. The China shock was a one-time event that enriched billions of poor people who will be the world's consumers.

[jcranmer]

> 3) Regulations make it very expensive to start and maintain a factory.

If we're talking about semiconductor fabrication, I'd be surprised if the regulatory costs were more than a few million dollars... for a factory that will cost a few billion dollars.

[klyrs]

> 4) The median age in the US is over 38 yrs old. Way past the education and career-building ages.

I'm 39 and generally dissatisfied with the work I'm qualified to do, and I might need to work another 30 years at the rate we're going (fml). I'd jump on a government grant for training in an industry with promised growth at this point.

[jmeister]

Interesting.

Would you mind sharing what industry you work in now please?

Also, how’d you feel about working with colleagues who are far younger, say early 20s, just graduated from college? (No snark, genuine curiosity)

[wbl]

9) a competitive fab is a massive capital investment

[DXA9zE]

I don't know if it was mentioned in the article but TSMC also has some US-based development under aegis of WaferTech.

[WheelsAtLarge]

Highly polluting too

[FlyMoreRockets]

What pollutants does a fab emit? I worked at an Intel fab a few decades ago, and didn't note significant emissions. Maybe I missed something.

[erik_seaberg]

The way I would put it is, chip fab processes use toxic and carcinogenic chemicals and waste that must be monitored, because historically they just let it leak or dumped it and left Superfund sites in their wake. Probably not as bad as mining but it tends to happen in more populated areas …

https://cleanair.camfil.us/2017/11/21/toxic-danger-silicon-v...

[kken]

This is something that happened in the 70ies. The industry has come a long way since then.

[forgot_again]

1) There are many ways to lower costs to make US chips competitive.

2) That's simply false.

3) Regulations can be dealt with. This current administration seems quite willing to do away with them.

4) The median age in China is 38 years too. This is an irrelevant point.

5) Rare talent needed for chip manufacturing will still be able to come in even with updated immigration rules.

6) See point 1. Also things are more complicated than that.

7) This makes no sense.

8) Subsidies and advanced automation will help here.