It's not about slave labor, it's about manufacturing equipment. I suspect it was turned down, because helping the northeast survive a pandemic was not perceived as worth any political risk/capital.
Wait. According to that article, the last major mask manufacturer in US offered to increase production and was turned down by government.
> "In the end, the government did not take Bowen up on his offer. Even today[May 9, 2020], production lines that could be making more than 7 million masks a month sit dormant."
That article was published in May 9. Even on May 9, the production lines were dormant. How could this happen? It is unfathomable. The country probably had masks shortage since March. It is so hard to believe some of the things that happened this year.
The consequences of that slave labor are far more on Chinese society than just the manufacturing dominance. There are a lot of things that are negative such as hatred of the CCP, that these policies are creating in China. The facade may look good, but there are cracks in China's foundation because of these decisions.
Depends on the face mask you're talking about here. A friend of my brother works for a company that makes unrelated clothing, furniture, and other comfort type items. They make all of their products here in the USA. They started up mask production in march. They're high quality washable cloth masks. I bought a few and have been using them when I need to go out. They're about twice the price of similar ones on amazon but much higher quality.
As for mass produced surgical masks? Yeah we don't have the manufacturing base for that sort of thing anymore unfortunately.
This is somewhere near the very bottom of a ranked list of US problems in this pandemic. Manufacturing takes time to significantly ramp up regardless of where it is, it’s not clear there would have been a major difference between what we did in waiting until we could buy more masks overseas vs waiting for US production to ramp up. And we had supposedly already alleviated this problem anyway with national stockpiles, except that those had not been maintained. Fixing that mistake is much easier and probably even more effective than undoing the globalization of the past few decades.
And honestly, by about April this year when China started having the virus under control and reopened their manufacturing sector at full capacity, it’s a good thing they were equipped to manufacture so many essential items. The US started running into capacity problems with some of the industries we do have like meat processing plants, if we relied more heavily on domestic manufacturing we actually would have been worse off over that period.
Average salary in Shenzhen (2019) was 127K yuan, or about $18K usd. Average salary (manufacturing) in the US is about $30K usd.
I'm sure that after you adjust for cost of living, the numbers more or less look equal. However, keep in mind that manufacturing is leaving Shenzhen because of rising wages.
Have as your "goal" less the desire to "win" the global competition for corporate profits & corporate headquartering of multinationals in your nation simply on grounds of labor/profit competitiveness, and take a more nationalist view of, where necessary, having state run enterprises or "free market" competition within your borders but not complete free trade in a global sense.
In other words, do no necessarily pursue as your goal to structure economy either to have most profitable companies that reduce costs by moving labor around the world to find cheapest workers, or those which try to export the most. Have as your goal at least to produce domestically as much as possible to satisfy domestic consumption demands, as well as having some minimal threshold of employed domestic workers.
As it stands, US has a massive trade deficit, and a decades long decline in working age male population, especially in "flyover" US regions where manufacturing has declined the most while not being replaced by equivalent jobs. These regions also have declining population, rising suicide & opiate death rates, declining family formation / birthrates.
The "telos" of our society should not put as its "end" an economy, especially one which pursues profit above all.
The economy should be a tool in service to outcomes we actually desire.
Like software built to do a job, not simply designed for the production of specific features.
This is where global financial capitalism (as the US has a giant capital surplus which balances its trade deficit) needs to be called into question.
Internal free markets is one thing. But not having a national industrial policy which prioritizes the well being of domestic workers and their families over well being of multinational corporations and banks makes our system quite degenerate over time.
People should really take a few minutes and watch these 2 videos explaining the current account[0] and capital account[1] relationship, and understand that how we operate now is a political choice, which has massive consequences on who benefits of this system accrue to, and who pays the costs of this system.
This system is maintained by having the reserve currency and the state using strong efforts over many years to not only maintain this GRC but strengthen it, not allowing the natural devaluation of the $ that would close these 2 imbalances and more closely balance capital and labor.
Also, it is not a requirement to have a well developed economy and run massive trade deficits or not have a thriving industrial sector. Germany and Japan are 2 examples that do not run giant trade deficits like the US [3]
This is an insightful comment that clarifies and distills some of my own thinking on the subject.
The blind pursuit of efficiency optimizes for the macro numbers at the expense of gutting the structure of the labor market and lived experience of people.
It’s far better to have a lower per capita GDP with a more equitable distribution of resources (such as a higher household income across quantiles)
It seems clear that some level of tariffs, caps on FDI, etc are “good inefficiencies” if done correctly.
In efficient, highly optimized economies such as the United States and most of the European Union, the border guards' job is to prevent people from entering and participating in those economies illegally.
In the countries with low GDPs and highly equitable distribution of resources -- North Korea, East Germany, Cuba, the Soviet Union, for example -- the border guards' job is to prevent people from escaping.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/in-the-early-d...