[iteratethis]

This won't bring home manufacturing but let's say that it will...

The US doesn't have the people to do the actual manufacturing. I saw a video recently explaining how sectors like the military, construction and the automotive industry each have 100K+ positions that they are unable to fill. A return to manufacturing adds to that shortage.

Apparently there's some 7 million young men of working age that are...missing in action. Self-isolated, gaming, addictions.

In construction, for every 5 people that retire, only 2 enter. And it's been like that for over 10 years. The people aren't there nor is the motivation.

I'm sure you'll have Apple investing in a mega plant where 50 educated people push some buttons though.

[forgotoldacc]

This is precisely the problem.

Plus, even assuming there existed lots of people to fill the gap, why would they sign up for manufacturing jobs? They pay like crap. Unions and worker rights have been gradually chipped away at for years and now they're straight up chainsawing them. Why work a monotonous job that pays at or just slightly above minimum wage, has skills that aren't really transferable should you decide to change careers, is rough on the body and doesn't even provide proper health care or sick days to rest, and employers will call you in during natural disasters with the threat of firing you otherwise and then leave you to literally die while pretending it's not their fault when you do die? [1]

It's companies and the government saying, "We want everything, and in exchange, we'll give you nothing. And you will be happy." No American sees their kid growing up and thinks, "I hope my child will one day work long hours at a factory." People in some countries do, and it's because those jobs are a step up from the current standard. Factory jobs in the US are, in many cases, a step down and that step keeps lowering. High tech/high skilled manufacturing can be an exception, but the bulk of the jobs they're hoping to bring back aren't that.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/11/02/g-s1-28731/hurricane-helene-t...

[palmotea]

> Plus, even assuming there existed lots of people to fill the gap, why would they sign up for manufacturing jobs? They pay like crap.

Maybe that's just you talking from a position of relative privilege (e.g. as someone who's likely an extremely well-paid software engineer or some adjacent profession), and not really understanding other people's situation. Not everyone has a pick of the perfect career that ticks every box.

It's very well document that there are lots people bitter those manufacturing jobs got off-shored, and lots of communities that wish they'd reopen "the plant."

[Qworg]

It isn't just "reopen the plant" - it is "reopen the plant and match economic conditions in the time period from the 1950s-1990s".

Just reopening won't bring back the comparably high wages from that time period.

[palmotea]

> Just reopening won't bring back the comparably high wages from that time period.

It's a start though. If the plant stays closed, those "comparably high wages" certainly aren't coming back. If the plant opens, there's a chance.

There's a lot of "letting the perfect be the enemy of the good" protecting a shitty status quo: "don't do that because it doesn't fix X," implicitly requires that one solution fix everything perfectly all at once.

[Qworg]

I'm not saying it has to be perfect.

I'm saying that this outcome will never exist because more has changed than just the plant closing. If we coupled "reopen the plant" with "the plant makes entirely new things" and "the plant trains local workers to take these jobs" and "the plant pays above local service/construction wages" and "the plant will be successful in geopolitical competition" and "the plant can do 10x the amount of business due to advances in automation to get to the same level of employment" and on and on.

We could solve _each_ of these problems, absolutely - but they are all interlocking parts of a wicked problem. Blowing up the economy and threatening a global recession won't actually solve any of these.

[palmotea]

> Blowing up the economy and threatening a global recession won't actually solve any of these.

But neither will the status quo.

[sn9]

That's a helluva defense of nuking our trade relationships and sparking a trade war.

Like it wasn't perfect but it sure was preferable to what's about to come.

We could have kept that and implemented policies that were far less painful and far more likely to increase wages.

[palmotea]

> We could have kept that and implemented policies that were far less painful and far more likely to increase wages.

Yeah, but we didn't, so this is what we get.

That's why, ultimately, I blame Democrats for Trump. They had many opportunities to improve things, but they chose to ignore the trouble and prioritize other stuff more amiable to their increasingly upper-class base. The root cause was their neglect of the building pressure, Trump is just the explosion. They keep claiming they're the competent and responsible ones, but they are just irresponsible in a different, more subtle way.

[h2zizzle]

Yes, the hard part is convincing owners to part with their wealth in order to fund better pay. This is partly because they themselves are wrapped up in a massive obligatory apparatus; call it "the financialization of the economy." I'm by no measure a Trump supporter, but I do hope that what we're seeing is a proper crash that wipes out some of these folks. Once defaults are rampant, you'll have destroyed a lot of wealth, but also a lot of the obligations that necessitated all of this shifting of wealth upward in the first place. You'd also have a lot of very sophisticated people in the clock-in line, suddenly very interested in pay equity. That's one of the happier scenarios, at least.

[forgotoldacc]

I'm from a very poor Appalachian town. My only option to better my life was to get up and leave.

People from my hometown do talk about the good old days. People worked at union factories and my grandfather worked a well paying railroad job. My no-name town of 1000 people had a train station that made it possible to go to NYC. My grandpa got paid a handsome retirement from the railroad company. When he died, my grandmother was able to receive his benefits.

My hometown votes against building railways. The station has long crumbled. They vote against unions. The factories are long gone. They've voted against any sort of retirement benefits. The elderly are struggling and depending on churches handing out food.

Even if those factories come back, they'll be paid less than my ancestors did. They'll never have an affordable link to cities hours away. They'll never get the retirement benefits my ancestors had. And if you mention giving them these benefits, they yell and say they don't want them. The youth in my hometown who worked hard in school (we somehow had a decent school, all things considered) used their education as a ticket out. Now the people there are pissed and they're coming for education next.

These people don't want "the plant." They want to be young again, without understanding that their youth was great because my ancestors busted their asses to give us great opportunities. They squandered everything that was given to us.

[areoform]

I'm sorry to hear that. That's genuinely painful to read, but it's a reality that I've seen reflected elsewhere.

I tend to think about Feynman's Challenger commission report whenever I come across stories like yours, "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."

For a successful society, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. And yes, nature will come for us all be it pestilence or disease, or a storm that washes it all away. Nature never stops.

We created civilization and society as a way to escape nature's wrath. To become something more, to rise above the muck, and when we degrade that we will inevitably go back to the muck.

[lynx97]

32 years after my father died, I still only get 1.9x the pay he used to get for manual labour. Given that inflation goes roughly double every 20 years, its clear I am getting less pay then he did. I also had to leave my village, because there were simply zero good opportunities to work in IT. The young leaving rural villages are pretty much common, and has almost nothing to do with how people vote. Neither in which country they actually reside. Its a downward trend, everywhere.

[cosmic_cheese]

My background is very similar. Grew up in a small, poor mountain town that once boomed with industry but today is crumbling to dust as the population becomes increasingly elderly and young people either leave for greener pastures or abuse substances in order to escape their reality and succumb to addiction.

The industry that once fueled the town is long gone and isn’t ever coming back, and as you say even if a new industry moved in the jobs it’d open up would be so grueling and abusive that it wouldn’t be a net improvement to anybody’s lives, thanks to all the worker protections stripped away over the years.

It’s not enough to “just” make jobs available. They need to be good jobs with proper protections and support that allow people to thrive.

[nthingtohide]

This is very telling. The American Empire didn't even work for Americans. Who really benefitted? Just the Elites? Why should common people care about propping up an empire if the people in power don't bother about them. For context, read this thread.

https://x.com/yishan/status/1906592890845028405

[kristjansson]

> Why should common people care

because, like Yishan is saying, they don't even realize the 'empire' _is_ working for them. We sit around in absolute physical security, awash in cheap goods, able to travel anywhere, finding our cultural and technological products in demand across most of the world, ...

We only feel want in areas like medicine and education where protectionism and prejudice have prevented us from fully enjoying the benefits of that position.

[e40]

Many if us can’t read threads because we don’t have accounts there anymore.

[42772827]

https://nitter.net/yishan/status/1906592890845028405

[abnercoimbre]

Since you grew up there, what was their rationale for repudiating pro-labor policies at the ballot box?

[forgotoldacc]

The guys on TV told them the people who supported it were communist and unions are for lazy people and welfare queens. They were told by the people on TV that if they vote against this, then those people will have worse and they'll have it better.

45 minutes down the road was a town with a large black population. When people talked about "those people in (town name)" being lazy or "those people" getting jobs or "those welfare queens" somehow benefiting from anything, everybody knew what they were talking about. It was better to be racist instead of caring about the future of their children

Now, decades later, it's still the same. "Welfare queen" isn't the word that's used much anymore--everyone knows it's used as a substitute for various racial slurs and it's hard to deny it. Instead, they complain about DEI and woke. They replaced the word, but the meaning is the same. They still deny that it's meant to refer to "those people", but they always mention "that" town name when talking about it.

[sjsdaiuasgdia]

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

- Lyndon B. Johnson

[kristjansson]

They squandered the sacrifice of their parents, and now they're asking their children to sacrifice for their benefit.

[Bhilai]

Reminds me on 'the town' in the book Damon Copperhead.

[hackable_sand]

I worked in a factory. I agree with gp. Don't you dare speak for me.

[cmrdporcupine]

> Why work a monotonous job that pays at or just slightly above minimum wage,

If you torpedo the economy so people have no other sources of income, raise the price of all goods, and cut of all social supports and programs, people will have no choice but to take jobs they would have turned their noises up at before.

Draining the swamp is winning!

[e40]

This. It’s the primary feature of the long term plan.

[charlie90]

>They pay like crap.

Then raise the wages. Yes that means products get more expensive, but so be it. The economy will find a new equilibrium. White collar workers will see their purchasing power decrease, but factory workers will see it increase.

>No American sees their kid growing up and thinks, "I hope my child will one day work long hours at a factory."

Maybe its just me, but I think theres something seriously wrong with society if people have existential dread over the thought of having to produce the things they consume. If the production of it is so unethical, it shouldn't be consumed at all.

[forgotoldacc]

> Then raise the wages.

The same people proposing bringing back all these factories also want to lower wages.

The dread isn't over production. It's about the conditions they face while producing them. Americans dream about having a small farm and doing their own woodworking and blacksmithing or doing so with a small community. They don't dream about working on a factory line and being fired if they miss a day due to being sick. But at the same time, if someone else says they don't want this, they call them lazy and say the kids don't want to work these days.

It's an odd paradox.

And high skilled manufacturing still exists in America. That work is often paid decently and people are fine with working those jobs. The problem is tariffs being made to bring back low skilled manufacturing, and the desire to make the standards of employment lower in the US so that it's feasible.

[SpicyLemonZest]

> Americans dream about having a small farm and doing their own woodworking and blacksmithing or doing so with a small community. They don't dream about working on a factory line and being fired if they miss a day due to being sick.

They dream about being treated better than that, but this is a big cultural gap. There are a lot of Americans who do, genuinely, dream about working somewhat hard factory jobs. They feel proud and fulfilled that they work in the steel mill just like their dad and grandpa and great-grandpappy, and they want to make sure their son will have the same opportunity.

[mjevans]

F-Them... I want a future of Star Trek replicators that can molecular print most of the stuff I want. Heavy engineering seems to still need at least some high energy refinement though. (Or at the very least, replicators with different composition.)

[UncleMeat]

The tariffs are high, but not 1,000% or whatever. If the alternative is "build new factories in the US, substantially raise wages and benefits for employees to encourage them to leave service positions for these roles, and then spend time training them" then the furniture from Vietnam with a 50% tariff is still going to be cheaper.

[stefs]

the good production worker's wages came from the unions. the GOP is fervently anti-union (with the exception of the police union maybe). they also oppose minium wages. there is no reason to think they'd support wage raises.

[vv_]

> Then raise the wages.

Then no one will be able to afford the products the plant is going to build.

[skywal_l]

They were able to in the 50s/60s/70s. So why not now?

[vv_]

Everyone in the United States was much more well off in the 50s/60s/70s as they had just won a huge war that left most of their competitors factories completely destroyed. There's no economic boom today.

[runako]

The triumph of conservative ideology has broken the unions. No individual factory worker has the leverage to negotiate a better compensation package against the professional management team at Gap or Deere.

The 80s was a period of explicitly designing for this condition; it's just taken a while for the ramifications to be acute. Although it's been obvious for decades that we were headed here.

[e40]

You mean back when rich people paid serious taxes?

[bcrosby95]

Wealth inequality. Increases in productivity are going to the top, not the worker. It's also why social security is going broke. It could be funded if you remove the cap. Removing the cap wouldn't be necessary if there weren't such a wealth inequality problem.

The ultra wealthy are hoarding wealth then telling the rest of us we can't afford things we've afforded for over 50 years.

[ThrowawayR2]

> "They were able to in the 50s/60s/70s. So why not now?"

Because the 50s/60s/70s was the post-World War II economic boom for the US. Unless you're volunteering to endure World War III so that the next generation can enjoy that kind of boom, that is not going to happen again.

[Draiken]

The line must go up.

[hagbarth]

Because there was a shift to shareholder capitalism. Everything is done to increase shareholder value.

[ImPleadThe5th]

It's a vicious cycle. But at the end of the day it's the _company_ that has to entice workers.

[vv_]

The _company_ also has to stay competitive to make money.

[ImPleadThe5th]

Won't even have a product if you can't convince people to work for you. Believe it or not, its actually the workers who do most of the work.

[selimthegrim]

Wow I guess that WEF quote was true but just within boundaries of USA.

[arkh]

> rough on the body and doesn't even provide proper health care or sick days to rest

That's why I'm bullish on human shaped drones controlled with full-body trackers. If you could do most physical jobs without being physically near the area you'd open them to more women (so widening the potential workforce) and improve on-the-job accidents statistics.

[mdda]

and (of course) the company will record the data so that the robots will be able to learn via imitation learning ASAP

[danpalmer]

I heard a great story from a colleague that worked in fashion development in the UK. There's a big push for "Made in the UK" clothing and consumers associate it with quality, but the items are lower quality, because the UK lost its garment manufacturing skills 50+ years ago. Meanwhile Asia has gained those skills, so if you buy clothes from China they are likely higher quality than you'd get here and cheaper.

This is not always the case, Italy still makes high quality leather goods, Portugal is still making good shirts and trousers etc, but for the most part as economies have moved away from manufacturing into services they have lost the skills and to force manufacturing to happen there means accepting higher priced, lower quality products.

[smokel]

This has probably little to do with skill being lost, and more with how little one gets paid to do this kind of work. Skilled people can get jobs in other fields that earn a lot more.

[lotsofpulp]

Skilled people don’t just appear out of thin air. Skilled people need years of practice, and advice from a network of adjacent skilled people to become skilled in a particular craft.

You can be skilled at Excel and be 10 years away from knowing how to make even mass produced low quality clothing.

[danpalmer]

No no, it's the skills. My colleague worked for a very high priced fashion brand who were able to pay high rates (and indeed did for this and other parts), but they couldn't get the quality they needed.

At the low end, sure, it's obvious you'll get more for your money abroad. The point here is that the skills are lost and you can't pay any amount anymore, at least not at scale (there will always be artisans who can produce extremely low volumes but these don't affect the market much).

[mitthrowaway2]

Skilled people are still mortal and after a couple generations, they do pass away. They won't be replaced by new skilled apprentices if the industry hasn't been hiring.

[coderenegade]

I don't know that I agree with this. The US is too large a market to ignore, and this is effectively raising the profit margin for local production. Foreign companies will either move some portion of manufacturing to the US (for the domestic market), or cede the market completely, and I don't know that they're prepared to do that (well, maybe Chinese ones are). Factories have a long lead time, so even if this is abolished at the end of his term, they'll be locked in with sunk capital costs. The main reasons not to do this are a) abandoning the market, as mentioned, or b) you think you can hold out long enough until the political landscape changes.

If the people aren't there, wages will rise until they show up. Most labor shortages aren't an actual shortage of labor, unless you genuinely can't produce that skillset domestically, or your labor market is so tight that no one is unemployed; rather, they're a shortage of wages. Pay enough, and someone will do the job. This is especially true for low-skilled work. There is not, and never will be, a shortage of cleaners, for example, because anyone can do it, so as long as there are unemployed people and the wages are good enough, someone will do the work.

And even if these jobs aren't in running these factories, they've still got to be built. Money is a powerful motivator, so I have no doubt they will. Companies will bleed because of this, but there are clear benefits for the US working class even if they're paying more. The gamble is obviously that the benefits outweigh the negatives of higher prices overall. Modern economics says no, but modern economics also believes in service-based economies, and that countries should only produce what they're good at, which, eventually, becomes a repudiation of the nation state. No country wants to buy bullets from an enemy, even if they're cheaper, and the web of infrastructure and industry necessary to maintain a defense industry mandates that at some point, you abandon the theory. Which is to say: I don't know, but I'm also skeptical that economists do.

[sebastianz]

> If the people aren't there, wages will rise until they show up. [...] There is not, and never will be, a shortage of cleaners, for example, because anyone can do it, so as long as there are unemployed people and the wages are good enough, someone will do the work.

While this might be in a theoretical and pedantic way true, sometimes you do not have the economic context to provide those larger wages, so there will technically be no "shortage" - but just because the jobs themselves will disappear.

If you look at poor countries or regions, there is garbage, dirt and dilapidation everywhere. Clearly there is - in a practical way - a need for cleaners, but by your definition there is no "shortage" - because they cannot afford to pay anything for those jobs.

[mattlondon]

> effectively raising the profit margin for local production

This is the sad thing for US consumers.

If there is now a tariff on Product X that means instead of costing 100 it will now cost 125, I will guarantee you that the price for a locally produced competitor item will be 124.99 The local producers are not going to leave 25% profit on the table.

[franktankbank]

Why would it have to be that way? Are you imagining a monopoly on all locally produced goods? Why wouldn't there be competition with a healthyish margin? Seems entirely and 100% cynical.

[runako]

The point of raising a tariff on a $100 imported good to make it cost $125 is because the US provider cannot profitably sell for less than $125. The tariff doesn't magically fix the domestic provider's cost basis.

If the US provider was able to compete close to the $100 level (as they already have incentive to do!), there would be no complaint and no need for the tariff in the first place.

[franktankbank]

Well taking that 34% number as reference. You could have been brought from 0% margin to 34% with a penstroke. US manufacturers were ground down just to the level of being unprofitable for the last 4 decades, of course they are close to the break even level.

[runako]

Let's leave aside for a moment the notion that there are any significant number of US manufacturers making stuff for 0% margins.

So you suggest that increasing the tariff allows the US maker to increase their margin. We're not talking about them reducing input costs (in fact, the opposite in many cases), so the only way you could mean for them to increase their margin is by raising price. And to get the full benefit, you suggest they raise their price to match the price of the imports. And yes, this is what will happen, US makers will increase their prices because their low-cost competition is gone.

So you're now kind of agreeing with the poster you initially disagreed with.

(Of course, for many goods there are no US factories here and no reasonable ability to make the goods here at prices that would make sense, even accounting for high tariff barriers. So in those cases, consumers will just pay more for the same goods.)

[coderenegade]

Yes, but if the profit margin is now higher, it a) permits new competitors, and b) allows breathing room for debts to be paid off, and investments to be made that improve local capabilities. Like most things, tariffs can be good or bad. Yes, they can stifle innovation when there's no additional impetus for improvement, but they can also be necessary to protect local industries that are of strategic importance.

All industry exists in a web, and you can't just excise parts of that web without affecting the whole. The US has de-industrialized while its rivals have grown, and its global dominance is predicated on its technological and military lead. This de-industrialization was purely a function of financial incentives, whereby companies could juice their profit margins by seeking cheaper labor elsewhere, and skilling up foreign populations. But the bill for that is coming due now.

[Tuna-Fish]

No-one will move any manufacturing because people don't expect this to last long enough for it to make sense.

The congress can remove Trump's authority to determine tariffs at any point by declaring the crisis to be over. The Republicans have a knife-edge margin in the house and the most consistent two rules in American elections are that the party with the president loses some support in the midterms and that bad economic times means that the opposition party gains.

It would take years to move production, and next congress is 20 months away. There is no world in which this ends up good for the USA. Even if you believe that this is a situation where short-term pain leads to long-term gain, there is no way this will continue long enough for that gain to ever materialize.

[sorcerer-mar]

Yep, there will be a lot of promises for factories that should break ground in ~2028.

The White House has already demonstrated repeatedly it can't stick to its guns.

[foota]

> If the people aren't there, wages will rise until they show up. Most labor shortages aren't an actual shortage of labor, unless you genuinely can't produce that skillset domestically, or your labor market is so tight that no one is unemployed; rather, they're a shortage of wages

I don't know about this in the US. Sure, we're not at full employment, but I don't know how factory jobs are going to change that. My impression is that there is already a deficit in labor willing to work hard for good pay (construction, trucking, etc.,) and tightening immigration policies will make this even worse.

[coderenegade]

The definition of good pay is relative. Increase wages enough, and people will leave other industries, and new workers will join the workforce straight out of high school rather than going to university. Those jobs will be filled.

[foota]

Op is implying that there's excess labor lying around that with moderate prices (say, what you make in fields like construction, electrical work, etc.,) would be picked up. This isn't the case, or they'd already be taking the jobs in those fields that are relatively in demand.

I agree that if you paid people as much as software engineers to work in a factory you would certainly see disruptions in the labor market. I don't know what the market clearing price would be for factory labor sufficient to meet the US demand, but I don't think it'll be pretty.

[retrorangular]

To what benefit though? People in the US currently provide advanced services such as software sold to people everyplace, and people in developing nations are manufacturing cheap goods, sold to people everyplace.

After tariffs, people in the US are (maybe) manufacturing cheap goods, sold mostly only here, and developing nations continue to manufacture cheap goods for the rest of the world, and fewer people are providing advanced services such as software.

Overall, the world just becomes poorer and has fewer useful services provided. Yes, the US becomes less dependent on the rest of the world, but the rest of the world also becomes less dependent on the US. Material wellbeing of everyone is worse off.

But that's assuming all went to plan. In practice, it's hard to see how they would even achieve bringing manufacturing here through tariffs. Crashing the stock market is a sure-fire way to ensure the next administration (3.5 years away) will revoke them. You could install a dictatorship, but that makes it even less likely for companies to invest in the US. In practice, this will likely just make Americans poorer, but not bring any meaningful amount of manufacturing jobs back. Pretty much the epitome of "cutting off your nose to spite your face."

[iteratethis]

You say foreign companies will move manufacturing to the US or cede the market. You leave out the most likely option: everything will stay the same yet you pay more for your imports.

[Marsymars]

There probably isn't enough labour to onshore everything like you're implying.

The US currently consumes about half of its goods from domestic manufacturing. There are about 12 million people currently employed in manufacturing, and 7 million unemployed people. Matching the historical all-time low for unemployment rate would give around 4 million unemployed still.

> There is not, and never will be, a shortage of cleaners, for example, because anyone can do it, so as long as there are unemployed people and the wages are good enough, someone will do the work.

I mean, by that logic there's never a shortage of any profession. But in practice, I've seen what happens with a shortage of cleaners in a popular tourist town (my wife used to run a cleaning business) - it becomes nearly impossible to hire cleaners because everyone's salary in the area is inflated and people would rather work at an easier job. You run into persistent performance issues with your remaining cleaners - they're dishonest, simply stop showing up to work without notice, etc. You can't hire anyone from outside the area because there's no housing available other than dingy, overpriced basements. Holes get blown in the budgets of schools, hospitals, etc. because they have to contend with cleaning rates that are effectively set by the competitive market for cleaning AirBnBs.

[vv_]

> The US doesn't have the people to do the actual manufacturing

The core issue is that, historically, experienced workers have passed down their knowledge to new generations, ensuring a steady accumulation of expertise. However, when factories close and seasoned workers retire or move to other fields without training successors, a vast amount of valuable knowledge is lost. Rebuilding this expertise is both difficult and time-consuming. Subsidies will be required to support local production - initially yielding lower-quality or significantly more expensive goods - until the Western world relearns how to manufacture at scale.

Furthermore, if you want to build something, you likely won’t do it by hand. You’ll need machines to automate the process or enable complex material operations. Rebuilding this capability from scratch will take time, as existing manufacturers lack the necessary capacity. Additionally, similar equipment is produced much more cheaply in China, creating another challenge that must be addressed. What’s likely to happen is that Chinese manufacturers will establish companies in the United States that replicate their production facilities elsewhere (e.g. mainland China). They’ll ship in parts, and final assembly will take place in the U.S. This approach allows them to bypass trade restrictions while maintaining cost advantages. I already know of several cases where this is happening.

[bluGill]

A lot of that experience isn't needed though - automation replaced a large part of the expertise needs. I used to work at a factory, it produces as much as it ever did (though with a lot of modern innovations), but today only about 200 people work in it, compared to over 2000 in 1950. The CNC laser cutters replaced 70 people running saws with just 3.

[vv_]

This isn't uniformly true in all industries or throughout all manufacturing. Not to mention that you need qualified people to operate and maintain these machines and the machines themselves.

[stefs]

> They’ll ship in parts, and final assembly will take place in the U.S.

i thought new the tariffs also applied to parts (with a few exceptions)?

[vv_]

They'll just lower the price of the parts.

[themagician]

No people, no supply chain, and no total lack of environmental regulations mean most manufacturing jobs are not coming back no matter what the tariffs are. It's not just one reason that the manufacturing jobs have left, but a conflation of reasons.

Unless… well, unless you eliminate the EPA, invade Canada and Greenland and take their raw materials, and make people so poor that they take up factory jobs again.

[codedokode]

> The US doesn't have the people to do the actual manufacturing.

A usual lack of high qualified low paid workers?

[porridgeraisin]

No, this is the effect for the last 50 years' usual "I will have my high paid cushy job while some other country somewhere manufactures products for me, taking on all the negative effects. Only positive effects for me. Yes, you should use our currency and take part in our inflation. Or we'll invade you. We will print 6T USD[1] in 2 years and you need to absorb that along with us."

Thankfully, this is coming to an end soon. No tears anywhere.

I know a version of this is what happens in every human age, not singling anything out, but don't get onto the moral high ground of "I am just trying to ensure everyone is well paid".

[1] additionally, 80% of all US dollars added to the supply were added in the last 5 years.

[yibg]

This is the part that confuses me too. The US is in an enviable position where a lot of the "shit" jobs are outsourced and in return we get cheap stuff. Why is this a bad thing?

[nthingtohide]

US is good at bits and bytes but not in actual atoms i.e. manufacturing. That role has been outsourced to China. Without real manufacturing in control of US, it is beholden to what China says which is bad for American empire and its power projection.

[Gud]

This is wrong. The US still has an excellent manufacturing industry. Just because you don’t make sneakers over there anymore, doesn’t mean you’re not good at manufacturing.

Frankly the US makes some amazing things.

[runako]

This is such an important point. Lumping all "manufacturing" together obscures that some production is low-cost goods like matches and socks. Other production is 787s and F-150s.

What the administration is suggesting is that we resume manufacturing low-cost goods. I'm not sure where they would plan to get the labor for that.

[nthingtohide]

Supply chains still originate outside US.

[porridgeraisin]

My interpretation is that today other countries are less willing to take on the role the US would like them to. So, the chosen solution in the US now is to wind down this approach, and try to bring back production to the country. I don't know enough to comment on the effectiveness of the method they are using to do this, but that they are doing it is clear to me.

China is not going to play this role anymore as has been made clear over the last 2 years. Them being the largest country playing this role for the last decade has fueled this recent revamp in the US.

Russia has not really played that role for a long long time.

India(me being an Indian, I might be biased) is way way too slow to be depended on to sustain the sheer scale of US' requirements. Also, compared to china, it's actually getting more and more difficult to get "shit jobs" done here, which might be surprising. It is for all the wrong reasons though, so not much to celebrate as an indian. However, india has enough domestic potential to be self sufficient, so nothing to worry about either.

A few years ago, I thought the next "dump yard country" for the US would be africa. But their progress to the required level is clearly multiple decades away, so that's out of the window in the short- and medium- term. Europe is already finding it difficult to get much out of Africa, despite still basically controlling multiple countries there. Thus, they are having to resort to immigration from the middle east (some 10 years back, it was all from africa)

Needless to say, "freewheelers" (for lack of a better word) such as western europe and australia&oceania were never under consideration, and will never accept this role.

Eastern Europe/SEA are "up for grabs", but the former is already saturated playing this role for western europe/russia (and the two fight for control of the same) and the latter is thoroughly saturated playing this role for china. You saw this play out recently with the attempt to get ukraine's rare earth industry serving the US. Russia invaded them for similar reasons.

The upper middle east clearly will not play this role, preferring to live in substandard conditions and submit to terrorist organisations instead (and who can blame them?) China seems to love supporting these lot too.

Saudi Arabia/UAE are options, and the new US government has made good use of them (atleast on paper) with the new investments. However, they can only do so much given their size, geography and demographics.

I never thought they would allow it to happen, but even LatAm is slowly being "lost" to china.

And suddenly, you've run out of countries! Maybe we'll find some martians though, they can do the welding for the starship.

Strangely, the US is also seemingly losing its ability to maintain an edge through intellectual property. The whole hype in non-technical circles when Deepseek came out was a reaction to this. 20 years ago, it would have been protected better. The IP from 20 years ago is protected well... even today! See: semiconductor manufacturing. Some people say this is because you're now needing to import people too (and so, the knowledge leaks). Some people probe further and say that this happened in the first place because of worsening education in the US. I am inclined to agree with this, since over financialization/trade/empire-building and increasingly poorer education was also what killed medieval india, which I have more knowledge of. However, I might be making more of the symmetry than there is.

[Qworg]

It isn't a bad thing - unless you don't have a job/have been stuffed with the idea that meaning and good pay could be yours if not for those foreigners.

[blitzar]

People in the US dont want to work 14 hour shifts for 50c a day for some reason.

[cevi]

Think about it: with 20% tariffs, we will now have the option to work 14 hour shifts for 60c a day!

[s1artibartfast]

If that's really the case, then these tariffs are the cure.

If outsourcing labor overseas is cost prohibitive, wages will have to rise.

[danny_codes]

Or standard of living can fall. Which is quite likely

[s1artibartfast]

Perhaps, but equality would rise in labor starved economy with low standard of living and high costs.

[trinix912]

No it wouldn't, it would end up in even more inequality as the middle and lower classes would be able to afford even less while the rich would just see their assets rack up in price. We had that problem in my small European country.

[kristjansson]

Nevermind the improbability that a decrease in living standards would actually compress the distribution of living standards - Are you seriously arguing that's desirable? That it's better to reduce everyone's lots so that we can be more equal?

[s1artibartfast]

If you asked me a couple years ago, I would absolutely oppose it, but now I am seriously entertaining the idea that it may be better to live in a poorer but more equal society.

It seems that the majority cares far more about comparative wealth than absolute wellbeing, and is willing to destroy the system if they don't get what they want.

[Vegenoid]

Why? Who is looking at the societies of countries where manufacturing is happening and saying “we want that”?

Manufacturing used to be great for the US because other places couldn’t do it, either because they hadn’t developed enough or they’d been ravaged by war. It wasn’t “manufacturing physical goods” that was great for the US, it was “having industry that others don’t”. Now, other countries have manufacturing capability. America’s uniquely exceptional industry is now tech - mostly software, but also hardware design, and design of tech for other industries. That is what we should be focused on - supporting the industries that set us apart from other countries.

[jquery]

I don't see how that follows. It's not a step up to be forced to work in a factory, compared to before when not working was an option because costs were lower.

[lodovic]

This essentially amounts to subsidizing industries that aren't competitive. It's like choosing to bake bread at home for $5 when you could buy it for just $2.

[xyzzy123]

Or it could be interpreted as putting a higher value on self-sufficiency and domestic production capacity than standard free trade economic theories value those things at ($0).

Standard comparative advantage narratives don't really account for production "webs" being ecosystems that get big synergies from colocation. They do not account for geopolitical risks either.

[lodovic]

True, it keeps wealth circulating domestically, fostering local economic activity. However, drawbacks of this system are higher costs for consumers and inefficiencies in production, so it needs to be balanced.

[palmotea]

> This essentially amounts to subsidizing industries that aren't competitive.

That's not a bad thing, especially if they are "not competitive" because foreign workers can be exploited more (and not some real competitive advantage).

There are more desirable things than the few neoliberalism optimizes for.

[lanthissa]

didnt you listen to the 70 year olds planning this? we're just going have the robots do it.

you know how people said putin was surrounded by an echo chamber and thats how he got stuck in ukraine? Thats the us now but with billionare VC's and 2nd tier 1980's NYC real estate developers. Look at their numbers and listen to them talk, they're genuinely not grounded in reality as whole group and theres no fixing that

[0x5f3759df-i]

This is basic economics that the administration refuses to understand.

Trade allows you to consume beyond your nation’s manpower and resource constraints.

And it’s even stupider when you’re putting tariffs on raw materials like Canadian lumber. So not only do we need to magically find millions of workers to work in these new factories we also need to find a bunch of lumberjacks and start cutting down our own trees? We’re at 4% unemployment, who’s going to do this work?

We literally don’t have the people to make this work.

[intermerda]

Well they can always go back to child labor like Florida is planning to - https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/25/business/florida-child-labor-...

[seydor]

Suppose you even find those workers. How are american products going to compete with cheaper chinese / european ones. People over there are used to much lower wages / purchasing power. You can look at Tesla vs BYD prices as an example

[coderenegade]

More likely the goal is for foreign companies to set up factories in the US for the domestic market. The US market is too big for most industries to ignore, and as they move manufacturing there, they skill up the US population.

Industries don't exist in isolation, and you need to be able to make simpler things in order to cultivate the know-how to make complex things. If China makes better phones, it won't be long until they make better drones. This is as much a strategic initiative as it is an economic one.

And BYD should be a wake up call that the US cannot compete in high value goods anymore.

[anonfordays]

>If China makes better phones, it won't be long until they make better drones.

They already do. China makes the best drones. Most of the drones in the world, most of the drones use in wars, etc. are manufactured in China, or are comprised of mostly Chinese parts.

[coderenegade]

I'm referring to the ones that carry a Q designation, not the DJI kind. China hasn't yet caught up in that domain. Electric drones are seeing a lot of use in Ukraine and other conflicts, but they aren't helping to establish air superiority.

[mrguyorama]

China has direct copies of our Reaper drones, they aren't some advanced technology, they are very simple craft actually, and descend from essentially target drones and some toys the navy put together in the 80s.

>but they aren't helping to establish air superiority.

A reaper style drone does nothing for air superiority. It's not meant to. It's a surveillance and ground attack platform. It has no means of equipping or targeting actual air to air munitions meant for Air Superiority.

Why did you believe the MQ9 was relevant to air superiority? Or some special machine that China couldn't make?

[coderenegade]

Reapers aren't the only military drones, and yes, there are drones that do help establish air superiority, either on the reconnaissance and logistics side, or (more recently) directly on the combat side.

China doesn't have the same level of sophistication in stealth tech, and they still struggle to make decent jet engines, because they don't have the required materials technology for certain components. There's also decades of work in signals processing, which is at least as important as the platform. Not to mention sensor packages, but they almost certainly have a lot of that down. A drone is simple until it needs to fly close to the coffin corner, do air-to-air refueling, land on a carrier, be invisible to radar, be hardened to jamming, act as a wingman to a human pilot... You get the idea.

And since it apparently wasn't obvious, I'm not really talking drones specifically, I'm talking about all defense hardware. China doesn't have anything close to an F-22, and as far as we know, their tanks aren't as good. They can't build carriers that can compete with US ones. But they're already outcompeting the US when it comes to building civilian vessels, and they're taking over the electric car market. How long until they can build a decent carrier or tank?

[jccalhoun]

I recently listened to an episode of the Search Engine podcast where they showed how hard it is to manufacture something completely in the USA: https://www.searchengine.show/listen/search-engine-1/the-puz...

(Spoilers, the problem they had was that even when they found companies to manufacture their bbq scrubber, it was harder to find someone in the USA to make the parts that are used to make the parts.)

[dharmab]

Simone Giertz said on her channel her company approached multiple factories in the US, EU and China about manufacturing a product. None of the US factories even replied.

[RobKohr]

Manufacturing pays very little, and for good reason.

You are competing with sometimes slave labor in other countries. Countries with no environmental protections and with no labor laws or concern for safety.

Imagine you could open a factory in country A or B, but country B's labor and employment law makes your production cost 30% less. You'd be an idiot, and more importantly you would lose in the market if you chose country A.

But you slap a tariff on, then it changes the dynamics. It makes the higher pay and labor costs more palatable in country A.

The usA has gotten itself in a pickle. It advanced worker rights and minimum wages to the point that shipping their work overseas to countries that don't care about such things is the only rational choice.

Perhaps if pay rates go up by some percentage to bring them out of their self isolation, then this will be resolved.

[sdsd]

In real life, people are spending years looking for jobs making enough to barely survive. I should tell them about your video you saw, if only they know.

[soerxpso]

> The US doesn't have the people to do the actual manufacturing

I am willing to move anywhere in the US to do any manufacturing job if it means that I will be paid enough to afford a house with two bedrooms and basic living expenses. I have a bachelor's degree and have been unable to find such an arrangement. So where exactly are all of these unfilled jobs that you speak of? Are they unfilled because we don't have the people, or because they're trying to pay in peanuts? Unfilled because we don't have the people, or because HR departments are filtering away qualified resumes based on voodoo? This outlandish claim you're making that we don't want to work is offensive to a lot of people who are aware of their own existence and know that you're spouting bullshit to trick people into more wealth inequality.

Your 7 million young men aren't 'missing', you're just refusing to hire them. The jobs don't exist.

[thrance]

Can you blame the new generations for not wanting to work their asses off doing arduous manual labor, payed a minimum wage that is barely enough to afford a single room?

Republicans made work awful. I've heard some wanting to get rid of minimum wage too. Do you think this will help?

[h2zizzle]

Eh. This always gets presented as a, "Why don't Millennial/Zoomer/Alpha men want to work?" Lack of training? Maybe. But I see that as more of a subset of the actual issue, which is two-fold: work conditions and compensation. So many jobs suck, and pay less than they should, and provide no real opportunity for growth. Let's break it down:

Jobs that suck: bad hours, bad bosses, bad processes that create inefficiency and stress.

Jobs that don't pay: can't afford a house, can't afford to date/get married/have children, can't establish a stable lifestyle .

Jobs that don't allow for growth: masters don't pass along their skills, managers don't promote (and, eventually, step aside), employers push employees out with stagnation and the hoarding of opportunities for nepo-hires or outsiders.

And why are we in this situation? Essentially, because someone likes the way things are. Managers and seniors don't want to change their work styles, even if those styles are dysfunctional. Employers don't want to pay. Older workers don't want to leave, or jeopardize their marketability by training juniors.

Every young worker can tell you about their experiences with older workers who promise to train and won't, managers who promise advancement and don't, having to be in the office at an ungodly hour or the warehouse or factory late into the night. And for what? Nothing of the American Dream, at least without putting up with the more ridiculous end of the job spectrum, or having been born into money, or having been lucky enough to rub shoulders with someone born into money.

It's Japan's hikikomori problem, transposed. Japanese authorities constantly blame the shut-ins, but outside observers recognize that the problem actually lies with the "functional" side of society, and its unwillingness to confront the way it alienates and produces perfectly reasonable, if dysfunctional, responses in these men (and women).

[sounds]

> sectors like the military, construction and the automotive industry each have 100K+ positions that they are unable to fill. A return to manufacturing adds to that shortage.

Feel free to offer higher wages than the previous stagnant wages.

[trallnag]

What's up with the corresponding 7 million young women of working age?

[summerlight]

Agreed, the root of the problem is that America has relatively zero modern manufacturing infrastructure and manpower, especially compared to China. Those MAGA folks just don't know this. Offshoring happened not just because of cheaper price; China already had a much better environment even 20 years ago thanks to billions of people.

[fnord77]

> Apparently there's some 7 million young men of working age that are...missing in action. Self-isolated, gaming, addictions.

perhaps we'll see something akin to "forced conscription", except for industrial work

[petesergeant]

> The US doesn't have the people to do the actual manufacturing ... I'm sure you'll have Apple investing in a mega plant where 50 educated people push some buttons though.

I feel like this could be used to steel-man the Trump administration's plan, though, should you want to. The best-case outcome here for America is it forces large capital investment in automated manufacturing facilities based in the US by making manufacturing that relies on cheap overseas labour expensive enough that the investment is worth it.

I'm doubtful, but, in the unlikely event it works like that, and this comes online in the next couple of years without causing a catastrophic wipeout in the mid-terms, Trump will look like a genius.

IMO it would have been much smarter to explicitly incentivize this with tax breaks and start with small tariffs that would ramp up a little bit each month, if it's the plan, and not just incoherent policy making.

[jsemrau]

>Apparently there's some 7 million young men of working age that are...missing in action. Self-isolated, gaming, addictions.

And you never wondered why that is?

[franktankbank]

The only question is how to get them employed where our economy needs them. Honestly I've worked in Manufacturing and it is fucking gnarly. Clean factories don't exist. Many of the men I worked with had some sort of mild mental disorder tending towards aggression. Constantly short serviced machines and price gouging by any contractors involved. There is a lot to figure out and before you end up with a hospitable work environment. I'm doubtful tubby mcgamesalot is going to hold down a job stamping metal parts all day getting his lunch eaten or pissed in.

[atom058]

We visited a manufacturing / assembly plats for industrial vehicles in Sweden during the autumn. Everything was spotless, bright, and almost silent. All the tools were neatly organised in overhead ergonomic hangers, reducing the stress on the workers. It looked like a great place to work, nor akin to an office than a dirty grimy workshop.

On the other hand, I visited a Canadian plant and the difference was stark. There was hardly any lighting, the floor was black with dirt, and the noise was unbearable. This was a small supplier about 10 years ago, so take it with a pinch of salt.

There is interesting effects from group dynamics and having a sense of purpose that can help people reintegrate into society. But the work environment has to be prioritised to make it easier on the workers. If the work place looks and acts like a prison camp, you are not going to get those benefits.

The point is that clean factories do exist, and manufacturing can be a good place to work. But it needs some work to make it so.

[creata]

Speaking as such an unemployed Tubby McGamesalot (well, minus the gaming) I'm pretty sure we're all aware, and would rather starve than work in manufacturing.

[creata]

Well, if I had to guess based on my own personal experience, it's easy to simply be... forgotten. Nobody asks you to do anything, and you don't have the will to do anything of your own accord because everything you want feels hopelessly out of reach.

[AnimalMuppet]

Don't vaguepost. If you've got a point, state it.

[spamlettuce]

If there was a real labor demand shortage wouldn't there be actual wage growth though ?

[seabrookmx]

But if wages increase so does cost of manufacturing in the US, making US goods less competitive not more?

[codedokode]

Actually there are people who are ok to do physical jobs but they are getting deported now.

[DennisP]

Good thing we're deporting so many people then.

[dpedu]

If this is true, why are US wages stagnating?

[hnthrow90348765]

No one will want to do lower income jobs while the cost of living is high and continues to rise. Wear and tear on the body is also not compensated, not to mention healthcare being expensive. Meanwhile, I do CRUD apps and work remotely 20/hours a week with no bodily harm (on the contrary, I have time to work out and make bad posts on HN)

No one in their right mind is going to choose manufacturing over what I have if they can do both, and most people could honestly learn to do CRUD apps. Even if my salary were to go down by 5-10% yoy due to people moving in, I'm still in a better position for the other reasons mentioned. I'd have to be below manufacturing and blue collar wages to get me to switch.

The only sensible explanation is that they're trying to force people to have to take these jobs by crashing the globalized parts of the economy because they are obviously better than starving and dying homeless.

All this assuming that Trump isn't just intentionally trying to destroy the country.

[tootie]

The best option would be to close the gap with immigration but alas...

[AlexandrB]

Why is that the best option instead of raising wages until those jobs are attractive to domestic workers? There's this weird back and forth where people bemoan stagnating wages for the working class but at the same time cheer on importing labor that is willing to work for those stagnant wages.

In any other market, the balance of supply and demand is reflected in the price. But for the labor market the perpetual solution put forward seems to be juicing the supply side so that the price does not move up to a new equilibrium.

[tootie]

Both would have to happen. There's very little slack in the labor market to absorb anything. Even if legal permanent residents take up manufacturing jobs, they'd have to give up whatever jobs they have now creating a shortage. And given then even most undocumented people are working, someone needs to fill those jobs.

[Vegenoid]

Who is pushing to raise the wages and power of labor? It sure isn’t the party that is pushing tariffs and the return of factories.

[feraloink]

The party that is NOT pushing tariffs is the one who said, between 2012 and 2016, that "they're NEVER coming back" (referring to return of factories and manufacturing jobs).

That same party DID try to bring back manufacturing between 2020 and 2024. I think they would have been more successful if it hadn't been for COVID19, for which neither party is to blame.

[jquery]

Or just free trade. Like we had...

[JimBlackwood]

The US has recently loosened laws regarding child labor. It’s how other countries produce items cheaply, why not the US?

That El Salvador prison could also come in useful.

[seanmcdirmid]

That was Florida. Child labor laws are mostly set by the states.

[JimBlackwood]

Fair point, but does it change anything? You don’t need factories in all states.

Florida has 19% of children living in poverty, which to me sounds very high. That’s a large and vulnerable group of people.

[bamboozled]

Do you think if children were going to be harmed in The USA then maybe the federal government should introduce a ban of that kind of shit federally?

I've heard it all now...

[seanmcdirmid]

> Do you think if children were going to be harmed in The USA then maybe the federal government should introduce a ban of that kind of shit federally?

I'm not sure the federal government can. There are powers reserved for states that the federal government can't circumvent. They have supremacy, but the jurisdiction of that supremacy is restricted.

[chgs]

Is Flordia not in the US?

[clarionbell]

In the same way that Berlin is entire Germany.

[ZeroGravitas]

Florida is the US of the US.