[mechagodzilla]

So applying this to China and the USA - the USA has a median household income of ~$80k, and China, in terms of purchasing power parity, has a median household income of $32k. China has a workforce of ~775M people vs 163M people in the USA. The USA has ~7M unemployed people. For the USA to stop importing goods from China, we would need to 1) stop consuming those goods altogether (even if they're intermediate goods that go into things we do manufacture), or 2) employ US workers to make those goods instead of whatever they're currently doing (either employed or unemployed).

Employed Americans largely earn a lot more than employed chinese people, and there just aren't very many unemployed Americans. Based on the value of imports to the US from China vs Chinese GDP($440B vs $17.8T), we import about 2.5% of their output, or the equivalent of ~20M people's output if we naively scale. I don't think there is any way around the fact that significantly reducing imports from other countries means we significantly reduce our consumption in absolute terms (i.e. we have a poorer standard of living), just out of spite for other countries.

[AnthonyMouse]

> the equivalent of ~20M people's output if we naively scale

Or about 12% of the US labor force. Meanwhile the 12th percentile US income is ~$22,000, i.e. less than the $32k median in China, and half of the jobs there are above that median.

Obviously these numbers are all useless napkin math and none of it really works like that, but the premise isn't inherently absurd. If China is subsidizing manufacturing in order to capture manufacturing jobs and those jobs pay more than what many in the lowest quartile of the US are currently making, there are people who could be made better off by having those jobs back, and they'd still only be paid about what we're currently paying to China.

And this before considering the general arguments about advantages to proximity of manufacturing, e.g. being able to talk to the people in the factory in your timezone in your language assists in product development so the location of the factory has an easier time developing new products. Which allows not just the manufacturing jobs but the whole rest of the company to be there, instead of those jobs starting to get eroded going forward.

[SideQuark]

The US manufactures more than ever, and the % of GDP in manufacturing has been flat for 70+ years now. The jobs didn’t leave, so they’re never coming back. They got automated. Just like we need vastly less farmers than in 1900 to farm more than ever, we need vastly manufacturing jobs to manufacture more than ever.

[chabska]

> The US manufactures more than ever

More of what, exactly? I looked at steel production data (in metric tonnes, not dollar value), US production has been flat or slightly declining since 1970.

[klooney]

https://www.econtalk.org/susan-houseman-on-manufacturing/#au...

People normally show a slowly increasing graph to claim that the US manufactures more than ever- but it's primarily because of hedonic adjustments for Intel chips. If you take that out it falls off a cliff in the 2000s during the China Shock.

[Spooky23]

Computer components, medical equipment, vehicles, aircraft, chemicals, etc.

Steel is something where value matters. US steel is usually higher grade or recycled with more value. Korea churns out tons and tons of low value low margin rebar.

You bring back manufacturing by investing in clustered industries. New York has a bunch of semiconductors. There’s a ton of chemical industries around Philly and Houston.

The iPhone is made in China because they have the best manufacturing for precision products. If you want that here, you have to invest.

[AnthonyMouse]

Automation increases production efficiency. Jevon's paradox says this will generally increase consumption, and in fact it has, so US consumption has gone up but production is flat. The difference comes from increasing imports from manufacturing in China. If the US manufactured the additional stuff instead of importing it, it would have more manufacturing jobs than it does now.

[aj7]

At what wages? Come on, man. Do you know what the average wage is in China on an iPhone assembly line? The pressures on workers?

[AnthonyMouse]

This is why the US needs automation. You don't want jobs assembling iPhones by hand, you want jobs building and maintaining factory automation equipment. But this is the trend globally anyway because a) it's becoming increasingly possible and b) the wages in countries like China have been increasing, so there is less "cheap labor" available in the alternative. But if you have an automated factory that requires trained workers making middle class money instead of a sweatshop, then why would the US want it in China instead of at home?

[SideQuark]

Decent paying manufacturing jobs are never returning; they’re automated out now.

It’s like wishing all of America would return to farming jobs, which once employed the majority of people. Then farming got automated such that now only a few percent of workers produce vastly more than those ancient hordes.

That’s where manufacturing went, and the rest of the world is as surely automating out those jobs too.

[dullcrisp]

Back of the napkin, we could spend 3% of the federal budget to pay each of those 20 million people an extra $10k a year, and avoid destroying some 10% of the global economy. If we wanted to do that, I guess.

[aj7]

No one will hire the people you are describing. We had 3.5% unemployment, before Trump began destroying the world economy. People in most fast food restaurants are making $30k. In fact the “entry level workers” and “illegals” were relatively happy. It’s the middle class workers who vary between desperate and enraged, because $45-$65k does not approximate the expectations raised in their childhood. What I’m saying is vastly oversimplified, but you get my drift. There is tremendous housing shortage, due to government policies that surreptitiously favored rising prices for incumbent homeowners, and corporate speculators. Healthcare is apportioned according to education level. Food is remarkably expensive.

[AngryData]

Maybe where you live people making under $30K for even the lowest entry level job is exceedingly rare, but there are still ass tons of people earning below that, especially in rural areas. Half of US states have a median wage under $40K, that leaves a LOT of room for jobs paying below $30K. And no those people are not happy, yeah housing is cheaper, but goods and services are not. Amazon doesn't charge you less for living in Mississippi instead of New York. Many stores that do still exist farther out have higher shelf markups too except for the highest demand bulk products where competition actually exists.

[supportengineer]

It should be easy to reduce our consumption, the average American is consuming an enormous amount of useless junk.