[rayiner]

Imports from China were under $20 billion in 1990. At that time, the majority of clothing was still made in the U.S.! My wife’s dad worked as a forklift operator at a Heinz factory in the early 1990s. His job disappeared shortly after NAFTA. The extreme reliance on foreign-made goods happened within the lifetime of millennials. It’s not some inexorable fact about America.

[ryandrake]

A lot has happened in 30 years. Developing countries spent 30 years developing and are now capable of doing all this work. And shareholders have required 30 years of profit growth, much of it coming from labor costs. Textile and factory workers in China make, what, ¥15-¥30 per hour, which is around $2-$4/hr. No American is going to take these jobs here, even for 3X the pay.

So we can either 1. artificially increase the price of offshore-created goods, causing higher prices for consumers and a whole bunch of factories and mills being needlessly built here, assuming it somehow becomes cheaper to build them here than there (The current administration's plan), or 2. give up on the romanticism of factory work and accept it's going to be done where it's cheapest.

[rayiner]

That’s a different argument. The point above was that americans would not accept the quality of life sacrifice involved in manufacturing domestically. But they did quite recently, in a time period that is broadly viewed as a very good one.

Now you can argue that the cheaper prices we have today is even better and worth the lost factory work. But that’s a different argument than saying domestic manufacturing isn’t feasible, because it clearly is and we did it until recently.

[triceratops]

> But they did quite recently [accept the quality of life sacrifice]

It wasn't a "sacrifice". It was literally the only life they knew at the time. But going back to it now would be an actual sacrifice for a lot of people.

Running a household on an income of $70k isn't a sacrifice if that's what you make right now. It would be a sacrifice if you make $500k right now and had to immediately start making do with $70k.

[ryandrake]

I'm saying that Americans will not accept the quality-of-life sacrifice of their labor being competitive with the current price of similar labor in Asia. It doesn't matter what the past competitive landscape looked like, as we're never going back to it without market-distorting tariffs, which bring with them their own problems.

Americans will not work for $2-$4/hr which would be required in order for American-made goods to be as cheap as foreign-made goods.

Americans will not pay 3-4X for all their goods to be made in America by people earning American wages.

I guess, to be complete the only other thing that could happen to cause goods to be manufacturable in America would be 3. for the cost of labor in China (and other places with similar textile and industrial capability) to rise to match that of America.

[rayiner]

So what did we do in the 1990s?

[chii]

made do without some things - such as feature phones, and big tv screens.

People lived simpler. They had less material wealth, and was fine with it.

Will people today be the same? Judging by the amount of consumer debt and how much the buy-now-pay-later popularity grew, i dont think so.

[chii]

> ...But they did quite recently, in a time period that is broadly viewed as a very good one.

i dont think the above time period was considered a sacrifice, and the idea that moving the manufacturing back to america would restore that time period is wrong. Because the world has moved on, and productivity has increased so much by now, that it definitely would be a sacrifice if conditions returned back to said time period.