Comment by PaulKeeble
12 days ago
Its the integration and overall combined effect of the entire industrial pipeline that makes China so incredible. It processes all the raw materials and the recycling/reuse of off cuts through every possible way to turn those raw materials into components and then into goods with very little need for import from other countries. Its the complete system for a huge variety of goods.
To compete with that the entire pipeline from raw materials through components and final product needs to be reproduced and its taken China 40+ years to build up to this capacity and capability.
I think its something more countries should consider and do for certain pipelines but we are in a world with vast international trade and the winner(cheapest) takes most of the trade so whatever it is needs to be worth while within country.
Absolutely. Canada for example should not be shipping lumber and oil to the United States for further refinement. It should be processed domestically.
Canada and the US are long time allies and should be able to benefit from eachother without much hesitation. China is an adversary, big difference in posture.
Canada and the US are no longer allies.
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Security allies? Sure. Economic allies? I don't think that has been the case for a long time. Even before Trump's second term.
Canada and the US have been to court multiple times over NAFTA violations (sometimes Canada is at fault admittedly).
https://www.international.gc.ca/trade-agreements-accords-com...
Why would that be better? Comparative advantage is real.
1. Jobs.
2. Profits.
3. Refined products can be exported to countries that don't have refinement capabilities. Not just the US and China. This gives Canada better trade leverage.
4. Security. A big one that's emerged in the last few weeks.
I don't see either Poilievre or Carney talking about this which is disappointing but not unexpected.
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Even getting workers to the factory is a concerted effort of trains and public transport, Americans would quickly clog the highways with millions of single occupant large vehicles without first investing in more efficient ways to move people
Scenario: someone builds a factory complex employing thousands of workers. Government builds and improves infrastructure and roads leading to and from that factory to get the workers in and out, as well as getting raw materials in and finished goods out. Someone properly points to the roads and says "you didn't build that", pundits freak out.
> Its the integration and overall combined effect of the entire industrial pipeline that makes China so incredible.
The incredible part is USA exported that entire sector to China.
They saw extra profit $ and didn't consider the consequences. I suspect there was a bit of racism involved where they thought the Chinese would never learn to go from manufacturer to designing products nor master the entire pipeline and end up competing with them in the domestic market. China obviously did because they funded engineering education heavily and learnt all they needed to and surpassed the companies they built for some time ago.
>I suspect there was a bit of racism involved
Or they wanted access to sell to the Chinese market and they did whatever it took to get it.
It wasn't just the USA, the entire west collectively.
This is true, and at the same time, this article is absolutely rife with unsourced, unserious points. However insane Trumps plans, the fundamental "facts" presented here are largely a joke.
> Chinese workers work longer hours more happily and they’re physically faster with their hands; they can do things that American labor can’t. It’s years of accumulated skill, but it’s also a culture that is oriented around hard work and education that the United States no longer has. In China, there are no people who are too fat to work. The workers don’t storm off midshift, never to return to their job. You don’t have people who insist on being paid in cash so that they can keep their disability payments, while they do acrobatics on the factory floor that the non-disabled workers cannot do.
It's an actual joke to present something with such a derogatory view of the median American worker with no data to back it up. Most of America's "labor class" is in fact Mexican, the country with the highest annual hours worked per year. Secondly hours worked does not relate directly to productivity. American workers are the most productive in the world. [1]
More importantly, _we don't manufacture like this anymore, even in China_. Doing "acrobatics" on the factory floor is now obsolete. Much of what's said here fails to acknowledge that we would _not_ build our supply chains the same way as China does. China had a surplus of human labor (one that's facing an impending demographic crisis) and so used human labor in ways modern western countries would not and do not.[2]
[1] https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/01/the-countries-where-... [2] https://ifr.org/ifr-press-releases/news/global-robotics-race...
Reproducing these supply chains is more possible than this article states. Doing it via destroying our economy however will not work.
I was thinking the same thing while watching "American Factory" on Netflix.
scrolled too far to see criticism about all that
And if China invades Taiwan, which they have said for decades they will do (we just don’t like to believe them), what then?
Do we sacrifice a democracy for the dollar? If not, is our economy annihilated? We have no credible alternative to reshoring for this reason alone.
> Do we sacrifice a democracy for the dollar?
I've got some bad news for you.
>>Do we sacrifice a democracy for the dollar?
What democracy? Whose democracy?
Trump just blamed Zelensky for the war in Ukraine again. The entire administration keeps saying they will make Canada the 51st state and "destroy canada economically". They want to take Greenland by force. I don't think America cares much about democracy anymore, only dollars. China will take Taiwan and US will will keep buying chips like they always did.
> cares much about democracy anymore
Anymore? Arguably, the US never did. Ask, for example, the people living in Caribbean or Latin American countries what happened when they elected leaders that the US disliked.
Or Iran. Or Italy. Or Congo. And so on.
Or ask the Indonesians about the mass killings in their country in 1965-1966, supported by the US. Around 500,000 people died, though some estimates put the number of deaths at 1,000,000. Ask the Filipinos about how the US propped up their military dictatorship back in the 1970s-1980s.
I could keep going, but I think you get the point. The US has never been sincerely interested in democracy -- only strategically. The illusion that the US cared about democracy was a primarily Western luxury.
And when a Democrat is back in power in 2029, and China invades in 2030, what will she do? Protect Taiwan and destroy the US economy as we endure the equivalent of an infinite tariff; or appear weak by saying “that’s a shame”, even if China is doing a Great Leap Forward on the population?
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> I don't think America cares much about democracy anymore, only dollars.
I don't think it's a good idea to assign Trump's beliefs, or those of his administration, to America as a whole. Any more, frankly, than it's a good idea to assign those of his opposition to the country as a whole.
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The relations between Taiwan and the US have nothing to do with "democracy". First it was about anti-communism, when the Chinese government fled there and the mainland was taken over by the communists. Now it is about anti-communism and "China containment". The fact that Taiwan transitioned to democracy in the 1980s is just convenient to feed the public that this is indeed about "democracy", "freedom", the usual.
As a historical point, the US never had a problem with Taiwan being handed back to China at the end of WWII, since it is what happened. Again, this is all just a tool against the communists and then against China's increasing power as a whole.
Even if you are correct, we are in a situation where we risk having built our economy on the cheap labor of a Russia equivalent.
If that Russia equivalent invades an Ukraine equivalent, despite both instances being considered unthinkably crazy, what are we going to do? Or, what will China do, to us?