Comment by motorest
9 hours ago
> Being entirely dependent on Chinese manufacturing to make anything.
I'm sorry, it's very hard to take this sort of concern seriously.
The express goal of US's take on neoliberalism was to dump all manufacturing onto countries like China while abusing IP to prevent anyone else, China included, from ever being able to compete.
Now that the rules that the US abused to stifle innovation are being used by someone else to protect their own investment, you suddenly cry foul?
The US needs to put on their big boy pants and figure out ways to compete in the same terms that everyone else had to endure, just like the whole world was forced to learn how to deal with that. If someone else has the IP you need, pay them. Or do you honestly expect that arbitrary rules are only acceptable if they clearly benefit you alone?
> Now that the rules that the US abused to stifle innovation are being used by someone else to protect their own investment, you suddenly cry foul?
I don’t know about the person you replied to, but I think a lot of us have watched US factories closing down and moving to other counties in the last couple decades and it’s just been a constantly disappointing train wreck. Auto manufacturing moving to Mexico and Canada, various factories shutting down because they can’t compete with foreign prices or volume, and politicians who happily didn’t care beyond lip service - the only reason it matters to any politician now is because trump brought attention to it (though accidentally) with the stupid tariff business.
The people who actually could’ve done something have sat here for the last few decades and been largely inactive other than giving deals to Big Tech to open data centers while making empty promises about “bringing jobs back” because no one was offering the kind of kickbacks that Bezos and Musk can throw around, and now they’re only making any stink because it looks better than not.
Sounds like modern neoliberalism, and it's proponents, are the big mistake here to me, and those shortsighted enough to offshore work of all sorts to countries that aren't close allies should get a big spanking.
Regardless of whether or not it's "fair" or "right" (not that our adversaries do any more than lip service to those concepts anyways), we've got to do something rather than just lay down and take it. If nothing else, there are a lot of people that need to answer as to why if you want all these labor and environmental laws and so on, why it's ok to buy and do things somewhere that's not aligned with those. If you wouldn't subject you and yours to something, it should be illegal to cheat and make someone else do it. "Comparative advantage" is bullshit excuses to offload labor and environmental abuse because it's poor vulnerable brown people somewhere else and I need my cheap shit now.