That's a problem. If a country doesn't have manufacturing capacity, other countries can use that as leverage in the geopolitical sphere. This is one example of where the interests of corporations and countries conflict.

That's Taiwan and Hong Kong in a nutshell.

Sadly, true.

The flip-side of globalization is there are unlikely to be any more large-scale conventional or NBC wars (only proxy, cyber and economic wars) because of extreme economic interdependency.

The US is the #2 manufacturer in the world [1] and will overtake China this year to become #1 [2].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_...

[2] https://www.industryweek.com/the-economy/competitiveness/med...

I would bet this is only for final assembly. I seriously doubt there is any "Made in USA" product that isn't completely dependent on some tooling or components made overseas.

Couple of things:

- For products containing electronics: short of the electrical components themselves, there is a healthy amount of US electronics+mechanical manufacturing, but it's more geared for lower-volume higher-margin type stuff (think for energy / agriculture / etc.)

- IIRC having spoken to someone at Jabil a few years ago, vague recollection of being told that the US is the largest manufacturer of high volume plastic goods (as well as other products using automated processes). Not so much enclosures for consumer electronics, but rather stuff like shampoo bottles, and that sort of tooling is done here in the US.

- Just keep in mind that manufacturing has a broader scope than what it seems you're implying. Not all manufactured goods involve electronics or injection molding.

Shampoo bottles make little sense to make in China. The processes are highly automated, the feedstock is cheaper in the US (way more petrochemical inputs and cheaper energy) and it would be madness to ship empty shampoo bottles over long distances.

True on high volume plastic bottles, caps, etc. Those must be manufactured geographically near final distribution, too expensive to ship billions of empty plastic bottles half way around world.

And lots of the tooling for this high volume plastic bottles, lids, etc is made in Germany. Consensus is Germans make best tools for this volume (100’s of millions of parts per year)

Even US industrials like the metals industry is still chugging along, and some of it even ends up in Chinese products. It's just that the US has shifted to making more specialized metals and alloys, rather than cheap and basic metals.

Yes, but be careful with that conception. That exact same thing can be said of just about anything made anywhere. This is the nature of globalization of supply chains.

I mean it goes back long before the word “globalization” was used to mean “anything I don’t like that involved more than one country.” There was very long-distance trade thousands of years ago. Not every raw material you might want will exist in your immediate vicinity.

It would be hard to find any product these days that isn't dependent on the world-wide supply-chain, but I agree that how "manufacturing" is quantified and measured leaves a lot of room for tomfoolery.

Sure but most Chinese factories operate using manufacturing equipment made in the US or Germany.

This is absolutely and patently false for 99% of Chinese manufacturing. I suggest you watch Strange Parts videos to see what manufacturing in China is actually like before making a fool of yourself.

Final assembly only would be the last strategy applied in the US due to high labor costs. The competitiveness of US manufacturing is due to high levels of automation.

Counterpoint / However: A lot of the "made in China" products were developed and designed in the US.

I wouldn't trust a projection from 2015 (!) about relative US-vs-China manufacturing volume. Hell, I wouldn't trust a projection from 2 weeks ago.

Is this adjusted for PPP?

This wont change in a capitalist society. The only ways to fix this that have a chance to actually work that I can think off is 1) Americans work for as low wages as workers in China to compete or 2) non-capitalism. I would love to learn of any other ways but this has been discussed by people way smarter than me for ages and I have seen no other solutions that wouldn't sink the US economy or cause a revolution.

> would love to learn of any other ways but this has been discussed by people way smarter than me for ages and I have seen no other solutions that wouldn't sink the US economy or cause a revolution.

Yeah, here's one: protectionist tariffs. I once looked into what it would cost to make a pair of pants in the US instead of China. The difference isn't that large; something like an extra dollar goes to shareholders instead of workers. You can see it in the actual list prices of jeans made in China[1] versus USA[2]. They're .... about the same. This same calculation is done in lots of different places: MBA types want that extra dollar to go to shareholders. Well, if they're not allowed to do so, everything works just fine.

[1]https://www.levi.com/US/en_US/sale/c/levi_clothing_sale_us

[2] https://www.allamericanclothing.com/made-in-usa/jeans.html

You seemed to have missed the option that has been driving economic growth for centuries: improved worker productivity through improved technology and methods. A machine can work cheaper and faster than any Chinese worker. Eliminating work is even more efficient than that.

So basically work smarter than harder or cheaper. The way to compete with the Chinese is through better ideas.

That's the theory we heard since 1980s: then Japanese robots will run over everyone. In practice however, you have Chinese workers instead. Outside some very high volume, certain simplicity manufacturing processes it's still mostly manual labor on assembly line.

Yes manual labor is used when it makes economic sense and automation is the same. Robots did indeed take over many tasks, but people still exist and still want to work so they do stuff too.

The idea that automation means people can't or don't work is a fallicy.

Communist China never should have been granted MFN status. That was our mistake. No one in the U.S. feels threatened if Germany, France, England, or any other Western liberal democracy manufactures something. (I make an exception for some goods critical to national security, which we should always have know-how for.) But China is a hostile nation.

When Woodrow Wilson talked about making the world safe for democracy, the flip side of that is that democracy requires safety and security. We liberal democratic nations are capable of playing nice with one another. We will have normal rivalries. But China cannot play nice.

We need to transition away from trade with China, under MFN status.

> no other solutions that wouldn't sink the US economy

After this pandemics is over I think we'll know better what "no other solutions that wouldn't sink the US economy" actually means. I suspect that behind the typical talk about sinking "the US economy" is not what it appears to be, especially if one talks about "capitalism" versus others.

Namely, since a some decades ago both China and Russia are technically capitalistic societies. Therefore I interpret the statements only as "will our empire continue to be the empire." The empire is kept primarily with the arms, and they aren't going away, whatever changes.

Very easy to change with laws. Similar to how laws were passed after 2008 to force banks to be less profitable (they can't trade any more, need more reserve capital, etc.). Very easy, all you need is political will. Trump was going in the right direction with trade war with China (possibly for the wrong reasons), I'm really happy because I predict it will be a political suicide for the Democratic candidate to propose the opposite policy now, so it will become the policy regardless of who wins the election.