Money Pours into New Fabs and Facilities

Re:Money Pours into New Fabs and Facilities by mdorazio on Tuesday January 09, 2024 @08:23AM (#38925859)

I think it's largely a mismatch between type of manufacturing people want to see and type of manufacturing that's economically viable in the US. For example, people see low-margin consumer goods and electronics all the time, which largely come from China. But those same people only buy a car manufactured in the US once every decade and generally aren't buying Intel or TI chips directly. As another example, consumers are often oblivious to things around them that are made by GE.

I think the more interesting question is if it would even be economically possible to have a Shenzhen in the US, given US property prices, labor force, wages, environmental laws, zoning restrictions, etc.

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Re:Money Pours into New Fabs and Facilities by fidotron on Tuesday January 09, 2024 @10:02AM (#38926946)

Shenzhen is at least the third manifestation of the electronics hotspot, after Akihabara and before that Radio Row: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Row

It definitely seems like once some of the factors you mention come into play these things lose momentum and move. Paul Krugman did some very interesting work on economic geography, with one result being that the leading region for a given sector will have a huge margin over the second player, so being in top position is very valuable.

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Re:Money Pours into New Fabs and Facilities by saalweachter on Tuesday January 09, 2024 @06:08PM (#38933648)

Since the overall topic of this thread is "world trade destroying American electronics/manufacturing", this is especially ironic:

"Radio Row was torn down in 1966 to make room for the World Trade Center." (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Row#Demolition)

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Re:Money Pours into New Fabs and Facilities by NoMoreNicksLeft on Tuesday January 09, 2024 @10:59AM (#38927573)

If the environment is important to you, then you might consider that offshoring to China also offshores the pollution as well, where if it were still manufactured within the US we wouldn't have the problem.

It's a little disingenuous when someone claims that the US meets its climate change goals and that China doesn't. The US is able to meet those goals in part because all of the goods it consumes comes from China where it is manufactured with coal-produced power and so-on.

I suspect that economic theory doesn't adequately explain some things that we need to understand better. There may be misunderstood risks in competitive advantage that we are ignoring at our peril.

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