Posting this from Europe by the way, which also has fallen behind on quite some elements of the modern economy, but I likewise wouldn't write off the entire manufacturing sector of Europe in one single post either.
Made-in-America cars are not competitive abroad and would hardly be competitive in the US if it weren't for a series of strange legislative moats.
Furthermore, Teslas are not really made in the US in the same way that things are made in China. Your average widget off the shelves is one hundred percent made in China using almost entirely Chinese materials. Teslas, on the other hand, are "made in the US of foreign and domestic components." Shut down the ports and you couldn't make a single damned Tesla.
If you haven't manufactured anything before you may expect that I'm talking about things like the screen or the cameras. No. I'm talking about nearly every part of the car. Where do you think the tools to make the car parts come from? The thousands of chemicals involved? The myriad plastic clips? Shut down the ports tomorrow and pretty much the only significant car part you could make from scratch is some pretty sheet metal.
>You can't mold plastic at scale?
Next time you speak to someone who makes plastic products, get an idea of how much it would cost to make new molds and produce XXX items for a random widget, in China vs Europe vs the US. When you get the answer you can drown your tears in a nice bottle of baijiu.
In general I find European "manufacturing" to be an even thinner layer of duct tape between Chinese components than its American counterpart. The few things we do well in the US (sheet metal, fancy semiconductors, fancy tooling) are either nonexistent in Europe or American-controlled (see ASML.)
Current form of capitalism coupled with constant inflation universally penalize work: it makes less work at higher charges under the guise of better value a local individual optimum. This isn't a problem according to some justifications, or less work is less work if you ask some others.
China hasn't gotten to that point of constant output reduction and price hikes. Their manufacturing is still working in that sense.
Places that used to do this in the U.S. have left major scars and real human impact. The lack of regulation and enforcement mean they are causing the same (or worse thanks to scale + neglect) in China.
None of the things I listed have to have a large environmental impact. We have huge warehouses and same-day logistics in the US, they're just for consumer goods. Making PCBs or coating electrodes or working metal can all be very low-impact processes. Shenzhen isn't Bhutan but it certainly isn't a chemical waste pit. Most Chinese pollution comes from coal or resource extraction, not manufacturing.
Like how people don't get married because divorce is such a big risk. Or people don't drive too fast because it's not speed that kills but the sudden stop.
........? North America and China are about equal in terms of steel and aluminum working expertise. Really not sure where you're getting that idea...
We have a few companies that make a decent effort, it's true, and indeed the US sheet metal industry is one of the few industries that could be entirely self-sustaining if the ports closed tomorrow. But most of the metalworking in the US is just heavily subsidized six ways to Sunday and still uncompetitive.
US is a second largest battery maker
LG should be mass-producing 4680's by now (and dry battery electrode by 2027). Panasonic? Maybe soon, but dunno when.
Also, the US battery production is almost exclusively Tesla, which is actually Panasonic, using a process that has still not been Americanized, using Japanese equipment, the most critical of which "in an area not accessible to non-Panasonic employees." It is also behind China on cost. Oh, and did I mention it is government-subsidized to a hilarious degree? In other words, it's a joke.
The subsidies aren't the problem here. The problem is that they are uncompetitive islands of foreign technology that lead nowhere, and they are _more expensive even after being heavily subsidized_.
The cognitive dissonance between these threads and the ones where local law and taxes are an insult to their right to free trade is amazing.
I’m also not sure what you found derogatory in my comment, and I don’t understand what you’re getting at about local laws and taxes and how that would be relevant here.
But I believe the US surpassed the EU this year with the GM/LG's Ultium 2 factory. I have no doubt in my mind that the US battery manufacturing will become more competitive as they scale up and commoditize: GM for instance also reported a 45% decline in battery cell cost YoY in 3Q 2023; followed by a sequential quarterly drop of $30/cell from the 1st 2024. With AMPC ($35/KWh), GM's per cell costs drops close to $80/KWh and is expected to fall further -- below $70/KWh in a couple of years.
Panasonic (NV): 40 GWh
Tesla (4680) : 9+?? GWh
GM/LG Ultium 1: 45 GWh (2022)
GM/LG Ultium 2: 45 GWh (2024)
SK Georgia : 21 GWh (2021)The US is behind China on key manufacturing sectors, but over the last few years this is changing in a big way. And I agree that China no longer has the labor cost advantage, but that also means that the US has a good chance to catch up now.
The last few years have seen an absolutely unprecedented boom in factory construction in the US. A lot of those are for green energy, but because green energy somewhat politically incorrect in the rural red areas where these go, there's not much local news about them.
https://www.volts.wtf/p/how-is-new-clean-energy-manufacturin...
So sure for plastic and PCBs, the US is not competitive and hasn't cared to be for a long time. But for emerging technologies like green energy, we have it in us to recapture the sector.
And maybe the needs of these other sectors will push local suppliers to want to be competitive, if the volumes are large enough. Because if there is a big enough customer, they can be competitive. But if a persons new project is not big enough to move the needle for a company in the US, why would they change their practice for PCB production?
At the end of the day, having one or two highly specific sectors with growth is basically nothing. It’s one or two drops in one or two buckets and there are thousands of buckets and modern manufacturing relies on those buckets being literally right next to each other. US lawmakers will throw a few bucks to the sexiest and trendiest buckets but what we really need is the least sexy parts; the business logistics and the suppliers, the raw materials, the moldmakers, etc. In 2024, the cheapest way to get aluminum stock or untold many other essential supplies quickly delivered to your business is to pay consumer prices for a million individually wrapped units at Amazon and then pay an employee to unbox them. What we need is broad and large scale vertical manufacturing if we want to be competitive and that is obvious to anyone who manufactures in the US.
This is like people saying for the past decade that solar will never be anything because it was <1% of energy production.
Predicting the future based on position only works if the velocity growth is the same for all points. I don't think that will be the case. Unless we just give up, and actively choose not to compete.
The problem is that we can't build anything in this country, with a handful of very expensive exceptions. If the US wants to change that, we have to send a planeload of senators to Shenzhen and copy fucking everything. Take detailed notes and copy JLCPCB, LCSC, Alibaba, Foxconn, all the raw material suppliers, all the chemical suppliers. Build a new EEZ near NYC or SF and invest $1 trillion over 10 years (5% of discretionary spending.) Write up a few laws: every business must have fast turnaround, thin margins, and instant quotes. In a decade every product in the world would be made in America.
It wouldn't even be hard; that number is ~10% of military spending and all of those companies will voluntarily give you a detailed tour. It's not like we don't understand any of this stuff. Etching a PCB or running a warehouse or spot-welding some crap is relatively simple.
Everyone thinks China leads the world in manufacturing because of labor costs. Ha, no. It started out as the labor costs, but now it's the vertical integration. You can go from prototype to product in a month in China. Try doing that in the US; it'll take a month just to get your calls returned, and you'll find that we don't and we can't make shit. At scale, we can't make foam, we can't mold plastic, and we can't make PCBs. More to the original subject, at scale we can't coat electrodes, we can't process chemicals, and we can't work metal; put that all together and we sure as shit can't make batteries.