The sad thing is, investment into new manufacturing was actually up -- WAY up -- under Biden, as you can see in this chart: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRMFGCON

Now that Trump is president, looks like it's starting to decline again.

Manufacturing lead times are huge. E.G. Offhand CPUs take something like 5-7 years from initial plans to final tapeouts / production.

That's not even considering the issues of planning, permits, installing machines, training workers, etc, in a more down to earth facility like a generic food plant, or heck forbid something seriously regulated (I hope) like making prescription drugs.

And...what exactly does this have to do with my comment, which was about how much money was being invested into manufacturing construction?

You'd mentioned a _timeline_ of manufacturing. I'm pointing out that usually investment has a lag time and giving some examples of lag times I've seen mentioned in publications before to parallel my supposition...

That real impact from investment may be 5-10+ years from the initial funding allocation.

But I wasn't talking about results, I just pointed out that investment was way up? There's no time lag there, it's just...how much money is going in.

That's a larger reason for offshoring than wages.

Your billion dollar factory can start returning the investment years earlier when you manufacture elsewhere.

Less red tape, easier to manage 'processes', fewer environmental / labor relations...

It's those last two, impact on the commons and unfair worker treatment, that are examples of where I _would_ support reasonable tariffs. Particularly if funds from those tariffs went to remediating the impact and were agreed to (also observed) by a majority of other leading countries / economic blocks.

It is not about manufacturing as in creating things. If it was, they would like Biden policies and continued them. Real manufacturing today is heavily automatized - you can create a lot of things with a few jobs.

It is about manufacturing jobs as identity and social status. Biden would create manufacturing as a "modern factories that create things". These do not employ all that many people and wont revert the world back to idealized past.

Yes, those jobs are never returning. Manufacturing will increasingly be automated, or the world will crash in some highly unfortunate way that we'd all be (un?)lucky to survive.

Production of critical parts within allied or the same nation is a reasonable goal.

It's probably also more energy efficient to manufacture things closer and ship less.

Whenever I tried to explain that quote is true anywhere in the world, it was never well received.

"a hard working guy can't get ahead any more because xyz"

It is ironic there are many very hard working guys in China, Philipines, Vietnam ...

Yes indeed, it's quite a blinkered world view when considered from a more reality-based perspective, but you can't deny the emotional experience precisely because it's subjective in nature.

Fact is that service jobs don't pay as well, or well at all, and some not even not enough to live on your own, or enough to save for retirement, or to start a family. This resentment is from the young working class males, and the rage is building. You can look at the election in Canada, to see how the younger people voted, and its totally opposite of the boomers they increasingly want to MAID. Populism isn't necessarily bad, It's what gave birth to America. Raging hillbillies rebelling is kind of a thing though out humanity. But particularly successful in America, thanks to the constitution it spawned. And probably many more examples since ...

If service jobs pay way worse than manufacturing jobs, how come manufacturing share v. GDP per head is some kind of inverted parabola? And why are manufacturing jobs deeply unpopular with young people?

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-vs-manufacturing-empl...

I googled: younger people voted for conservatives https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd6j9z3dqg8o

MAID: Medical assistance in dying?

Yes, it's no longer a taboo and many younger people are cheering it on. As the older generation controls most of the resources, and wealth. I remember reading somewhere it's actually illegal (or maybe it was a proposed law) to try and discourage someone once they consented. It's currently one in 20 deaths, but that number is growing steadily.

Half a million extra deaths of despair over the last twenty years or so.

https://www.takimag.com/article/deaths-of-despair/

>"But the more I study the White Death of the past two decades, the more I am instead reminded of the tragic trajectory of a now much less publicized American race, Native Americans. Like American Indians, working-class white Americans seem to be living, and dying, like a defeated people, quietly offing themselves with so little to-do that nobody even noticed what was happening to working-class white lifespans for the first fifteen years of this century."

I'm not here to say that working class Americans have it easy but it is outrageous to suggest that depression is in any way comparable to the genocide of America's indigenous population.

He's not talking about the "genocide" you dork; he's talking about the aftermath. But thank you for the virtue signal.

Yup. I'd hazard an analogy to the idea that one can strategically bomb a population into submission via morale collapse [1]. Not only does it not work, in WWII "being bombed hardened civilian will to resist." (Also in Vietnam.)

Speaking more concretely: Canadians are willing to suffer more pain today (vis-à-vis America) than before because of the trade war.

[1] https://acoup.blog/2022/10/21/collections-strategic-airpower...