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*Both* parties have supported these trade agreements. Naturally, each party wants to convince its supporters that the other party is solely responsible.
Don’t be a useful idiot for any political party.
You are right, both parties sold us out with these crappy trade deals, which is why Trump's going back and trying to re-negotiate them. It took 40+ years to get us into this trade mess, and even Trump needs more than 4 years to fix it. In 8 years, he will have repaired a lot of it, especially now that the entire USA isn't working against him on it. If anyone else gets elected besides Trump, its back to the same 'ole same 'ole that got us into this mess.
China will keep buying our land, buildings, and company's, and flooding our markets with cheap goods and stealing our intellectual property, and jobs. They are already our #1 debtor...they are our banker which gives them a lot of control over us. China is very close to placing America in a choke hold.
Trump's approval rating is going up because his warnings about China, are now becoming much more transparent to American voters. China denying meds and medical supplies to WTO (World Trade Org) partners lifted the curtain on how evil they really are.
Now, Americans see how not manufacturing our own meds, and medical supplies can be dangerous.
The China siren Trump began sounding ~4 years ago, that people scoffed at, are now being heard..loud and clear.
Is this the first national crisis where 3D printing is having a significant impact? That technology can help return manufacturing to this country and make it local.
Return?
The US is the second largest global manufacturer which is darn incredible given China has more than a billion people than the US.
We do not have the resources to be self- sufficient without a substantial decline in the standard of living.
Thread fail. not only do we make masks etc, we also make ventilators.
Im surprised so many us companies make masks to be honest, I figured all of it would be overseas. The ventilators were no surprise though, I listed one, but given that they can be more complex, and people want to be able to sue if something goes wrong I wasnt surprised to see them made here.
The US dominates the global ventilator market. Does not necessarily mean the devices are manufactured here.
Prior to Covid-19, most folk never pondered “ ventilator”.
Labor-intensive work went to the cheapest labor market - mostly China, in the last few decades. Both US main political parties were onboard with that, & the manufacturers lobbied hard to get that done.
But as manufacturing moved offshore & also moved upscale - consumer electronics, domestic electrical items, bicycles, motorcycles, cars, trucks, pianos - the nuts & bolts knowledge also went with the equipment & supply chains, & it's very difficult to reconstitute that. There's plenty of blame to spread around - the real question is What to do about the near-future & medium future about manufacturing in the US.
Why blame?
The US economy is consumer based. Whole lotta middlemen between the end consumer and a factory in India or China Or Bangladesh. The livelihood of these middlemen depends on sustained consumerism.
I’m in medical and scientific device manufacturing. It would be impossible to do the products I do in the U.S. any longer due to the erosion of expertise and industrial infrastructure. I’m currently researching the idea of exporting a small, production-ready face mask operation from Taiwan to Oregon capable of producing 100k face masks per day but I’m not confident it will be doable or even that there will be any meaningful long-term support on the U.S. side for such an operation.
Congress passes and Trump signs the $2T bill to provide aid, relief, supplies et. al.
He then allocates $1 million (could be $100 million, but I'll use this made-up number for now) to buy N95 masks, and orders some major Federal supply warehouse to order as many as it can for that amount.
They can either buy them from a U.S. manufacturer, in which case they might get 500,000 masks.
Or they can buy them from a reputable manufacturer in China (yes, there are a few reputable ones), and get 5 million masks.
As a result of getting 5 million masks, several thousand people who would have died (when 4,500,000 didn't get masks), stay alive because they all got masks.
Now, who do you suggest they buy masks from?
And what will you say to hysterical liberal fanatics who call you "evil" as a result?
Nobody, especially the people who keep screaming how terrible it is that we buy things from China, seem to want to answer this question.
Yet it's a very important question, is it not? And we're facing it NOW.
I have been highly distressed by the fact that we were moving everything to India and China and the USA was increasingly not making stuff anymore. I was thinking exactly the same thing. "What if you have a war and you don't know how to make anything??"
Voted for Obama because he said he'd do something about it and McCain didn't. Obama didn't do squat, so voted for Ron Paul next. Couldn't stand Donald Trump, the very personification of the high school bully, but with power, so I voted for Gary Johnson. Still not crazy about Donald Trump, but at least we have a guy who is actually doing something to get the USA back into the business of making stuff. He at least got the process started, but when this virus hit us, we still were dependent on China for supply chain and/or manufacturing of just about every medical supply there is. Consider the fact that the last US plant that manufactured penicillin shut down in 2004. We've been selling our souls to China for decades now.
Wanna make a difference? Refuse to buy "Made in China" or at least try. There are many things you can't even buy
Everything ? Hardly.
Back into the business? You drank the Trump kool-aid.
Manufacturing tracks the cheapest sources of global labor. Technology Substitution/ Industrial Robotics has and will continue to level the playing field in many key sectors.
Both parties sold us up the river and now everyone is addicted to cheap crap. None of the elected idiots or the lobbyists they serve give a hang about the rest of us. And we're too stupidly looking at a tiny screen to notice.
Why should a government impose its will and prevent a US company from manufacturing in or sourcing from any damn place they want?
We do not have the resources to produce what we consume. We either import people or stuff.
Do you have any evidence or backup to the existence of this mysterious "training" you have come up with?
Do you watch TV? Use the Internet? Hey, go out in public even? (Perhaps not go out in public, lately.) There is a barrage of messaging with the intent of making you consume. And it works.
I'd say that qualifies as training - people are being conditioned towards the desired response.
Quote:
Or did you just make it up because it sounded like something you wished were true, however nonsensical?
Billions of dollars are made each year by telling people that their lives are incomplete without the latest doodad. It's an entire industry.
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