Comments by "dbergerac" (@dbergerac9632) on "What would it take for US supply chains to minimize reliance on China?" video.

  1. I'll pay more if it will get factories open here again. No chain is stronger than the weakest link, and it seems that even of things made in the USA, one or more critical component is imported ( to be competitive). Make a good US product and we'll pay a bit more, restore jobs and be safe from a strategic or accidental interruption of critical material. Feel free to make things in the South, we're business friendly, the wages are low enough that foreign companies open plants here, industrial acreage is cheap and tax incentives are competitive. Outsource to Alabama for a while, we even speak a little English here.
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  2. Overtaxing corporations drove them to tax friendly nations. We are gradually luring them back with breaks, but industries have a lot of inertia and overseas capital investments. They did not leave overnight, they cannot return overnight.
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  3. When the great depression hit, factories closed their doors. Years later for WW2, someone with a key, re-opened those factories and we went back to work. In the 70's I worked in such a factory, using machinery built during the 1920's, still good to go. It makes me very very sad that now when a company closes, valuable and possibly even strategic machinery is ripped from the floor and sold for scrap metal. That factory will not be re-opening regardless of the fates of nations. One by one, even the old buildings succumb to fires and weather. It is almost as though, as a society, we do not want the factories re-opened regardless of changing economies. If we resume full scale pharmaceutical production, will we have to buy the machines from China?
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  4. Find a suitable existing generic factory ( if we have any ) then cut a deal to lease their "excess capacity". A machine that is not running 24 hrs/day is not making its full potential,and that potential capacity is regularly leased. I worked in a name brand food factory and when our orders were filled, we changed the wrapping paper on the machines and then began production for one of our competitors who was sold OUR product, under THEIR label at a cost below our own cost to even produce. ( It relates to fixed vs variable costs, just trust me). It is a very common practice among consumable goods. If you can get enough market share, then you can finance your own factory.
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  5.    That sounds good to me. what we have been doing is wrong.
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  6.  @pmachin06  LOL. I remember the commercials to "Look for..the Union Label...." we did, and then bought something better made for less. When there were billboards saying "Buy American" We responded with "Build better stuff so that we CAN!" Every product has "quality creep" It makes and sells and gets market share, and THEN accounting see's that an inferior ingredient ( corn syrup, etc) can be substituted and save a few pennies. ( I actually WAS this guy decades ago.) That guy gets a promotion and next year,another guy finds another ingredient or part that can be substituted or outsourced and save a few pennies. Over time, products become unrecognizable from their original form. Just as this happened in US firms, Europe and China were not immune to quality creep. If you are old, you already know that your Bic lighter ( or pen) is not really like the one that was made in the '70's, or '80's. Attention Mega-corporations! I WILL pay an extra quarter to have my hamburger the way I liked it. Stop cutting materials costs, streamline expenses. Raise a price now and then.
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  7.  @JeffCounsil-rp4qv  I used to work in the home office of a large candy manufacturer. You are quite correct, what we paid to make a candy bar was a fraction of the cost to buy the wrapper.
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  8. Yes. who would want to build in a new socialist economy when they can just exploit one that already sort-of works?
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  9. Change comes slowly and is best achieved through social pressure. When it becomes "uncool" to have sweatshop sneakers.They will vanish like the wind. It has worked remarkably well for smoking. Now if we can just wean the government off of the tobacco tax cash cow...
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  10. With Smithfeld Ham, the Chinese obtained most of the US pork industry.
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  11. It depends on how long it takes China to fill the order for the machinery. We stopped making that too. I wish I were joking.
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  12.    You make a very good point, but the US military does not bid out it's ammunition to foreign nations because they might not be our friends in a conflict. For the same reason, it was foolish for us to allow foreign nations to monopolize many strategic supply lines. It is, of course, impractical for any nation to supply ALL of it's normal needs. National Security sometimes means ships and tanks, sometimes it means, a secure supply of petroleum, sometimes medicines, and sometimes something as simple as sugar. For quite a few years now, leaders have neglected that "Secure" feeling that you have with cash in the bank (growing GDP), a reliable car ( reliable transportation network and infrastructure) and medicine in the Cabinet ( Pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity ). I don't feel a need to make everything we want economically, but there is an advantage in being to make almost anything that we NEED, even if we cannot do it as efficiently as someone else.
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  13.    Thanks. Absolutely. Government schools do a poor job preparing graduates for living/working/voting. My g/f is a college professor who teaches 8th grade math ( which offers no graduation credits ) to "College Students" who are receiving federal grants to attend. Our K-12 free education has been so successful at eliminating critical thinking that there is a new trend in politics to make College "free" meaning that it will be babysitting now for grades k-16. And the public has a growing number of voters unable to understand the potential results. We had a nice run for a while there.
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  14. We should order some factory machines from them first. We melted ours for scrap.
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  15. If two nuclear powers went to WAR, medicine would probably be irrelevant.
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  16. Just stop buying their cheap crap and supporting The greedy Disney Empire.
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  17. I prefer to buy hand tools and precision tools from Germany, Belgium and the UK. I really don't mind cheaping out on some Chinese work gloves or other disposables. IF I require a non-precision machine, I will consider a Chinese machine if the MTBF rate is high enough to offset the additional costs of a US or European machine. There is a market for everything, but as a CONSUMER, I measure value differently than a manufacturer. A broken wrench, a brittle drill bit, or a soft saw blade are not bargains.
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  18.    Why imbeciles in DC who never held a job, owned a business, or bought their own groceries are ill equipped to determine our fate.
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  19.  @bwagner1800  Kia and Mercedes are quite happy exploiting cheap Southern USA labor. US companies might consider working with the home-boys.
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  20.  @Echo_Charlie  Preach!
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  21.  @bwagner1800  They don't exist to lose money.
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  22.  @meljohnston-stock5480  And GATT
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  23.  @laylacicconi8447  Who is John Galt?
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  24. People aren't hating on the Chinese people for wanting to make a buck. We're angry out OUR leaders who gave our jobs away.
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  25. The GATT treaty giving away our jobs to Asia ( promoted by both parties ) long predates both Trump and Obama. That was a combined Bush/Clinton effort.
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  26.  @JeffCounsil-rp4qv  When the state requires a word added to the ingredients label, it can cost a large manufacturer hundreds of thousands or more in labels taken to the landfill. I know, I placed the orders.
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  27. Nothing quite says "victory " quite like setting your own economy back 20 years.
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