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rockskonlast Tuesday at 10:58 PM4 repliesview on HN

No amount of time will let the U.S. - a country of 348 million people - replicate what China - a country with 1.4 billion people - a can do with manufacturing.

This isn't "working harder".

This isn't "rebuilding infrastructure".

This isn't "training people in trades".

The numbers are so cartoonishly lopsided as to be a non-starter for categorically replacing Chinese manufacturing.


Replies

derektankyesterday at 12:21 AM

600 million people live in North America. 1 billion people live in the Americas. Another billion live on the Pacific rim in non-Chinese countries.

Establishing regulatory harmony across all those countries is obviously not possible in the same way it is in a single authoritarian state, but if the US made it a priority to create a trade bloc capable of replicating China’s manufacturing capacity, it probably could.

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vsgherzilast Tuesday at 11:11 PM

we don't have to entirely replace Chinese manufacturing to build back American manufacturing that's a false dichotomy.To compete we'll just have to be more revolutionary than the manufacturing industry already is.

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maxgluteyesterday at 3:49 PM

People idealize US regaining manufacturing glory is like climbing from 1/5 back to 5/5 US industrial peak. Meanwhile is PRC grew he denominator and working at 20/20 scale. Ultimately 20 > 5 > 1, but better 5 than 1.

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Romario77last Tuesday at 11:12 PM

both are pretty big numbers and I think are pretty capable to do mass manufacturing. As evidenced by many industries that US had and still has.

it could be less economical, so Apple has to innovate to be competitive on pricing - with automation, robots, etc.