However I was kind of looking forward to the insanity that would follow from leaving this long term and fairly sensible pact! Change isn't always bad, sometimes change leads to new solutions.
I personally enjoy the ability to buy NEW parts for my 1914 sewing machine and have them sent directly from some mom and pop family stall in a Chinese village for $0.15 with free shipping.
But I also see the importance of encouraging American manufacturing, even though I also realize the long tail products I love so dearly and greatly appreciate the life support China's extended to them is valuable.
I also benefit from the ability to manufacture prototype PCB boards in China for new products just by sending off a webform request and for around 1/50 the cost stateside. Losing that ability might be damaging to domestic productivity since we really can't meet those prices, which makes doing frequent bugfix revs, or a small production product, untenable. For those with access to those highly superior Chinese facilities at low cost and quick turnaround, they might have the long term advantage. On the other hand why can't we locally have very modern robotic pick and place machines that don't cost hardly anything and have Joe Bob's fabrication of Arkansas pivot from custom tractor parts to producing clean room spec proto boards. These shops in China doing this stuff a lot are in rural areas and are small outfits run by a few people. We can do the same and would be more interesting for a lot of americans than meth and opioid despair. And yes we can do it.
Who knows though. What happens in the global economy and balance of tech is a delicate balancing game and difficult to predict long term outcomes past next year.
I do think our present administration is quite good at this game of take it or leave it hardball. The present outcome is a reasonable compromise. And is the new solution we may or may not have gotten from actually leaving.
> I personally enjoy the ability to buy NEW parts for my 1914 sewing machine and have them sent directly from some mom and pop family stall in a Chinese village for $0.15 with free shipping.
I do, too, but this just means that we're externalizing the cost of shipping and ignoring the fact that shipping things over such long distances is damaging to the environment, and damaging to the US's ability to have an independent, self-sustaining economy. (We'll never actually 100% get there in our globally-connected world, but getting closer when it makes sense for our interests is IMO a good thing.)
> I do think our present administration is quite good at this game of take it or leave it hardball.
I agree they're good at reaching for hardball at the slightest provocation, but I would not agree that they're good at it. This is one of the very very scant few situations where it's worked. It's the exception, not the norm.
"Joe Bob's fabrication of Arakansaw" has some licensing requirements his foreign competition might not. And some materials handling friction that's probably less costly elsewhere. His employees have overhead and administration costs which are again, higher than many other places.
However I was kind of looking forward to the insanity that would follow from leaving this long term and fairly sensible pact! Change isn't always bad, sometimes change leads to new solutions.
I personally enjoy the ability to buy NEW parts for my 1914 sewing machine and have them sent directly from some mom and pop family stall in a Chinese village for $0.15 with free shipping.
But I also see the importance of encouraging American manufacturing, even though I also realize the long tail products I love so dearly and greatly appreciate the life support China's extended to them is valuable.
I also benefit from the ability to manufacture prototype PCB boards in China for new products just by sending off a webform request and for around 1/50 the cost stateside. Losing that ability might be damaging to domestic productivity since we really can't meet those prices, which makes doing frequent bugfix revs, or a small production product, untenable. For those with access to those highly superior Chinese facilities at low cost and quick turnaround, they might have the long term advantage. On the other hand why can't we locally have very modern robotic pick and place machines that don't cost hardly anything and have Joe Bob's fabrication of Arkansas pivot from custom tractor parts to producing clean room spec proto boards. These shops in China doing this stuff a lot are in rural areas and are small outfits run by a few people. We can do the same and would be more interesting for a lot of americans than meth and opioid despair. And yes we can do it.
Who knows though. What happens in the global economy and balance of tech is a delicate balancing game and difficult to predict long term outcomes past next year.
I do think our present administration is quite good at this game of take it or leave it hardball. The present outcome is a reasonable compromise. And is the new solution we may or may not have gotten from actually leaving.