Comment by almosthere | Hacker News Reader

Comment by almosthere | Hacker News Reader

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They didn't have those steps outside the USA in 1960, yet people wore shirts. Those steps can come back.

For cars I found it interesting that my water pump on my Dodge Ram is stamped with Made in Italy. Yet the part is fairly small that even if Italy continues to make it, they can ship 50k water pumps in one shipping container to Detroit, and the truck can still be assembled here. That's not an issue. The issue is when the truck is made in Mexico entirely (which I think they still are). I know that's not "the entire supply chain" but it certainly becomes a center of gravity.

Last year many people were talking about dev shops changing their "center of gravity" from the US to other places like Poland. In other words, CEO here, EVERYTHING else is in Poland. Wherever that center of gravity is, that's the country that will benefit the most. They may even hire a remote worker in the US that is up all night - but it will be the exception, not the rule to hire US people.

> They didn't have those steps outside the USA in 1960, yet people wore shirts. Those steps can come back.

That was an entirely different economic world. We also paid 25 cents for gasoline; that's not coming back, and neither are cheap t-shirts.

Clothes are much cheaper than they were in 1960. You could bring the garment industry back to the US but you wouldnt be able to sell your products because they wouldnt be price competitive with sweatshop products.

You can just ban imports of the sweatshop products.

Protectionism has been proven time and again to fail. Over time inflation rises, trade gets worse, prices get higher, fewer choices, then the economy fails; it's a shitshow.

Even if we wanted to buy domestic-only, wealth inequality is so fucked that our people couldn't afford it. The way to solve that is higher wages, smaller corporate profits, cheaper healthcare and cost of living. But you know that ain't happening. Our economy is built around corporate profits. We're basically one large hedge fund with a lot of uber drivers.

So while you can get away with protectionism during the reign of an insane person for 4 years, you eventually need to move stuff back overseas, because nobody here can afford the stuff you make here. (You could export all your goods, but then what's the point of the protectionism?)

The problem is that people like sweatshop products. If you ban them you get voted out because of massive inflation.

like all Apple products?

Most clothing worn in the U.S. was made in the U.S. even in the 1990s. In the 1980s it was over 70%.

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