alt Hacker NewsUS industrial output is much lower than it has been relative to our consumption. We should mostly make in the country the industrial products we consume.
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Manufacturing as a share of GDP is bound to fall. It is inevitably going the way of agriculture.
The US is in the envyable position of having developed a globally dominant service sector. Putting that at risk of retaliation by imposing tariffs on all imports, including the lowest margin stuff like screws and bolts is utter insanity.
https://www.ft.com/content/aee57e7f-62f1-4a57-a780-341475cd8...
> We should mostly make in the country the industrial products we consume.
You state this as fact that we should all agree on. Why should we do this? Why not rely on our allies and friends to do what they do well, while we continue to do what we do well? Is trade not the basis of peace? If we stand alone, we must ask why we must.
Why? That's what trade is for
I'm curious, are you personally volunteering to work in the factories? Or is it a situation where we need industrialization to come back but you personally are not willing to see it through?
So you agree that we are not deindustrialized. Have a nice day.
We really shouldn't though.
Cargo culting "manufacturing jobs" isn't actually a plan.
(I also notice nobody is talking about bringing back switchboard jobs or typing pool jobs)
We are a consumer nation because we are more prosperous than our peers. It's the same reason you buy your food at a grocery store.
Generally, the clamoring for domestic production comes down to: 1. Employment. But because we are more prosperous, our employment is aimed elsewhere. We have jobs for people that are less dangerous, less manual, and better paid.
2. A fear that without domestic production, we're at a strategic or military disadvantage. But it's not that we _can't_ produce in an emergency, we can and have historically (see: oil in the 1970s). What protects us most is hegemony, which is threatened by things like across-the-board trade wars.
3. Nostalgia for the good ol days. Look, if you want to work in a factory, we have lots of them here, still. Nobody will stop you from putting on the hard hat. But in all likelihood you have a less stressful, less dangerous, and better-paying job today.
There really isn't an argument for this. Our trade was - as all trade is - mutually beneficial. Right now we're pushing the glass to the edge of the table when it was perfectly fine where it was.
One other important note: there are things we literally cannot produce domestically due to lack of natural availability (food products, certain textiles)