Why Everything Can’t Be Made In America

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Why Everything Can’t Be Made In America

By Steve Berman  |  December 16, 2016, 02:11pm  |  @stevengberman


For people who voted for Donald Trump because they thought he could bring back “Made in USA” to everything we buy, I’m sorry, but it ain’t gonna happen.

Trump’s incoming Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, a man not normally given to unintelligent remarks, said “We can make everything here, or our goal should be to try to make everything we can in the United States so that the money gets put in the pockets of Americans.”

Priebus was answering a charge by the media, in a conversation with Hugh Hewitt, that Secretary of Labor nominee Andy Pudzer wants to replace workers with robots. Hewitt called it “fake news.”

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You know, the point is that there are many ways in this country that we have outsourced jobs, even a robot, that we’ve outsourced jobs to places that we don’t need to.

I can actually understand Priebus, a lawyer and RNC guy, not a trained economist or hard-nosed businessman, thinking that somehow jobs can be boiled down to “we don’t need to.” But I can’t understand President-elect Trump thinking this way. Back in November, Trump said this to the New York Times

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I was honored yesterday, I got a call from Bill Gates, great call, we had a great conversation, I got a call from Tim Cook at Apple, and I said, ‘Tim, you know one of the things that will be a real achievement for me is when I get Apple to build a big plant in the United States, or many big plants in the United States, where instead of going to China, and going to Vietnam, and going to the places that you go to, you’re making your product right here.’ He said, ‘I understand that.’

Then Trump went on to tout his business-friendly tax and regulatory goals. Fine. But Cook’s response of “I understand that” is basically his Alabama upbringing coming out in a Silicon Valley way of saying “Bless your heart!” Cook’s predecessor put it more plainly to Trump’s predecessor.

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But as Steven P. Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?

Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.

Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.

Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said, according to another dinner guest.

“Those jobs” are the jobs the Chinese do for $1 an hour. One one hand, we say it’s unfair and beneath contempt for Foxconn and other Chinese companies to pay their workers such an outrageously low wage[/i]

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http://theresurgent.com/why-everything-cant-be-made-in-america/

[Cripplecreek]

Into the early 70s, cars could still be pretty much 100% American made but they're a whole different animal today. Today they have thousands of tiny components that come from fully automated production and you can't pay the cheapest labor to make them efficiently.

Trying to make a 100% American made car today would take up a huge portion of the available workforce and would be a 6 figure vehicle that few of us could buy.

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We can’t bring back the 1950’s because in the 1950’s Europe was devastated, the Soviet Union was reeling from 20 million dead and a poverty of intellectual and engineering talent after Stalin’s purges. China was in the midst of a giant purge as Mao’s re-education camps were in full swing. Japan was effectively destroyed. The United States and Canada were the only places left relatively untouched and in top industrial capacity. Those days are gone by nearly 70 years and they will never come back.

Those were the days

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

Those were the days

We still call morphine medicine don't we? :)

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