Comment on I Tried To Make Something In America (The Smarter Scrubber Experiment) - Smarter Every Day 308
LordWiggle@lemmy.world 4 days agoYeah, it’s called trade. Trade is good for the economy. Every economist will tell you that. But feel free to follow Trump, who says the economy will be better when everything is made in the US.
We all rely on each other. International trade has never been on a larger scale as it is right now. You can’t have a complete production line in a single country. Like Nintendo said, it would cost billions to set up their entire production line of the swith 2 in the US, and even when they would try it would be impossible to do it a 100%. Resources come from all over the world. Rare earth metals are being imported into Taiwan, chips are being produced which are being imported into Japan. The chip machines are made in the Netherlands, which buys its resources from other European countries, the US, Asian countries like China. This is the entire process just to produce a chip. There’s an entire different international production line for just the screens, as well as all the other parts.
Back in the days you needed copper for wiring and plastics to mold, and you basically had a rotary phone. Easy to produce in a single country. Not comparable to phones these days. Trading was expensive back then. These days trading is cheap. Beleving everything needs to be made in the US using US raw resources is completely dillusional. Like Trump.
Even for simple products like a grill scraper, the most economically efficient way is to use the international market. It might not feel nice to be reliant on other countries, especially when you start trade wars with everyone and make everyone your enemy. Look at Russia, and the European reliance on them with gass, oil and rare earth metals. Even now we buy Russian stuff, even though we don’t want to. The alternative is to destroy our economy, like the US is doing right now. It isn’t fun, but it’s the reality. We slowly need to find substitutes. For that we can’t just say we will do it ourselves, we need to look for new sources elsewhere.
The world isn’t as simple as it was the 19th and early 20th century. You can’t compare it to our current economy, products and lifestyles.
I’m not saying make all things here, I didn’t even say that in my last comment… Nor do I agree with Trump overall.
Do you ever make your own food at home? By your reasoning, commerce and trade is good, never make food at home again. Never learn a skill, call an electrician, HVAC, or plumber. Never learn to fix your own things or solve your own problems if there is someone out there who can do it instead.
Jikiya@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Trade is good, being completely reliant on another country to deliver the things you need is bad. Especially if you have no idea how to make the things you need. What’s doubly bad is relying on a country that says they want to be ready to go to war with you in three years.
Trade is good, but we need to know how to make the stuff we rely on daily. If WW3 were to start, and we were to get cut off from our trading partners, we need to know how to make the things we require to continue to exist. I don’t think the video is trying to convince us to never buy another foreign product. I think it’s telling us we need to retain the knowledge that is required to make things in the US, so the country doesn’t grind to a halt in the event of an emergency.
bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
Agreed with this, but I don’t think it was entirely the point of Destin’s video, as more of his focus was about keeping jobs local to the United States. Unfortunately his bit at the end about companies spending more money for local manufacturing is not how Wall Street works, and that’s all corporations care about. If from a national standpoint, retaining this knowledge is vital to the security of the country, the government should be investing in keeping that production in the countries via tax subsidies or other incentives. Corporations won’t do it on their own if it means less profit for them, and imposing tariffs will just be passed to the citizens with no industrial gain.