What "stuff"? Food? Yes, the stores are full of Chinese garlic and mushrooms. I seek out North American garlic and there is a mushroom farm 30 miles from me. Energy? Nope, not a watt, not a barrel.
So, what kind of "stuff" do we get from them? Weapons, nope, not yet. Cheap consumer electronics and other consumer goods. Do you mean to tell me we can't make that "stuff" here in North America?
The only "stuff" they have a monopoly on, and would hurt us is "rare earths". The government should be stockpiling rare earths right now, forget the SPI. Also, there is a mine in California that is used to produce rare earths. The deposits are still in the ground.
You can't tell me the country that built and deployed an atomic bomb FROM SCRATCH in 3 1/2 years couldn't reopen that mine and produce the required rare earth minerals in 30 days. The mine closed because of "environmental concerns". Faced with an existential threat, I think the US could bury the envirowackos in the tailing pit and get production going in 30 days.
Nothing personal, I just don't think they make anything we can't do without or make ourselves in jig time.
“So, what kind of “stuff” do we get from them? Weapons, nope, not yet. Cheap consumer electronics and other consumer goods. Do you mean to tell me we can’t make that “stuff” here in North America?”
Go to any store. Look at almost everything. 90% isnt made in this hemisphere.
Sure, we CAN make this stuff, but it wont be for months AT BEST. The economy isnt going to tread water while factories are set up to accommodate all of these items.
I think you're absolutely right. War there might actually be good for our economy. Get us working again. We certainly have an edge in medical goods and supplies; that would be the first thing we would sell to them both during and after a war. (Obama would probably just give it away for free.) The rest that we would have gotten there, we can produce ourselves here.
Chinese production has a dominant supplier position in basically two things: cheap household goods and toys, and consumer electronics.
For the former, the gear-up time for domestic and Mexican replacement production is maybe four weeks longer than the present inventory. Prices will probably have to go up about 30% for that stuff, to ration out the remaining Chinese inventory and then to finance local costs (higher labor and environmental compliance costs, less reduced shipping expense). Not the end of the world.
For the latter, it’ll be more of a challenge. The supply chain for electronics in the US is limited to defense and aerospace applications which legally can’t be off-shored, but it’s a very different set of scaling and cost structures. The capital investments to be able to manufacture 55” LCD panel TVs soup to nuts are mammoth, and no one will make those investments without a long-term earn-out protection. My guess is that we’ll need a 5- or even 10-year tariff law before Dell or Apple will put the billions into the ground needed to scale up for full domestic production. Figure on a doubling or tripling of cost as the remaining inventory is bid up (iPads at $2,000), and at least a 50% premium thereafter.
I wish that were true but we have closed down so many factories, we are not allowed to extract natural resources, we don't have many steel mills anymore, obama is keeping us dependent on foreign oil, we have raised a generation of uneducated idiots that never did grasp American excptionalizm. We are soooo screwed.
A decade ago, I would have agreed with your bravado.
Now I am starting to become concerned. I believe there is some validity to your confidence.
However now a huge portion of Americans are becoming used to buying things we never made. Moreso all the time. That is new, and very troubling.
We need to stop importing everything. We need to raise import taxes, and start producing things in America once again.
Now.