Posted on 09/13/2021 12:51:53 PM PDT by jfd1776
No, actually there are many things these days that are no longer made in the USA. It will be a massive, massive effort to turn that around.
...at least for the ten to fifteen years it will take for our transportation network to catch up.
How long would it take us (assuming that governments didn't get in the way, and that there's actually a will to do it) to build up US manufacturing and source more things here?
I suspect that it would take equally as long as it will be to get through the existing ports. We don't have the skilled labor to work in manufacturing, nor do we have the desire to pay for inflated prices--do you think those former McDonald's workers are going to build things for any less than $15/hour? More likely, they'd want to double that wage.
A container with machine tools from Taiwan was $4000 and is now $20,000. No one wants to pay the difference.
I didn’t realize it is that big a mess and no end in sight!
Dollar stores hit the hardest.
If we did more porduction in America, we wouldn’t have as much stuff stuck in the China pipeline.
Working in transportation for the last 35 years - the missing piece from the article is it still takes professional drivers to move across the country or from the seaports. We forget the ridiculous regulations (environmental/labor) put in place that hinder the needed expansion of our transportation professionals. The push for unmanned tractor/trailer is coming - I assume the gov’t will herd everyone into urban centers due to whatever virus is running rampant to protect us and keep the roads clear for driverless vehicles. Too many professional drivers retiring and fear of COVID or the vaccine driving them away (sorry for pun). The decline in numbers is significant; and pay is increasing - many drivers could start their own company with one truck and work whenever they want or need. The decline in available work force has been evident in transportation for years - other service industries just now seeing it.
And the Federal bureaucracies will be there to triple the cost of everything. Over-regulation is one of the reasons so much manufacturing went overseas in the first place. For example the cost of permits to build a refinery in the USA is more than the cost of building the actual refinery.
Subsurface maglev intermodal corridors. Get rid of the ships. Arteries to all cities of 3 million or more. Sub-arteries to all cities 500K to 3M. etc.
Linedrive - You’re absolutely right. I focused on the ship and rail aspects of the supply chain, only because it was already such a long piece, and covering the issues with trucking would have had to add several more paragraphs. I figured I’d save that for another column.
But you are so right... we’ve had a serious driver shortage for years, and several things make the international/intermodal area especially painful for truckers.
The terrible wait for railyards to swing the containers down off the stacks... the terrible shortages of chassis... the way that so many importers sit on containers for days or weeks, which means taking precious chassis out of action...
in chicagoland, for example, a driver of a domestic 53’ can be in and out of a pickup or delivery in a couple of hours or even less. But a driver often sits half a day or even longer waiting for one pickup at the railyard, just sitting in line waiting. And at least ten or twenty percent of the time, they have to collect and/or return the chassis to a different yard than the container!
I feel sorry for every trucker stuck dealing with international/intermodal ocean containers nowadays. Long-suffering folks.
But well worth it!!!!
Lou, mass production is cheap wear ever it’s done. Here, there any where. It’s degrees of cheapness.
Free traitors will scare and tell you screw divers made in the USA will cost $10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000.00 each.
The cost of regulation is measured in pennies on the dollar. You are FOS....
Now THAT’S really funny, central va.
The cost of regulation is measured differently depending on who is measuring it.
To say “pennies on the dollar” is a meaningless dismissal.
Many regulations are worthwhile (protecting a lathe operator from cutting off his hand), and many are not worthwhile (saving some miniscule subspecies of bird or fish).
US regulations have driven countless industries abroad. Even if you say some cost seems tiny, if it’s enough to move the manufacture from our country to another one, then its REAL cost is all the jobs and profit that are thus displaced.
The cost of regulation is therefore IMMENSE, and those who deny it are either fools or utopian dreamers.
Yes, MBAs would offshore to save .001 on a dollar. IMO it is not worth losing all the industry, economic security, jobs, secondary business and technology to save a penny. This is why we need tariffs to protect us from fools, like you.
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