Posted on 08/03/2025 6:34:56 PM PDT by delta7
WTF?? How did our brilliant leaders arrange it so that India and China would account for 80% of production of something as damned basic as transformers?
Critical infrastructure is what the tariffs are supposed to address.
Better we learn about this flaw now than in the midst of hostilities.
Cheaper prices...basic Capitalism 101
Years and years of being bought off by wealthy executives who wanted to make these offshore for cheaper costs.
What do expect when your workforce consists of "aspiring rappers" who are "turning their lives around". In China they don't coddle or glamorize such people. They execute them, and sell their body parts on the open market.
Not really. Tariffs are intended to bring manufacturing to USA. But building large manufacturing plants requires design, procurement and installation. It takes time. Tariffs are a long-term solution.
Put the inmates to work?
Appearing soon on the Naz? Hope so.
An EMP burst and we are skarewed.
Or Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs): Massive expulsions of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun’s corona.
Pelosi, Schumer and Benedict Obama were busy with their insider trading...
Transformers have a lifespan of 50 years in normal service conditions. The majority of our transformers serving towns and cities on the poles are over 70 years old. The other shoe to drop is that the natural gas servicing our cities leaks out of broken pipes in greater quantities than is delivered to homes and businesses. That’s why they want to phase out natural gas heating and appliances.
Here's how it worked in industries I know. Albeit not transformers, but similar enough. Has decades of experience.
US manufacturer either is private company or public company making decent, but low margins
In comes private equity, using a little of their own money and LOTS of loans to buy up manufacturers
Several may be purchased to "roll-up" into one
New entity has larger market share in the USA, but also massive debt
To escape that debt, prices will be raised, and components will farmed-out to China and India. In the 1990s, it was the most basic or "polluting" components that the NIMBY people didn't want in their area.
Margins may increase under such short-term thinking, and and ever- increasing content of the transformer will be manufactured overseas. Huge payouts from the acquired company are paid to the private equity or Wall Street owners in "management fees"
In the meantime, the transformer manufacturer has been sold again, to another hedge fund or private equity company. It is saddled with debt and looks to reduce R&D
This time they become a "full range services company" and farm-out entire transformer manufacturing abroad. Since by now, several Chinese and Indian manufacturers are in the game, others are doing same. The US company now sells "services" and consulting on transformer installation.
The most skilled managers, engineers and craftsmen by now are retiring from the industry, and are difficult to replace with young talented engineers, who either going into finance, or law. The true money-making careers in urban America
By this point, the Chinese and Indians have a large scale also selling to their own growing (and protected) economies. They can invest larger sums in R&D. They may also get state support. Exporting to the West will also take more of their capacity as well, so they can expand, and drive more efficiencies.
Pretty soon, most American manufacturers are out of the game.
Robots in disguise!
This has been known for a long time. President Trump put a plan in place to make the U.S. power grid more robust.
President Biden had large amounts of money allocated to power grid upgrades in the big money bill. The Biden administration squandered it on Green New Deal nonsense.
IBTG
odd that the Gaytor isn’t here with some smarmy comment about Russian inflation...
The transformer “shortage” has been around for several years. It didn’t start in November because I voted for Trump.
Sat outside watching the work crew lower the retired unit and install the new one at 1:30 AM. My presence outside apparently bothered one of the local raccoons, who was chastising me from the other side of the hedge for sitting by my front door during raccoon happy hour.
Make them here.
L
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