Comment by yibg

Comment by yibg 5 hours ago

2 replies

Typically as economies advance there is a shift to services and higher value add / higher skill manufacturing anyways. That can be the explicit strategy for the US as well. Focus on renewables, high tech, aerospace etc instead of the lower margin / lower skill manufacturing.

They're not mutually exclusive of course. There can be some national protection via tariffs on some types of manufacturing, while investing in automating some other types and just completely ignoring others and keeping those offshore. Problem currently is there doesn't seem to be a much of a strategy.

petermcneeley 3 hours ago

The USA and the west in general is 40 years deep into this crisis and recent developments have not actually made a shift in that trajectory.

  • yibg an hour ago

    It seems like the US in particular isn't able to pick one path and stick with it. The shift towards services has already happened. But investment in silicon, renewables etc is on again off again. There now seems to be a desire to bring all manufacturing jobs back to the US, although it's not clear who wants this or why. e.g. who actually wants clothing and toy manufacturing back in the US?

    So we have a set of ad hoc policies (or EOs), that don't seem to have an overarching goal.