NA could we replace china? NA

James331

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James331
So based on my limited experience on this earth, it seems to me we as Americans have much more in common with RSA, Russia or a hand full of other industrial countries with cheaper money than us.

Would it be possible to swap things over to one of those countries? Start buying cheap Russian or South Africa made stuff vs china stuff?

Seems like there are other industrial counties who are more like America and cause a little less crap than china, are easier to work with, who perhaps could take over in the cheap crap and labor department.
 
The typical American doesn't care where anything comes from or who it harms so long as they can get it as cheap as possible.

Possible at this point? No, not without some serious regulation. I dont see it happening anytime soon.
 
Or we could change laws and entice American companies to return to the USA and provide more jobs. Atleast ones that automation hasn't replaced, yet.
 
Or we could change laws and entice American companies to return to the USA and provide more jobs. Atleast ones that automation hasn't replaced, yet.

For sure that's the best bet, personally I pay more to get stuff made in the US or at least another first world country.

China can't even make boxer shorts that don't fall apart, plus their culture is not inline with our values one bit, and what they have done with Tibet and Taiwan, the bodies on art exhibit, love for north korea, censorship, etc etc, I try to avoid anything china.
 
Or we could change laws and entice American companies to return to the USA and provide more jobs. Atleast ones that automation hasn't replaced, yet.

I'm not so sure we aren't getting a better deal. They manufacture stuff we need very cheaply, using their natural resources, pollute their own environment, take all the birth defect risks, etc for our paper. Think about it.
 
South Africa makes all sorts of stuff, most anything you buy in Africa is made in the RSA, salt and pepper to VW polos, still a beautiful country and much more American than china.
 
The typical American doesn't care where anything comes from or who it harms so long as they can get it as cheap as possible.

Unfortunately the "typical American" doesn't even know where things come from. Unless of course some celebrity tells them how terrible it is.

Without getting too political, if we make the products here, we are jingoistic isolationists. If we import from ANYWHERE we are exploiting someone and living the high life while someone is breaking their back to support our excesses.

Winning isn't an option, only whining.
 
South Africa makes all sorts of stuff, most anything you buy in Africa is made in the RSA, salt and pepper to VW polos, still a beautiful country and much more American than china.

South Africa is not price-competitive with China and the currency isn't stable - on strong currency years, prices are closer to European values and it's actually relatively expensive for even someone with US$ to buy stuff there.
 
But the stuff I bought while over there didn't fall apart, buying one hat for 20 bucks vs replacing a 12 buck chinese built hat 4 times, which one is more expensive again?
 
But the stuff I bought while over there didn't fall apart, buying one hat for 20 bucks vs replacing a 12 buck chinese built hat 4 times, which one is more expensive again?

If you bought clothing in South Africa, chances are it wasn't made in South Africa - it was made in Taiwan or Thailand.
 
If you bought clothing in South Africa, chances are it wasn't made in South Africa - it was made in Taiwan or Thailand.

A few pairs of shorts, couple shirts, sweet bush hat, all made in RSA, all still going strong.

I do look at tags, and shy of toilet paper, I really don't want anything made in china, it just breaks, disappoints and reaffirms all that is wrong with the human condition.
 
But just think of it. If boxer shorts were made in America, it would have to be union, then those shorts would cost $65.00 a pair, and they would still fall apart......
 
I loved visiting South Africa. James states that they are more "American" than China. I'm guessing that that perception comes because they speak English.
 
South Africa's president makes Putin look like a Girl Scout. Their government makes a Brazilian soap opera seem boring !

The people were great, the government I'd say we're misguided but at least have their hearts in the right place, and the country is beautiful.
 
The people were great, the government I'd say we're misguided but at least have their hearts in the right place, and the country is beautiful.

It is a beautiful country. I have a friend with a 2000 acre farm there. It has been in their family for over 150 years in one form or another from when her great grandfather came from Holland. They fear this heartfelt government will take it from them as other South African countries have and give it to the indigenous people.
 
If you want a real understanding of why the Chinese products are the way they are, read "Poorly Made in China" by Paul Midler. Fascinating read.
 
The reverse apartheid is real, no doubt, but I'd still rather give my money to folks in RSA than china
 
The end of apartheid was only about a generation ago, and there is much greater income inequality than there is in the US. Still, the poorer people seem to have an entrepreneurial spirit, but you might also say that about the Chinese.
 
That "crap" is accepted by many consumers. Therein lies the problem.

Some of the crap is manufactured to US-acceptable standards. Since this is an aviation forum, the 162 is one example.

I bought my daughter a camera drone for Christmas, engineered and made by a Chinese company. The quality and capability of that thing is amazing (not sure if they stole any proprietary engineering, but that's a different topic).

We should all be worried for the future, if we don't have a plan for staying ahead of the curve; we have great potential to fall behind. But what am I (or you) actually doing about it?
 
I have a commercial sUAS, she ain't china built, frankly china can't even make underware right, I ain't worried.

I'll happily pay more for a US or other good nation product.
 
The problem we have right now is that as money is flowing to China to produce the items, fewer Americans are on the receiving end of those dollars to buy more products. When the flow of dollars goes USA -> Walmart -> China and we wonder why real income has stagnated and why we need cheaper stuff.
 
The problem we have right now is that as money is flowing to China to produce the items, fewer Americans are on the receiving end of those dollars to buy more products. When the flow of dollars goes USA -> Walmart -> China and we wonder why real income has stagnated and why we need cheaper stuff.

Exactly!

Millions of blue collar jobs have gone to China, largely led by Wal-Mart's abandonment of "Made in America" and its embrace of "Made in the cheapest *%!!$! place possible". Now the guy or gal with a high school education has to work in a (typically) lower paying service industry instead of holding a decent job making toasters or whatever. The toasters are now sourced in China. Ultimately, this becomes self-defeating for Wal-Mart, as the people who used to shop at Wally-World lose their discretionary income. And, Wal-mart's competitors are buying the same Made in China crap, so it isn't like Wal-Mart has a distinct competitive advantage by doing business there...
 
And this isn't meant to demonize WalMart at all. It describes most consumer goods in general. It's just the reality of globalization. I'm not sure there's a way to combat it without levying huge import taxes on products made overseas in a protectionist move... and I don't know that that will actually encourage companies to move jobs back here, or if it'll just mean that the United States will no longer be a target market.

We make the mistake of pretending corporations are still beholden to their patron countries... that hasn't been true for at least the last 20 years.
 
And this isn't meant to demonize WalMart at all. It describes most consumer goods in general. It's just the reality of globalization. I'm not sure there's a way to combat it without levying huge import taxes on products made overseas in a protectionist move... and I don't know that that will actually encourage companies to move jobs back here, or if it'll just mean that the United States will no longer be a target market.

Logistic costs and time are the things which could drive manufacturing back to the US. When energy costs were so high a few years ago, some industries started looking at bringing manufacturing back to the US, but then fuel prices dropped again. As far as time goes, it is 6-8 weeks typically for a container to ship from China to the US East Coast. That's a lot of inventory in the pipeline (which costs money) and a long lag time between when something is made and when it could be sold.
 
The problem we have right now is that as money is flowing to China to produce the items, fewer Americans are on the receiving end of those dollars to buy more products. When the flow of dollars goes USA -> Walmart -> China and we wonder why real income has stagnated and why we need cheaper stuff.

And who is it that has been buying all the US Treasury debt that continues to be issued to fund the budget? You know, that doubling of the national debt under "W" and then doubling again under Obama. Answer: China, and every other nation with which the USA is running a current account deficit. Be careful what you wish for, because that is the burden that comes with the "exorbitant privilege" of issuing the world's reserve currency. And if that goes away, like it did for the UK early in the last century, the USA will have much larger problems than China.

Since this is an aviation forum let's use an aviation example. Roughly 30% of the content of a Boeing 787
Dreamliner is sourced from outside the USA. These are sub-assemblies that feed the Boeing manufacturing process, and are made in places like Canada, Belgium, South Korea, France, Italy and the U.K. Commercial aircraft are also one of the largest export earnings generators for the USA economy. So if import tariffs are applied to these inputs to the Boeing manufacturing process guess what happens to Boeings competitive position against Airbus, and its ability to sell abroad... ;)

Three other factoids to consider: a)70 percent of the value of USA exports are manufactured goods. b)In the last 25 years the value of USA exports to China has increased by a factor of 20 times. Exports to the rest of the world have increased over that same period by a factor of 3 times. c)twenty-five years ago China's share of USA goods imports was 5% and the rest of the Pacific Rim was 34%. Today China is about 18% and the rest of the Pacific Rim is down to 14% of total USA goods imports.

Finally, the biggest problem in the whole trend of declining manufacturing jobs (even as absolute manufacturing output continues to rise) is that over the past 25 years USA manufacturing labor productivity (and therefore permanent job destruction) has been increasing at 3 times the rate of USA service sector labor productivity. Quite simply, it is easier to improve the efficiency of a CAT, John Deere, Boeing, or auto vehicle manufacturing plant than it is to do the same with accountants, engineers, paralegals or Starbucks baristas. And THIS is the real issue we are all going to have to figure out how to deal with (re-patriating the making of men's underwear ain't gonna do nothin). For a really sobering read get a copy of Martin Ford's "Rise of the Robots".

(The majority of the statistics are from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis database).

Apologies if this has turned into too lengthy a post. No, I don't live in Denver.:rolleyes: :D
 
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And who is it that has been buying all the US Treasury debt that continues to be issued to fund the budget? You know, that doubling of the national debt under "W" and then doubling again under Obama. Answer: China, and every other nation with which the USA is running a current account deficit. Be careful what you wish for, because that is the burden that comes with the "exorbitant privilege" of issuing the world's reserve currency. And if that goes away, like it did for the UK early in the last century, the USA will have much larger problems than China.

Since this is an aviation forum let's use an aviation example. Roughly 30% of the content of a Boeing 787
Dreamliner is sourced from outside the USA. These are sub-assemblies that feed the Boeing manufacturing process, and are made in places like Canada, Belgium, South Korea, France, Italy and the U.K. Commercial aircraft are also one of the largest export earnings generators for the USA economy. So if import tariffs are applied to these inputs to the Boeing manufacturing process guess what happens to Boeings competitive position against Airbus, and its ability to sell abroad... ;)

Three other factoids to consider: a)70 percent of the value of USA exports are manufactured goods. b)In the last 25 years the value of USA exports to China has increased by a factor of 20 times. Exports to the rest of the world have increased over that same period by a factor of 3 times. c)twenty-five years ago China's share of USA goods imports was 5% and the rest of the Pacific Rim was 34%. Today China is about 18% and the rest of the Pacific Rim is down to 14% of total USA goods imports.

Finally, the biggest problem in the whole trend of declining manufacturing jobs (even as absolute manufacturing output continues to rise) is that over the past 25 years USA manufacturing labor productivity (and therefore permanent job destruction) has been increasing at 3 times the rate of USA service sector labor productivity. Quite simply, it is easier to improve the efficiency of a CAT, John Deere, Boeing, or auto vehicle manufacturing plant than it is to do the same with accountants, engineers, paralegals or Starbucks baristas. And THIS is the real issue we are all going to have to figure out how to deal with (re-patriating the making of men's underwear ain't gonna do nothin). For a really sobering read get a copy of Martin Ford's "Rise of the Robots".

(The majority of the statistics are from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis database).

Apologies if this has turned into too lengthy a post. No, I don't live in Denver.:rolleyes: :D

The only good thing about our debt is that we own most of it. Turns out Japan as of last month was the leading foreign power that owns us.. err... I mean our debt. :D
 
A few pairs of shorts, couple shirts, sweet bush hat, all made in RSA, all still going strong.

I have a family member there who would import clothing and then cut the label off and sow her own label on (which would carry a Made in RSA tag), to increase the value for resale. She would also take some generic clothes and sow Billabong logos on and then gift those as gifts to her grandkids - she's quite proud of this in fact. Bizarre person. Anyway just an anecdote, not saying that this is necessarily widespread, but you may get small shops operating this way - especially in tourist areas.

I do agree that quality does seem to be better there than here, and even when stuff is imported from the Far East, it has historically been from Taiwan and not China. During apartheid, Taiwan was one of the few countries in the world which didn't sanction South Africa so we got a lot of stuff from there and those trade ties still exist. I think Taiwan's production quality is overall closer to Japan than it is to mainland China.

Don't get me wrong, I would LOVE to see more investments into South Africa. I was born & raised there, still a citizen, still have most of my family there, and have quite a bit of personal investment there. South Africa has a lot of highly trained engineers so I was trying a few times getting an outsourcing center set up over there, but the economics just never worked out. Goods and services are expensive (compared to India & China), and support infrastructure is very lacking. Internet performance is abysmal, transportation is expensive, security is expensive, and the high-level job market is pretty competitive. You end up paying over 50% of what you would pay in the U.S., which isn't worthwhile for the logistical challenges that it causes. But it's a nice dream to have every now and again.
 
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James states that they are more "American" than China. I'm guessing that that perception comes because they speak English.

It absolutely is. I would say South African culture is somewhere between UK and US. Of course same language, but also more U.S.-like in terms of sense of humor, entertainment, food, religion, business interaction. We always found the Britts a bit off. Also similar racial problems. They're MUCH closer to each other than to India/China/Middle East.

Of course not the same sports, but that's the U.S.'s weirdness. I can still live with American football - it's like girl's rugby, which isn't terrible. But what baseball did to cricket is an abomination.
 
It absolutely is. I would say South African culture is somewhere between UK and US. Of course same language, but also more U.S.-like in terms of sense of humor, entertainment, food, religion, business interaction. We always found the Britts a bit off. Also similar racial problems. They're MUCH closer to each other than to India/China/Middle East.

Of course not the same sports, but that's the U.S.'s weirdness. I can still live with American football - it's like girl's rugby, which isn't terrible. But what baseball did to cricket is an abomination.

Food? :eek:
Biltong is in category all its own! :) ;)
 
The only good thing about our debt is that we own most of it. Turns out Japan as of last month was the leading foreign power that owns us.. err... I mean our debt. :D

That is, in part, due to the US Federal Reserve Banks collectively increasing balance sheets from about $800 Billion in 2004 to $4,400 Billion currently. Most of it is in T-bills, T-bonds and mortgage backed securities. The Fed also holds in custody for foreign official sector accounts about $2,800 Billion in Treasuries, up from $1,200 B in 2008 but down from a record of over $3,000 Billion a year ago. That declining trend is an indicator of the current difficulties in China, which is selling foreign reserve holdings including US Treasuries in an effort to prop up the Yuan as part of its efforts to control significant capital outflows from the mainland - prior to this recent selling it was the largest single foreign holder of US Treasury debt, just ahead of Japan.

The big concerns are whether the Fed can reduce its balance sheet without disrupting the US economy, and how much more it can increase its balance sheet if needed when the next US recession finally arrives. In the meantime I think betting against the US economy has been a lousy trade for many decades, and I don't see it being particularly good odds at present despite the histrionics of the internet "crisis pundits" predicting the demise of the US$ or the decline of the USA itself. Global capital flows, including those continuing to pour in FROM China, suggest quite the opposite at present.
 
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Food? :eek:
Biltong is in category all its own! :) ;)

Absolutely! (He says literally while munching on Biltong :p ). Jerkey doesn't get anywhere close.

But things like BBQ's (Braai's), Grits (pap), even Pizza & Burgers are common and closer to each other. The Britts stick meat in a pot and boil it. Case closed.

Of course, South Africans take BBQ to a whole other level. The New York times had a great article on it last year:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/25/dining/braai.html?_r=0

cool quote:
"Chicken is popular for everyday meals, but braai purists consider poultry and seafood to be vegetables, or at least intruders."


I've left South Africa 18 years ago and I still fire up a BBQ at least 3 times a week - no matter what the weather. Temperature last night was 29, and I had to actually break through a 5 pound chunk of ice on the cover before I could open it... But in the end we still had our boerewors :):

GOLD-Restaurant-Boerewors.jpg
 
And braai, plus all the game meats, properly served jager, and it's not all English speaking, going to some areas without speaking afrikaans can prove to be difficult.

But culture wise, taking someone from Cape Town and transporting them in their sleep to Santa Barbara, and vise versa, it would be a pretty seemless transition.

A friend of mine took a Chinese student under his wing (HS age), this kid was sposed to be a piano guy, very knowledgable about piano, but his state schooling was MAJORLY lacking in all areas that didn't have to do with piano, my understanding is the commie state is all about this type of "education" and the culture embraces it too.

One of the issues I noticed when he played at a competition, or whatever you would call them, is he sucked, yeah he could play the crap out of the piano form a technical note perfect, all his half notes were exactly half notes, whole notes exactly whole notes, but lacking all the life experience his peers from the US, S America, and even a Russian kid had, even at their young ages, his music lacked any understanding of the story behind the music, the emotions, the joys, sorrow, vengeance, embrace, the soul if you will.
 
Absolutely! (He says literally while munching on Biltong :p ). Jerkey doesn't get anywhere close.

... The Britts stick meat in a pot and boil it. Case closed...

:thumbsup:

LOL. My mother-in-law is English. My family is most decidedly not. She cooked damn near everything in a pressure cooker. My family has never owned one.

Early on I did much of the cooking and BBQ so my wife could experience the fact food can actually taste good.
Keep the faith! :stirpot:
 
People used to understand Made in USA and were particular about where the stuff they bought came from. The march toward manufacturing in China and other third world areas are a direct result of ivy league MBA programs and their indoctrination of students in the mantra that low wage areas must be exploited. They teach that skills aren't necessary, only warm bodies need to be put on assembly lines. Exploiting the short term bottom line to bump the stock price is the only thing these greedy little ivy MBA leeches are interested in.

My hope is that the Chinese population will one day purge itself of the communist scourge that infects it.
 
Absolutely! (He says literally while munching on Biltong :p ). Jerkey doesn't get anywhere close.

But things like BBQ's (Braai's), Grits (pap), even Pizza & Burgers are common and closer to each other. The Britts stick meat in a pot and boil it. Case closed.

Of course, South Africans take BBQ to a whole other level. The New York times had a great article on it last year:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/25/dining/braai.html?_r=0

cool quote:
"Chicken is popular for everyday meals, but braai purists consider poultry and seafood to be vegetables, or at least intruders."


I've left South Africa 18 years ago and I still fire up a BBQ at least 3 times a week - no matter what the weather. Temperature last night was 29, and I had to actually break through a 5 pound chunk of ice on the cover before I could open it... But in the end we still had our boerewors :):

View attachment 50721

Wish I could find boerewors around here and kudo

One of these days I need to make myself a real braai, grid, old wheel and some legs :)

1002928171_3_1000x700_braai-wheel-rim-garden-braai_rev002.jpg
 
Wish I could find boerewors around here and kudo

One of these days I need to make myself a real braai, grid, old wheel and some legs :)

Boerewors you can find. Actually a butcher about 10 miles from me sells it. Crappy though, but same day delivery on Amazon Fresh... so done it a few times. For the good stuff you can sometimes order online from African Hut (but you have to order overnight so it gets really expensive). My main supplier is in Vancouver - I bring in 25 lbs every time I go there and it's cheap!

Kudu on the other hand... oh man. I've tried. Contacted all kinds of exotic meat importer but no luck. I saw a Kudu in the San Diego zoo once. The thoughts that went through my head...
 
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