this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2025
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The right time for Chinese tariffs was 1980.
Not arguing. But why that year specifically?
It's roughly when the US shut down practically all of our manufacturing plants and laid off the vast majority of our manufacturing talent.
We've had some 40 years of mostly not passing down the knowledge of how to manufacture things well.
What manufacturing we still have is pretty amazing, but the demand for cross training - should those jobs return - is going to be way more than the remaining available talent can take on.
Bringing it back in 1980 would have given us a shot to pass on all the skills of the previous generation of skilled tradespeople.
Ironically enough, a great solution to this problem would be to bring in Chinese experts to train American workers. The USD still spends.
All I can do is mass deportation.
I have watched Chinese tool steel and heat treat ability improve massively over my career. The steel went from chineseium to the cheap usable option in a shop.
Tool and alloy steels are a basic measure of a country's industrial ability. That genie isn't going back in the bottle.
The gutting of US manufacturing and unions has been a crime against blue collar folks that most don't understand. Few new machinists stuck through the recession of the aughts. There are few machinists in my age bracket. There is no magic switch to rebuild manufacturing in the USA. It takes years to create competent machinists and we don't have enough competent machinists to do the training. The apprenticeship programs have mostly been eliminated, the guys that taught me had journeyman's papers but those programs were gone by the time I came up.
I've been lucky enough to grow three machinists, green to competent, in my career. Had to fight with management/corporate to do that much. I know of one that has already left the trade.
Michael Keaton will save us right? (Curious which you think I mean)
I'll split my chips between Birdman and Spiderman: Homecoming, but save one chip for Batman.
Gung Ho but I figured people read Batman
I'm approximating, but it's in that general time period when manufacturing was moving to China, and with very little concern for the American worker.
Ball had started rolling on Reform and Opening Up by about that time