this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2025
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Actually heard this yesterday. The brainrot going around is that big companies like Nike will be forced to move mfg back to the US so America can make things again. We'll, it's not going to work like that.... the corporations spent years gutting their American factories and sending them overseas because they don't want to pay a living wage. But the non informed folk apparently want their children to work in factories for 2 cents an hour and be forced to give birth to more factory workers who will by that time be little more than serfs.
That's not what they think. They think that employees in the US would get good wages and the cost of goods wouldn't change. They don't understand the simple economics behind moving a factory to a country with a low manufacturing overhead.
They would be the first to complain that Nike wages are too low and/or Nike trainers now cost too much. Nike would be accused of price gouging even when they would probably struggle a lot more to be profitable.
Is a have your cake and eat it situation. Oh and it's also worth noting that I expect almost all of the people who complain about manufacturing being overseas and not in the USA would not consider the jobs they want to bring home.
"There are plenty of other Americans who would do them, but i am destined for greater things than that"
You’re both right.
They want magic to happen. Jobs to magically appear in the US, prices to remain magically unchanged, wages to be American factory wages, and for all of this to happen now.
They completely disregard they’ve already drilled holes in the bottom of their fantasy boat with trump’s tariffs. All the materials and machinery needed to either build and establish American manufacturing, or grow American raw materials extraction, processing, refining, forging, and basic tech production would take a decade to spool up even with importing of outsourced resources; resources which trump has conveniently slapped tariffs all over making it cost prohibitive to even start building American self-sufficiency. But trump waved his magic wand, so the True Beleivers™️ are happy and trump can sling blame at China or liberals, or whoever else when his shittly lack of actual planning doesn’t fix everything.
Right, magas have 0 empathy so that's most of it. They don't think their children would be the ones making shoes in a sweatshop. Not saying it's right for it to happen in other countries either (i don't buy nike, but yes I have tech that was probbaly made by foxconn and we know how nice they are to employees). If nike moved to the US their shoes would be $300 , and the workers would make at most $13, which is not even close to enough to live on now.
For shoes im not sure. They must have massive profits on those things.
That is the attitude that proves the point. I'm not as sure as you are about the profit.
It does not cost much to make a/an _______
We tend to oversimpliy and ignore other things that need to be paid for. A short list of things that the markup has to cover that I can think of if the top of my head... IT infrastructure and support for ~80,000 employees worldwide. Rent for stores, salaries and benefits for the staff that work in them. Furnishings, signage and maintenance of stores. Shipping of product to stores. Distribution warehouses. Logistics planning and execution staff and software. Corporate level sales management staff and software. Marketing including sponsorships, TV spots, billboards, etc etc.
Each pair of shoes has to contribute to each of these things and all the others I can't think of right now or don't even know are needed.
I don't mean to say that they don't make (good) profit, but it's probably no where near as big as you imagine.
You can argue whether or not a all of that corporate machinery is needed as well, but Nike clearly thinks it is right now or they wouldn't spend money there for no reason because that doesn't make the line go up unless there is a payback for that spending.
So we oversimplify and say the markup is huge, they can afford to pay more to make their product and still be profitable.... But it probably means job losses in other parts of the company a good number of which are probably American jobs that Nike currently does offer.
There IS a theory to this. But it starts with the carrot, not the stick.
And Biden did this. Clean and renewable energy is inevitably going to shift above fossil fuels. For a while, China was going to be the biggest profiteer since they make all the solar panels. One goal of the Inflation Reduction Act was to bring solar manufacturing to America.
And, while many “making jobs” actions of the government are false charities (“We’ll pay you to watch paint dry! It’s not welfare!”) clean energy has the chance to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and lower people’s out-of-control home utility bills in the face of extreme weather. The best part, these jobs were going to red states.
So after several years of this, we could’ve put a tariff on Chinese solar panels to boost American markets as an alternative. But Trump, skipping the hard work, wanted to operate solely off the stick.
And EVs. New technology for all personal vehicles. No one yet dominated. No country, no manufacturer. If anything, Tesla, an American company, was out ahead. It’s a lot easier to build an industry when there is no industry leader to outcompete
Biden’s policies were guiding US manufacturers toward that, setting efficiency standards, building infrastructure, offering incentives to both establish a predictable market and to help manufacturers transition. US could have been a leading country for automobile manufacturing.
I’ve never seen that so blatantly thrown away. When we wake from the insanity and are allowed to buy foreign cars again, we’re going to find our legacy manufacturers with hopelessly outdated technology and overpriced products unsuitable to be sold anywhere else in a world where there are now established leaders. The car manufacturing supply chain in the US supports millions of jobs, but I’m afraid we’re seeing the beginning of that entirely disappearing
Way better to have foreigners working for less than a living wage, earning 2 cents per hour and giving birth to more factory workers, am I right? But for real, the right answer is that nobody should live like that, so how do we change things? What steps can we take to wean ourselves out of the consumption driven economy? Tbh this might do it, or at least push it in that direction.
Agree, no one should be we are addicted to cheap goods and throwaway. We need to teach people to repair and learn and stop buying shit they don't need on Amazon. But humans are total idiots. I'm lucky I won't be around for the collapse