One might also ask why notoriously American company Nintendo, which is based in America, would not already be making their American-designed products in America.
I could easily wait 2 months for a civil survey and geotech report. Not even addressing the actual land procurement process…or the design process…or the permitting process…or the construction process…
Very hard to say, I'm not sure what Nintendo requires in resources. I am aware some of the new upgraded consoles require some rare materials which are being affected by Donald Trump's tariffs. Some can be produced in the Usa, but not enough for meeting their needs.
When this person was 12 or so, someone probably told them a story about auto plants being quickly converted to make bombers in WW2, and it turned into a world view.
This is a great idea. And we can use it to beat tariffs in the other direction, too. All the Iowa soybean and pork producers that are about to get nuked by 34% Chinese tariffs can just go raise those things IN CHINA! Brilliant!
So you're telling me we can move immediately if we just get enough people with printers and sticker paper to print out "Switch 2" stickers and slap them on etch-a-sketches?
Look I'm not the brightest person but even I know you can't just move an entire manufacturing operation from abroad to your location to get cheap goods overnight. Even if the companies actually wanted to do that it'd take years & millions of dollars, this idea is born out of sheer desperation.
People saying "this is how bad the US education system is" & na man, even people without any economic education would assume that you can't uproot a foreign company to move to America in a couple months, this here is pure cult delusion, a conscious effort to not think about anything.
Resetera is just NeoGAF with less sexual assault allegations attached to it, I would not in any way call it left-leaning & it's not as if fascists never set foot in these forums.
Well you need critical thinking to properly react to widespread lies, especially when they deliberately come looking for you on your phones, pc, tv or whatever. A functioning educational system could teach you how to think in these trying times
I mean possibly? It wouldn't hurt. But I think even that wouldn't help some of these people because they really really really want to believe the lies because it makes them feel good and powerful. Hence why fascism tells you to not think about it "trust the plan", because reality is not as fun.
I agree, and I don't entirely rely the duty on education's shoulders; although, a proper understanding of history, politics and civil rights might seed in the angry, rebellious youth a constructive vision and direct their anger at those who truly deserve it
It wouldn't stop the cultists imho, but it would at least cultivate an opposition to them. I think some of the problems of today is that people are so disaffected & lacking in any skills they don't see any point in fighting back, & I don't blame them tbh. Basic life skills are just not taught today.
🎯 last fall I had disagreement with MAGA sister @ F’Elon & him ruining Twitter. She idolizes wealth. I sent her link to Fidelity Investments (that bastion of liberal orgs) about Twitter value dropping 80% since he took it over. Her response? “It would be better if you didn’t send me things like that
This was, of course, only final assembly and test. It was “just” putting already assembled PCBAs into cases with displays, a final verification and flash, and boxing them. I think PCBs were assembled in Mexico, with displays and cases coming in from China, probably via Mexico because NAFTA.
When you pack up a pile of equipment in China and ship it to Texas, your local fire inspector and OSHA folks will absolutely freak out when you try to plug it in.
Texan factory workers are not shaped like the ones in China. Every table got put on a riser, and extra spaces were added between stations. The line got 20% longer. This wasn’t a big problem, they had a really clever CAD and tooling system for modular tables and stations.
Texan work schedules and employment management processes are quite different, as well. The Chinese labor pool wasn’t so much more educated, they were much more motivated to become so. Nobody wants a job using a power driver in the same five screws for six hours at a time.
I saw a company owner on the news describing it as "moving the entire state of Maine to Texas - you could do it, but it would be very hard and costly".
Honest question, what is the timeline to do that? Let’s just say final assembly is moved to Ohio, not every last component. Is that like, a 5 year project? Or longer?
You could do that in a couple of years, maybe, if everyone involved cooperated. You would also take the opportunity to automate more of the process. But since the parts all get tariff'd it doesn't move the needle on the price of goods except to increase it due to the still-increased labor costs.
Micron (supported by the IRA) started the process to build a semiconductor chip factory in Syracuse in 2023, their target was completion in 2032. A Nintendo Switch needs chips
That’s exactly what they think and they also think that a civil war, or any war for that matter is going to be like one of their PS5 1st person player games. 🤦🏻♀️
Right? Trump could keel over next week or roll back the tariffs on a whim. Zero certainty how long these things will actually be in place to justify spending a shit ton of capex
I keep wondering when some F100 company like Lockheed Martin feels it is worth buying 20 Republican Senators to go tell Trump he's going to resign or be impeached or worse. Who knew the Deep State was so powerless?
You just assume some CEO would call up Mike Johnson and just start talking to him like Joe Pesci in GoodFellas. Of course, I thought the intelligence system would have stopped Tulsi Gabbard dead in her tracks, same with big pharma and RFKJr.
It's also the case that Nintendo already HAVE production capacity at scale. They're not going to have any motivation to spin up NEW production capacity without significant new demand.
And even if (for some insane reason) they did move production to the US- most of the world will be doing tariffs ON things made in the US so they would be killing all their non-USA sales.
Nah, that isn't the case. I'm Panamanian, finished my Master's degree in the States thanks to a scholarship, and am now trying my best to get a work Visa.
Fact of the matter is, if the economy here is bad then it's gonna be even worse elsewhere. Especially in my country, which uses USD for currency
As much as the situation here sucks and is getting precipitously worse, it’s still got a long way to go before it’s not worth it for people in Venezuela to risk their lives coming here!
And, as a Canadian, I have to recognize that the US, just by its location, protects Canada from migrants from South and Central America.
I'd add though, a lot of the pain in other countries has been caused by the US.
These people really are stupid, aren't they? Why on Earth would Nintendo do that? And if they did bring production to America, why Ohio when their headquarters is in Washington State?
Why would Nintendo EVER DO THAT ?
They will just charge dumbass Americans higher prices.
No industry wants to relocate to the unstable Banana Republic of America !
Now wondering what a more reasonable estimate for this time is. IF Nintendo wanted to move production there (which they don't), and if suitably skilled workers were willing to go there (dubious), and IF relevant government/agencies wanted to play nicely to help it happen quickly (which, maybe)…
I’m sure that’s totally realistic. And the car companies can shift production back to Flint lickety-split.
If we had decided we needed or wanted to shift production to the US, we could’ve given companies 10 years, instead of 3 months. This is just asinine. It never needed to hurt this bad.
I think you’re right. That’s probably the only way it would work. Since there’s no logical reason for this, other countries can’t actually sit down with him and ask him what he wants and expect a logical decent, coherent answer. It’s just gotta be a shakedown.
it's also a loyalty test, see what he did with the tech bro industry, elon folded early so he gets more benefits, entirety of the us industry pays or obeys to a certain measurable extent, oligarch mob stuff, and I hate to say it because it's such a dumb lib conspiracy but it's very similar to russia
Except most of the world isn't budging, so it's already backfired. I've only really heard word that Vietnam wants to negotiate a deal to avoid tariffs (which might mean the Nintendo Switch 2 avoids them, I guess), but pretty much the vast majority of the world is against the US.
I think they're trying to do it. That doesn't mean they're going to succeed at it, rather than simply causing all sorts of chaos and devastation that will massively backfire on them.
The idea that this is all some master plan to destroy democracy or take over the world is silly. Trump doesn’t plan. He’s going to wreck a lot of things, but that’s just hurry up and break things, not steps in a master plan. I don’t even think project 2025 as a master plan.
One thing I do believe, or at least am willing to believe, is that he is working towards *something*, that thing being riots - as he alluded to back in 2014. It's just he's going about it by taking a hammer to everything without much rhyme or reason and being a chaos goblin until the bough breaks.
Yes. But he hired a bunch of incompetent suck up and I don’t think they really have a great plan either.
Project 2025 is this ultra-right plan set up by a bunch of ideaologues that probably won’t work, because they don’t have a realistic view of the world.
Trump is out playing golf while others are doing the work. He understands pay to play just fine, and he believes they will fuck up elections enough that it won't matter how mad people are about it.
Trump doesn’t do that much work even when he’s not golfing. He sits around & watches TV and tweets until about 11, comes in to the Oval, brings in the press & insults them, signs some executive orders he’s never read, insults some more people who aren’t in the press, & is out of the office by 6.
The thing is, Republicans are only used to screwing over Democrat voters in elections. But now their own Republican base that are not die-hard Trump loyalists are being very vocal about their dissatisfaction of the Trump administration. So trying to cheat them might not be as easy.
So those Republicans face getting voted out come the mid-terms either by a Democrat or even a Republican that campaigns on not blindly doing what Trump tells them to do.
Maybe, but like I needed a new phone since I had my old one for around six years and it was starting to break down. I figure if I keep this phone for another six years, why not pay for what I get?
That was before they gutted bidens chip act- don't know if they will finish without the subsidies and they ability to export any product anywhere due to recriprocal tariffs.
Simple math. If it costs 10 times as much to make it in the US... it would require 1000% tariff to make it even remotely viable, not including the cost of relocating of the likely 3 years+ it would take to do it. Either way the consumer cost would increase 1000%.
Most estimates I’ve seen suggest 3 years is overly optimistic, with 5 years being a minimum, & 10 years being most realistic. Take into consideration the amount of time it would take to build the infrastructure, hire & train workers, and then scale up production…
Add in the additional costs of building materials and equipment for said construction because we don't have the amounts necessary for everything consumers spend money on.
The investment isn't even profitable at all. Why should Nintendo invest billions to save US-American gamers some tariffs? It's not as if they would sell much more
It certainly wouldn’t be profitable inside a trump term. Even if he somehow were to complete the coup for a third term, it’s highly unlikely infrastructure would be built out in time to show a net positive for Naranjas.
That's for sure. And it's doubtful that a. so much more people would buy it, and b. the higher wages wouldn't offset the saved tariffs
And that is probably valid for a lot of imported stuff.
You probably can't spin up a modern chip factory from scratch in three years.
And that's if you already have the 100 billion dollars and tens of thousands of educated technical people needed already available.
They aren't ever moving production to the US. They will eventually 'allow' US consumers to purchase after the rest of the world at the increased price.
That site and especially that thread is fucking depressing and way beyond delusional someone said that 70% of Americans voted for this when no it was literally less than a 2 percent vote split.
i bet it took one entry level accountant at nintendo all of 5 seconds to realise... naaah, i'll keep that thought to myself and pretend i never considered it, let alone suggesting it higher up ;)
This from the same brilliant minds that are no doubt buying up Tesla stock now that it is so "low." I am begging them to buy it all up and get what they deserve. 😈
It's easy to pick out the ones that failed history... and math... and economics... and chemistry, etc.
This is why most electronic devices are manufactured by better educated people living outside the US. 🤔
Realistically never. To just get the fab for the silicon it'd be ten years. But that'd raise the price so much on its own that it'd make no sense to do so.
Some of the supply chains needed might just be impossible.
So ten years is we ignore all the nuance. Never if we don't.
It's hard to understand something when the key illuminating fact, preventing you from understanding it, is accepting that you have doubled down hard on being a complete idiot, probably for years, because you didn't want to do the political equivalent of eating your veggies and doing your chores.
Several conversations with pro-Muskers here in the UK who are "yeah just onshore all Chinese and foreign manufacturing and give workers high wages and push the costs down"
"Yeah! Trump is canceling those dumb CHIPS Act subsidies to move semiconductor manufacturing stateside for the first time in decades! Take that woke libs!"
*literally 6 minutes later.*
"Why won't these woke libs make their electronics in Cleveland? How hard is it to make semiconductors stateside?"
I just hope it doesn't take 4 months to spin up the industry necessary to manufacture and assemble all the incredibly precise and specific parts necessary for a switch 2 from scratch. can you imagine how awful that would be!
I know this is a joke, but I feel like so much that is wrong in the world could be solved if we replaced our leaders with people who were familiar with high level StarCraft.
Pretty sure if you play the right faction, they can even pack up and move! God, it's like these woke libs at Nintendo haven't even played this before...
Assuming a complete and utter overhaul of Ohio's Industrial Base, plus the Creation of Mid-West and Appalachian Mining Industry for Rare Earth Minerals, with the complete backing of the US Government to fund and expedite construction and mining.
We actually have a case of a Japanese company sorta doing so to combat restrictive policies, Sega sold license to TecToy of Brazil to manufacturer consoles. As a result, Brazilians have access to affordable consoles. The only problem, even in 2010s the consoles in questions were 1990s MegaDrives.
I'll be honest, I don't know that I'd trust MAGA to build anything. They couldn't get a fence going so why would I believe they could slap together Switch 2s.
so, in 2017, NeoGAF split up because EviLore (its owner) got MeToo-ed. The right-wingers stayed on GAF and the left-wingers left and founded a new forum called ResetERA, which is what you now see screenshotted in the OP
Sorry, a lot of members of the resetera web forum found each other on Bluesky so we do get a bit casual speaking about it, which might feel a bit alien to someone passing by.
This might be me projecting, but I do think a lot of us are dealing with trauma. Whether it’s personal or political, and it’s a forum based on the beginning industry, which has been an absolute shit show for the last couple years. So I think there’s just a layer of bitterness and spite there…
… I realize that when I had a month ban recently (for saying mental illness instead of mental health, an accident, but was called “ableist” - insert eye roll here because I have difficulties articulating myself sometimes) that my mental health improved.
Yeah I'm just a lurker (never had a personal paid email so no choice) but I'd prob rarely post if I were a member cos ppl there try to twist words into the absolute worst uncharitable Interpretation and then gang up on the poster until the mods ban the one person to regain order
Why don’t we teach just a little bit about semiconductor and PCB manufacturing? It’s wildly complex, but could at least make an impression. Seems kind of important!
The question is just assembly from imported components or 100% US sourced? 5 to 8 years for the first if all regulatory hurdles were waived away. And then that would just be to start assembly. Doing it at scale to meet demand add 10 years. 25 to 50 for 100% us made.
Even if there exists a facility built with some of the equipment required (for a specialized product like this = tall order) it would take years. Factor in the increased costs of all materials and labor. Making them here doesn't end up making it cost less than paying the tariff on the final product.
The thing is, I am naturally skeptical of free trade agreements, and I do believe that there's a level of protectionism in certain sectors that is required (as long as the nation-state is the predominate geopolitical order). But I honestly can't imagine a worse way of trying to rebalance the scales.
Even with the tariffs it will still be cheaper than trying to find enough Americans that can do the skilled labor required. That is assuming they want to work with him. In 4 years he's gone with the tariffs OR no one here can afford a tariff free console anyways.
This is an example of bluesky blossoming into what I miss about the bird site. Come for the rational discourse, stay for deep insider knowledge of the pizza box manufacturing game. Things I didn’t expect to learn…
I wish I had more detail, but my knowledge comes from having a close friend whose family owned a company that makes the plates for industrial printing on cardboard and the dies to cut them (if not standard). From what he said, the process for making the printing plates is a similar back-and-forth.
I legitimately find sharing the tiny bits of info we all learn from our circle of influence is the best way to actualize the connection that’s inherent between us all. It’s also wild to read the vast collective knowledge we’re capable of sharing when we talk and don’t just yell at each other.
2/ which brings up another key idea - there's many different people with different specialized skills and equipment involved. Prototyping is different from bulk manufacturing. The graphic artist knows how to revise the customer's art so it's faithful to their intent when printed on cardboard, etc.
3/ all of this costs money. Someone might design and prototype in the US and print overseas. As the cost of that process goes up, more customers will opt for generic boxes instead of custom ones. Prototyping is labor-intensive, printing is not. The net result is *less* skilled employment in the US.
society really used to say "that sounds like a complicated problem. let's invest monetarily and socially in nerds whose whole job can be that problem and then none of us have to think about it" and then they tried to just optimize that down to "none of us have to think about it"
And that's the assembly. Individual components -screen, batteries, CPU, fucking capacitors- will also be subject to tariffs if not made in the US,so the price won't go down much; unless Nintendo also stands up factories for those. And that would take quite a while.
Typical world revolves around me simplistic thinking. The US is just one market for Nintendo, the rest of the world is still open and much cheaper to produce. Also the ones paying the premium are Americans, not Nintendo. They will sell at the exact same price and make the same profit
I love just throwing out numbers. "They'd have to completely move assembly lines including tools, design specs, they'd have to convert all the metric to imperial, they'd need to hire new staff and file paperwork to manufacture in the US, hmmm yeah like 2 months or so, quicker than a visa."
Why Ohio? I live here, but I wouldn't build a factory here for any amount of money with the current political administration. They'll all want their cut to grease the wheels and by the time you get to purchase the end product it'll be 300x markup vs now.
My greatest fear in all this is the idea that he's speedrunning total economic collapse on purpose so he and his oligarch buddies can cash in, then "rebuild" everything with them having even more control.
The last 5 years have shown that things are much more fragile than we'd like to think.
that's because everyone but delusional centrists can see the current system is unsustainable. the point is how you can steer the post-collapse future into something better. what "better" means, however, is a deep ideological and moral issue, which is why those "extremes" are not similar at all.
Congress has too much money wrapped up in stocks for them to let him do it. There's already a bill drafted that would allow them to deny him the ability to set tariffs. It's a shame that it took him fucking with their money for them to act as opposed to, y'know. *Gestures broadly*
Nintendo, a Japanese company, is not planning to relocate its production to the U.S.. Even if they were to consider such a move, the cost would be in the billions of dollars, and it would take years to complete. Instead, they may wait out Trump’s presidency or lie say they will and wait it out.
And "wait out Trump" is a much more predictable plan than "try to adjust to whatever nonsense he's going to plan next week" - nothing about how Trump's handled the past two months should give us any assurance that there won't be new tariffs later this year or something worse.
Don't forget the video games being the regular price point that Nintendo would usually have them at as well, pretty much! (Worse case scenario, they bought into $70 video games permanently going forward.) 😭
Tom, any chance you could share a link to the specific thread? I see that it's Resetera from the alt text, but I went there and can't find the specific thread. Would love to peruse it
Apparently the median trigger for mass resignations at office places is a change in the coffee. It’s not that the coffee is that important, it’s just that that change makes people look around and ask why they’re putting up with this.
Comments
It sure won't be $450, though.
No one can price a damned thing anymore.
I wonder how many gamers voted for this?
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=KT7DJTA9g2w&si=uWhb-EkWawsTOp7O
Years and many millions were spent to pack up a manufacturing line and move it to Texas.
When you pack up a pile of equipment in China and ship it to Texas, your local fire inspector and OSHA folks will absolutely freak out when you try to plug it in.
you know nothing J snow
Fact of the matter is, if the economy here is bad then it's gonna be even worse elsewhere. Especially in my country, which uses USD for currency
I'd add though, a lot of the pain in other countries has been caused by the US.
They will just charge dumbass Americans higher prices.
No industry wants to relocate to the unstable Banana Republic of America !
Assembly, maybe a year in existing building…
Production, 3 years.
If we had decided we needed or wanted to shift production to the US, we could’ve given companies 10 years, instead of 3 months. This is just asinine. It never needed to hurt this bad.
The idea that this is all some master plan to destroy democracy or take over the world is silly. Trump doesn’t plan. He’s going to wreck a lot of things, but that’s just hurry up and break things, not steps in a master plan. I don’t even think project 2025 as a master plan.
Project 2025 is this ultra-right plan set up by a bunch of ideaologues that probably won’t work, because they don’t have a realistic view of the world.
He doesn't know or care why it works that way.
They're not doing anything as a masterful strategy.
Heritage Foundation types thought up "How to autocracy" and gave Republican reps the cliff notes.
That's it.
OMG, the best!
And that is probably valid for a lot of imported stuff.
5 years to get prototypes off the line, 8-10 to scale up capacity.
Nintendo HAVE enough production capacity, they don't want or need more - so "never".
And that's if you already have the 100 billion dollars and tens of thousands of educated technical people needed already available.
And many people aren't eligible to vote (children, in prison, etc)
Americans will just have to pay up.
You had a typo, but I fixed it.
Utterly delusional imbeciles.
This is why most electronic devices are manufactured by better educated people living outside the US. 🤔
Some of the supply chains needed might just be impossible.
So ten years is we ignore all the nuance. Never if we don't.
stupid people can be made to believe anything.
Just... wow.
Just overnight -and- everyone gets more pay ?
Reality has long since moved out
*literally 6 minutes later.*
"Why won't these woke libs make their electronics in Cleveland? How hard is it to make semiconductors stateside?"
1. Select China-based factory and press delete button.
2. Select Ohio and press build button.
Simplest of simple. Nintendo is just being lazy /s
Never.
Era moderation has a lot of “good intent, bad execution” so many decent posters get nuked for minor deviation from perfection even if 99% aligned
It’s like avoiding toxic friends.
Make Xbox Great Again
🙊🤬🙊
It’s as if the American education system sucks.
How could anyone be this dumb?
and that's like a fifth of the complication of the switch
and you think you can move this shit to ohio?
Which is why your successful local independent pizza place probably still uses generic boxes.
They’d lose so much money on this scheme, they wouldn’t do it.
Of course a few years later they moved it all to MX. That also took ~18 months though they'd planned on 6.
The tariffs are going to hurt production no matter what. It's not possible to make a device like the Switch 2 without importing at least something.
Neither country is interested, so it'll fall to military action, which everyone knows is notoriously cheap and sustainable.
Then another week for resource extraction, and boom! Switches for everyone within the month!
/s
The last 5 years have shown that things are much more fragile than we'd like to think.
I can't say I disagree with the idea of everything being torn down and replaced with some form of democratic socialism, though.
Given his predilection for just ignoring everyone who tells him "no", I'm not yet feeling super optimistic. 😬
Tom, any chance you could share a link to the specific thread? I see that it's Resetera from the alt text, but I went there and can't find the specific thread. Would love to peruse it
The next part of 'Find Out'. Have fun with your Annoying Orange in office.
Switch that gets people to renounce fascism.