I’ve been saying for a while the reason China is winning in manufacturing is that their tooling industry is broad (basically tools for any kinda thing you want to make/install), deep (you want ten thousand units? No problem), and high quality. American tooling just kinda sucks now! - ThreadSky

sky.skymarchini.net • 4 days ago

I’ve been saying for a while the reason China is winning in manufacturing is that their tooling industry is broad (basically tools for any kinda thing you want to make/install), deep (you want ten thousand units? No problem), and high quality. American tooling just kinda sucks now!

Reposted from Pwnallthethings

The funny thing is NYT already did a definitive piece on why Chinese workers are so much better at managing tiny screws in iPhones back in 2019 and (fun fact) turns out it's not because they have small hands, it's because they have a big tooling industry www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/t...

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charlesdeguava.bsky.social•4 days ago

And the thing is… this is fine. It is really not that big of a deal to give this up, have high-end service economy we have, and move on. But Americans psychologically cannot, but also cannot countenance the radical shifts in lifestyle and investment that’d be required to make us like this

lildonnyb.bsky.social•4 days ago

The problem is we have devalued the growth sectors. We have transitioned away from manufacturing which actually isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but we have delinked worker productivity for pay so completely that people cannot sustain themselves let alone a family on the available wage.

benfiorucci.bsky.social•4 days ago

My thought is it's because of the history we're taught. We're the heroes of WW2, and our factory production is unmatched. Factory=Heroes=America

sxl-blshvsm.bsky.social•2 days ago

a "service economy" only makes sense when the entire global economy is based on selling you stuff. china is rapidly building up the necessary infrastructure to weather a US blockade, and the rest of the world hasn't been too far behind in at least recognizing the need for a backup plan since 2016

louisevans.bsky.social•4 days ago

It’s also iiuc just literally the eternal explanation for whoever happens to be manufacturing dominant at some moment in time. Like when other societies have been dominant it’s because they have the three tooling dimensions. No trick to it.

vonneudeck.com•4 days ago

What are the three tooling dimensions?

louisevans.bsky.social•4 days ago

Oh just what Sky mentioned in OP: breadth, depth, and quality

louisevans.bsky.social•4 days ago

People get so fucking racist about it in every conceivable direction but it’s just the depth of the precursor tech base! It doesn’t mean anything!!

nemo141.bsky.social•4 days ago

This is very true. One specific case is DJI, which can exist in the manufacturing ecosystem that an effective tooling industry can create.
DJI can build like 1000 Mavics in a day because they can build a factory within one hour of all the parts and all the tools.

christosilvia.bsky.social•3 days ago

Also Chinese local governments actually like, do new industrial zoning and intentionally create clusters!

timplex.bsky.social•4 days ago

Michigan used to be full of little tool and die shops.

ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social•4 days ago

Maine, too. Towns of a thousand people would have one, maybe two. Based on building/repairing mill equipment originally, then small-run bespoke stuff for Route 128-based defense contractors and early high-tech firms.

Lots of ex-Navy veteran machinist's mates and Air Force guys on the floor.

1/2

timplex.bsky.social•4 days ago

My town of 4000 had 3. Tax cuts on investors provided capital to replace them with automation, outsourcing and consolidation. But all of that investment depends on accurate projections about the future. In fact, it often overshoots and bubbles burst. Unexpected viruses or wars disrupt.

ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social•4 days ago

The state team chess championship was dominated by the team from a Bangor machine shop. It was a whole culture....

Petered out late '80s, early 90's. Right around then the local vocational HS stopped its machine-tool program.

Chicken? Egg? Who knows? Now it's history.

2/2

bear-dee-arr.bsky.social•4 days ago

And that would be a defense for national security-related tariffs.

Instead, you just get Mr. Pouty saying “I want it”.

tmcatee.bsky.social•4 days ago

We can actually do precision tooling for anything... But we can't scale it. No one wants to write the contract that would enable companies to expand.

It's a hard ask given the radical inconsistency out of Trump.

Meanwhile, you can get what you want from China and just pay the tariff.

tmcatee.bsky.social•4 days ago

The quality thing is an important point. The Chinese are producing quality.

thoughtcast.bsky.social•4 days ago

People have this idea that China's only good for low quality junk but that hasn't been true for like 20 years now. Wages aren't that low there either anymore. People criticize a version of China that doesn't actually exist in this decade and wonder why their predictions invariably fail.

collie.bsky.social•4 days ago

It would take us decades to build the machines required to build the machines that we need to build tooling at their capacity.

sky.skymarchini.net•4 days ago

or an all out pre-ww2 style drive, and evne then...

roland00.bsky.social•4 days ago

me thinking about MacIntyre this week, me not thinking about tariffs and supply chains

which means I am thinking about Tariffs and Supply Chains this week

collie.bsky.social•4 days ago

This but unironic. We don’t even have the people.

relaxing.bsky.social•4 days ago

this is such a funny example because no, we don’t have master stonemasons to build a gothic cathedral. we have engineers and steelworkers to build one world trade center (with 100x the sq footage AND running water.)

roland00.bsky.social•4 days ago

literally specific times of the decline and post roman empire

where food supplies were semi similar before and after, but trade, and the know how to actually do now marble columns instead of repurchase them … well it was lost

for capital goods you may need to build them only 30 or 50 or 70 years

roland00.bsky.social•4 days ago

hell it may last hundrends of years if one get enough maintenance

are you going to apprentice the next generation during said time ? are you going to allow the masters and apprentice to innovate ?

mikeblack114.bsky.social•4 days ago

The last time we talked about this (heavy press construction) we came to the conclusion it'd require a Manhattan Project level of effort to get the holistic ability to manufacture them back onshored

I assume iphones are a near similar level of effort, globalization is a bitch

sky.skymarchini.net•4 days ago

i mean, even getting the capacity to *assemble* iphones here is probably not gonna happen without a hercuelan effort; actually *manufacturing* them is, well, glwt there's no LG display factory here

mikeblack114.bsky.social•4 days ago

Put another way, this should be fine to mostly throw away (airplane and ship building discourse is a whole thing) but it isn't because Americans have feels

https://bsky.app/profile/charlesdeguava.bsky.social/post/3lpxtnhyepk2e

collie.bsky.social•4 days ago

There are certain industries where we should maintain capacity for defense/strategic reasons but those are largely present in the US, we just haven’t invested enough to expand them.

sky.skymarchini.net•4 days ago

yea, and like, that's fine! we're not about to fight a war over Taiwan despite what defense cheddar says

thetecheng.bsky.social•4 days ago

Also, Industrial policy isnt some sort of arcane black magic. The previous admin showed exactly how it's done with the semiconductor industry.

But thanks in no small part to partisan stupidity, no one in the current admin can admit that, even on a "lessons learned" level.

mikeblack114.bsky.social•4 days ago

Correct, aviation is a great counter example to shipbuilding discourse on this point given that we still (for now) have that capacity for reasons, and it won't be hard to continue it (it's one of our asymmetric defense advantages)

toneloaf.bsky.social•4 days ago

I worked at a US manufacturing start up in 2022 where our value add was being tech forward in the design/inventory management. At the end of the day we typically contracted a Chinese firm to actually make the product because they would win on price and ability to deliver quantity + specs

sky.skymarchini.net•4 days ago

you'll also almost always get bids from a chinese corp, unlike american firms who will be like "oh that's too small scale for us"

toneloaf.bsky.social•4 days ago

You're totally right on the specifics. Especially when it comes to injection molds, which is hard to source domestically, there is a quality Chinese factory to handle almost any job

thesharmat.bsky.social•4 days ago

America also just doesn't make anything anymore. It's a country of speculation and investment

shiitake74.bsky.social•4 days ago

Also they can do extremely rapid prototyping and small series production, and they are really close to their entire supply chain of parts, and everyone is a single wechat message or phone call away from doing business any time of day or night.

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