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the U.S. industrial base being in China does seem like an obstacle yeah
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During the first COVID supply crisis after China shut down, I remember:
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A door factory shutting down because they couldn’t domestically source the parts for doors
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Freight truck factories shutting down production because they couldn’t domestically source some small metal part
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Every utilities company facing critical shortages for repairs and maintenance, warning they were one natural disaster away from the electrical grid collapsing
Every utilities company facing critical shortages for repairs and maintenance
Still an issue, I work for a utility and lead times for things like high voltage transformers are still ~18 months or so from what I’ve been told
Coincidentally, I also processed a shipment of smaller transformers that came thru from South Korea (which for us was unheard of)
It’s not ideal
so what youre telling me is that if a group of organized people wanted, they could take out the entire us electrical grid by blowing up a bunch of transformers?
HUH
Attack on Nine Substations Could Take Down U.S. Grid (2014)
https://spectrum.ieee.org/attack-on-nine-substations-could-take-down-us-grid
interesting
Lead times on those have been that bad for at least 10 years
It’s never been good in my experience (9 years), but it’s also never been quite as bad as it currently is
-Ammunition becoming more scarce and expensive because guess who makes almost every primer in almost every shell
We truly missed a potential cool zone. Donald Trump is made of goddamn teflon.
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I have said it before and I will say it again: people still pretend like American imperialism is still rooted in industrial prowess. That era is long gone.
No, America is a landlord/rentier capitalist and as such will always behave like a landlord.
A landlord does not have to work. I repeat, a landlord does not work. A landlord extracts what other people have worked hard on.
American tech giants like Microsoft and Google aren’t dominating the market because they are the most competent at making the best products out there. No, they dominate because they were able to leverage on various legal and financial means to bully their competitors out of the business, and they are able to do so precisely because the sector works just like a rentier economy. Every time you use their product, you (or your employer) pays a rent to those companies.
America is never going to re-industrialize because industrialization raises the price of labor, and thus confers labor with leverages against capital. America didn’t de-industrialize itself in the first place for nothing. It de-industrializes itself precisely to defeat the trade unions and working class movements that had been gaining momentum by the 1970s.
This is how US imperialism functions. Nobody is ever going to invade America so long as it has nukes at its disposal. And as long as the dollar reigns supreme, it will continue to behave like a landlord that extracts concessions from all over the world.
Incidentally, this is a fantastic read on the subject https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/08/the-value-of-nothing-capital-versus-growth/
That was a great read. I’m working my way through vol 2 of Capital. In it, Marx talks about how it’s in the sphere of production only where value is created. Distribution, beyond what is technically necessary, does not add value. I think this is particularly relevant for the non-financial sector of the US economy - Apple, Nike, Gap, even Amazon and Walmart to an extent. For the most part, these firms are not creating surplus value, they are extracting surplus value from, for example, contracting factories in the global south. That strikes me as inherently unstable: all it takes for much of the surplus value in the non-financial sector to just evaporate is for imperialism to be severed.
Oh yeah, very much agree with all that. And I’ve only got through the fist volume myself so far, really gotta read the rest. 😅
American tech giants like Microsoft and Google aren’t dominating the market because they are the most competent at making the best products out there. No, they dominate because they were able to leverage on various legal and financial means to bully their competitors out of the business, and they are able to do so precisely because the sector works just like a rentier economy. Every time you use their product, you (or your employer) pays a rent to those companies.
This is why they’re so fucking scared of Huawei and Bytedance
It’s even more involved than just the renting. US imperialism demands large consolidation in order to exert control over the markets. Tech giants are supremely important to consolidate because they offer all of the intelligence any empire could want, thus it is in the interest of the empire to ensure that a handful of giants rise, and those giants run uncontested.
tbf losing a hot war w/ china would def help the dedollarization process one way or another, main problem is dedollarizing via nuclear winter is less than ideal
Capitalism builds industry for war.
Socialism builds industry for human needs.
Simple as.
Except not even - if that was the case then ukraine would be winning instead of getting rinsed.
“Industry for profiting from wars” probably fits better?
Capitalism innovated a way to do war profiteering without all that pesky industrial production
The idea that the US could even hope to “resolve key challenges” here is laughable. China is too far ahead in manufacturing and companies aren’t willing to spend the massive amounts of money required to expand manufacturing in the US.
they might have to hire people, and then train them
gross
Or even spend money on factories instead of stock buybacks.
Yeah, this is delusional beyond belief. Most people don’t realize just how dependent on China US is today. For example:
https://edconway.substack.com/p/globalisation-is-a-far-far-bigger
Love when my grand interconnected system is really a single point of failure
Posting numbers from 2018 is an insufficient insight into the situation though as there has been reported increased decoupling following covid.
US industrial output is currently shrinking, the decoupling is just talk with no substance to it
Right because (as I understand it) the decoupling is shifting to nearshore/friendshore operations like Mexico and Japan.
Not when you account for intermediate inputs. While end products might be made in Mexico or Japan, those will almost certainly rely in intermediate components manufactured in China:
https://edconway.substack.com/p/globalisation-is-a-far-far-bigger
Right and that chart only goes up to 2018 so I’d like to see a similar chart updated for post covid. Do you happen to know of one?
I don’t have a more up to date one, but I would bet money that nothing fundamentally changed in the past 5 years.
holy shit
You’d need to build new facilities and train people up to run lathes and whatnot. On top of that weapons aren’t made with steel and wood anymore so you’ll need to teach them some light programming too in order to mill your M4 receivers. In short America is fucked because free training in a high skill job is sacrilege here.
weapons aren’t made with steel and wood anymore
I mean depending on how badly america wants to arm a million conscripts they might bring back open bolt stamped sheet metal rifles again. This is the land of idiot elites after all.
I miss the grease gun. One of the greatest of all time.
To deter a potential conflict with China, the United States must act quickly to resolve key challenges in its industrial base.
to deter conflict we have to resolve the things that would make it difficult for us to have a conflict?
also, cute animation, is that the only way to explain things to congressmen these days?
50.000 missiles won’t be enough, billions must die Mr. Congressman, watch this cocomelon short
lol, what is the U.S. industrial base prepared for?
the US industrial base
You mean prison labor?
bitcoin farming
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profiting off of ownership of bitcoin farming
FunkoPops
https://support.funko.com/hc/en-us/articles/360048044733-Where-are-your-products-made
Where are your products made?
Collectibles are manufactured primarily in Vietnam and China.
The west has fallen
They can’t keep getting away with it!
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Cheese that cannot legally be labelled cheese outside of the US, likely in a can
FEMA death camps? Best i can come up with, bc the us hasn’t had an industrial base in decades.
Making toys, cheap clothes and piñatas in Downtown LA
I can’t over emphasize how true this is. We would be in total ruin in a matter of months.
Electrical shit in industrial manufacturing blows up all the time and stuff from 5 years ago is already obsolete.
When something blows up that’s obsolete you have 3 options. Adapt current generation parts at huge cost. Buy 1 of 3 used units left on the planet or repair your broken unit. Repairing your broken unit requires basic electronic parts that are likely manufactured in China and even rushed it can take weeks to get something repaired. Meanwhile your money printing machine sits idle.
And so many more items made in China are essential to US manufacturering and are not easily replaced.
Oh yeah, supply chains are so incredibly complex nowadays. The only way you find out what you’re missing is when you can’t get it anymore. And given that China now accounts for something like 30% of global manufacturing, it’s pretty much guaranteed that a lot of essential stuff will be gone if US ever decides to start a war with China.
I do think the crises of overproduction that Marx predicted have been mitigated in part by Just In Time production and lean inventories. However, that all comes at a cost - it makes the whole system much more fragile and if we ever see something like another world war or pandemic that shuts down global supply chains, the economic magnitude of that will be far beyond any simple crises of overproduction. The capitalists can mitigate it temporarily but it just means they’re kicking the can down the road.
I very much agree, just in time economy maximizes profit efficiency because you don’t need to keep stores of commodities, but it creates fragility. As soon as you have some unexpected event like a ship getting stuck in the Suez canal, the whole global economy grinds to a halt. And unexpected stuff happens, that’s just a fact of life. Factories have accidents, ships sink, wars start, droughts happen, etc. A fragile economy that spans the whole globe simply can’t deal with these kinds of events in a reasonable way. So, I expect well be seeing more and more economic crises happening because the world is becoming more unstable overall and the economic house of cards the west built is starting to fall apart as a result.
cyber attacks alone would probably do in our electrical grids
The reality of a modern major war with China, an ocean away, with no logistical supply chain, is that it will be fought and over within weeks, culminating with the launch of nuclear weapons.
That is the most probable outcome by a wide margin.
Right? After the US carrier fleet gets totally smoked by DF21s in the middle of the pacific. As they say, kiss your ass goodbye.
MAD world
And if it doesn’t result in exchange of nukes/ICBMs then it will quickly reach a stalemate where both sides’ navies are either sunk via missiles/drones or pulled back to their own territory. From there it will descend into a proxy hybrid war, with asymmetrical cold war shit escalating all over the globe
How would China’s ships pull back? They are already in their own territory. Who would the proxy war involve?
Yeah that sounds like a Chinese victory to me and unironically the proxy forces would be in Africa and maybe Europe.
That would be hilarious if the US declared war, China’s hardest battles will probably be the first few weeks of heavy bombing, then the US collapses instantly from a mysterious chicken shaped hole in their supply chain.
Oh damn, always wild seeing a post about China on reddit before the feds started pushing all the anti-China stuff there. They actually treat it like a real country instead of the Evil Bad Place.
Ok that was epic, especially that it was Chinese who domesticated chickens and the wild ancestor of chicken still lives there.
good, maybe we won’t be stupid enough to provoke one then.
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Historically it’s chickened out of direct confrontation with the USSR and Iran
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What? Of course USA will do everything it can to provoke China to go to war. Just look at what’s happening in the Philippines. When Duerte was president everything was fine and there was peace in the area. Now that US puppet Marcos Jr is there, suddenly they need to build 4 MORE US military bases there. Now suddenly there’s all sorts of collisions and arguments. Hmm…
Duterte literally sponsored militias and death squads that murdered people for using recreational drugs. I don’t think we should say everything was “fine” under him…
Well then it’s better for the USA to provoke a war that it will quickly lose than one where it might win
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Weird how US has to sail half way across the world to China’s shore to deter China…
Deterrence by Punishment did not work with Russia. These people are so dumb.,
Just forsake Taiwan, shift your detente to Korea and Japan. What is the fucking point of potentially killing billions of people over an island the size of Maryland. You stupid fucks.
better yet, withdraw entirely from the Eurasian continent and let Japan and South Korea sort themselves out with the neighbors.
If Maryland produced 60% of the worlds’ semiconductors and was the only place that could make 3 nm chips, then more countries might be willing to risk global catastrophe over Maryland. Taiwan is a golden goose for most of the US economy that positively contributes to the line going up, and semiconductor manufacturing is one of the last technological edges the “West” has. The Department of Defense and its corporate halo are perpetually in a contrived state of disarray when it comes to talking about things that need money, from their supply chains to research. While it’s true that price gouging and rent seeking probably don’t lead to good weapon systems, I think the people writing this article are assuming the average policymaker already is onboard with the necessity of Taiwan, and they are emphasizing a shopping list of things that need evermore endless funding. If we ever actually went to war with China, then all these weapons companies would need to start making more weapons and less money.
The US will blow a trillion dollars on a failed F-35 program, but won’t even build up its own semiconductor manufacturing industry. The US truly is fucked.
America, the arsenal of democracy, will simply ramp up production like it did in WW2
-Reddit
America won WWII through recycling model Ts and other crap we had laying around in landfills and turning it into ships planes and tanks. We shipp all our scrap to other countries these days, there is no reserve to quickly ramp up new production lines. In fact, China built some of their infrastructure on the bones of American waste, even including the scrap we sent over from the world trade center and the solar panels that Carter put on the white house. America is so fucked in any conflict with China. America couldn’t even beat Illiterate Afghani with busted-up AK-47s who never even heard of 9-11.
America won WWII
they didn’t have that much to do with it, honestly
U.S. bombers smirking as they blow up factories in China just before realizing those factories were making American goods.
WWIII is when no iPhone
