560 comments
reaperman · 12 days ago
This is going to utterly fuck so many R&D projects at my company. We actually do large-scale manufacturing of industrial valves in the USA. But a lot of our prototyping involves working with Chinese suppliers and getting small batches of samples / prototypes / revisions sent in packages on airplanes.

I literally do not know how the electrical and firmware engineers will do their jobs now if we cannot receive packages from China. It's going to halt all our R&D for at least 6 months while we onboard domestic contractor alternatives --- which will also just generally be shit. Not to mention the American contractors WONT BE ABLE TO SHIP IN THE FUCKING ELECTRICAL COMPONENTS FROM CHINA THEY NEED FOR THE PROTOTYPES.

Every single R&D department in the USA just got fuuuuuuuuucked by this.

Show replies

dmd · 11 days ago

Show replies

ggm · 12 days ago
Anyone got a non-intuited, horses-mouth reason why? I suspect (ie, intuit) that its actually an attack on the USPS, not on China. The party of government doesn't like the post office, and this is to teach us not to like the post office either.

I guess if they stopped using electric cars, they might like the post office again.

Show replies

bbarnett · 11 days ago
Unless I've missed a thread, no one seems to be saying what counts.

Changing duties, taxes, and rules is fine. It's how a society adjusts. Changing them instantly is literally the most anti-consumer, anti-business concept ever.

No 30 days? 90 days? Nope, block it all now! That's sheer stupid on a caliber almost unheard of. It sends a signal "Don't do business with the US, the rules change on a whim". Don't do business IN the US, the same!

Set up a company anywhere else, any other nation, else you'll wake up tomorrow and your entire business model is invalidated, without even a day to adjust.

This is how children behave. How over emotional, non-rational people behave.

Unfortunate.

I personally support this, but not immediately. Nutty.

Show replies

markus_zhang · 11 days ago
I sincerely hope US and Canada can regrow some manufacturing capacity. I think the only way to do it is by a one-two punch, and middle class like me are going to seriously get hurt, but I still want it done, for the sake of later generations and for a better, safer, more competitive humanity. Safer because a successful reform removes the need of a world war.

The one-two punch is:

1) A massive devaluation of housing, stocks and other similar items. The reason for this is we need to introduce local, more affordable merchandises, which can only be brought by cheaper lands, cheaper labor -- but no one is going to work $6 an hour (about 45 Yuan per hour, more or less on par with the better paid Chinese manufacturers I think) unless, unless housing and renting costs a fraction, like, 20%. That's why I said we are going to get seriously hurt. This is basically a wealth transfer from the richer to the poorer.

2) Educate a whole generation that labor is honorable, so that engineers, scientists, technicians and such get more respect (I mean real respect, not the superficial one nowadays) than lawyers and bankers. It's a social change that takes at least one generation, perhaps two. Maybe I didn't put it right, but by saying getting more respect I'm basically saying getting an equal pay and equal say.

But I'm seeing is that US is taking another darker road.

Show replies