The foreign factory workers will still have jobs making the same products, except those products won't be exported to the US. Luckily for them, 95% of humans live outside the US.

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baby_souffle 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Listening to friends that are connected with the manufacturing industries in China, it sounds like most factories didn't struggle that hard to find alternative markets. In some cases, the Chinese government has been stepping up to help factory owners find alternative markets.

In this case, though, I would imagine that lightly waterproofed decorative outdoor lighting would sell about equally well to any first or second world market.

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bombcar 2 days ago | parent [-]

If the alternative markets were easy to find they should have been selling into them before.

I’m wondering if some of them are wide but shallow, and that they have a much smaller total consumption quotient available.

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michaelt 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Sometimes alternative markets have lower margins, as they need different products and lower prices.

America's average net salary is $53,000 and Portugal's is US$19,000.

If your TV factory can't ship to America for the time being, you might need to retool and make more 43" screens and fewer 85" screens. You'd prefer to be making the higher margin products, but at least you keep work coming in and keep your workers fed.

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netsharc 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I wonder if the Chinese government goes to small countries and say "We'll give you a loan, in return you're going to buy x million 那个啥's"...

	▲	bombcar 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		At some point that becomes a Pahn Zee scheme …

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darth_avocado 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

3.5 Billion people in the world make less than $7/day. People may live outside the US, but they don’t have the same consumer appetite.

	▲	robocat 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		They have the appetite. They mostly don't live in economies that enables them to earn money. The US was a unique money-making machine... Although the gears seem to be getting looser and the machine is being broken. Personally I think the US economy is flexible enough to mitigate much of the damage, however I worry about the future impact of political changes. I'm in New Zealand which is quite wealthy although the demographic timebomb will go off in next decades: and our economy is also fucked because our voters hate businesses and business people. One strong signal of how fucked a country is economically, is how well small businesses can survive. If the US starts screwing its businesses more, that is the time to worry.

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delusional 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Can we try to not fall victim to this sort of "us or them" rhetoric. It's obviously exactly what this is being framed as officially, but it's way worse than that.

Yes, the the cost of (at least) some foreign workers is that the jobs they had creating good exported to America will go away. That's true. The trade-off though isn't just that the Americans don't get their stuff. The real trade off is that the good those factory workers buy (whether they be physical or immaterial, cultural or financial services) will not get bought. Americans making those good will therefore ALSO be out of a job.

In the end, nobody gets what they want and everybody loses employment. It's a lose/lose for everybody involved.

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Teever 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

But it really is an 'us or them' situation.

The US is treating everyone else like shit and isolating themselves from the world.

The world is slowly esponding accordingly and reconfiguring to the new reality where the US is unreliable and unfriendly.

While it's a lose/lose this will ultimately hurt the US more than everyone else.

The world isn't going to come to the aid of the US and prop them back up to their place of hegemony when this all goes to shit. The rest of the world is going to pick at the carcass of what was once an inspirational empire.

	▲	delusional 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I hope I made it clear that the us decision make does seem to be driven by an "us or them", sometimes called "transactional" mindset. It's accurate to describe (at least the stated) rationale as "us or them". What I don't like is when we start using the terminology if "winning" a trade war. A trade war, like an actual war, has no winners. We are all going to be poorer, both materially and culturally, from hurting each other. So yes, the current American administration (which is currently a legitimate democratic representation of the American people) has started a trade war meant to inflict pain on everybody that doesn't align with them. The answer to that isn't "well actually the trade war is going to backfire and the whole world is going to be stronger than you" its "you're going to pay for this too. However much you hurt us, and it is non-zero, you are also going to hurt yourself. Not because I'm going to hurt you, but because we are all part of one system of trade".
	▲	jumpman_miya 2 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		[dead]
	▲	mystraline 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> The rest of the world is going to pick at the carcass of what was once an inspirational empire. Yes, I've read that inspiration in the Mein Kamph. Hitler cited the US's hatred, slavery, and Jim Crow for how Germany responded to the Jewish problem. If you were a WASP - white anglo-saxon protestant, you were fine. Elsewise, yeah, not so much.

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ToucanLoucan 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Can we try to not fall victim to this sort of "us or them" rhetoric. It's obviously exactly what this is being framed as officially, but it's way worse than that.

I read it more as decentering the United States, which frankly I'm completely, 100% for. America's (lack of) culture has been our biggest export. We've sanitized vast swathes of the globe into our hollow consumerist self image at great cost to interesting and beautiful places. All products are designed with Americans in mind, because Americans were the center of global trade. If you wanted to make money, you had to sell your thing to Americans.

And, worse, Americans have grown accustomed to this deference and preferential treatment. It's time we got a reality check: that the world doesn't need us anymore. That we've become as old, dumb and worthless as the shitty president that so perfectly embodies our culture of consumption, waste, and useless greed.

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wqaatwt 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Well.. Way more than 5% of consumption happens in the US. The majority of those 95% is also very poor and can’t afford a lot of of goods (let alone expensive ones).

Meaning that for a lot of businesses, especially those that manufacture goods US is often a very important and hard to replace market.

e.g. What do you think will happen to the profit margins of EU drug companies if Trump actually imposed his tariffs on pharmaceuticals? Besides the size of the US market they also generally charge much higher prices there.