No amount of time will let the U.S. - a country of 348 million people - replicate what China - a country with 1.4 billion people - a can do with manufacturing.

This isn't "working harder".

This isn't "rebuilding infrastructure".

This isn't "training people in trades".

The numbers are so cartoonishly lopsided as to be a non-starter for categorically replacing Chinese manufacturing.

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derektank 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

600 million people live in North America. 1 billion people live in the Americas. Another billion live on the Pacific rim in non-Chinese countries.

Establishing regulatory harmony across all those countries is obviously not possible in the same way it is in a single authoritarian state, but if the US made it a priority to create a trade bloc capable of replicating China’s manufacturing capacity, it probably could.

	▲	cmrdporcupine 43 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Establishing regulatory harmony is not only not possible but the current regime is working in exactly the opposite direction. If the US wants to take on China, and actually needs Canada's help to do it -- I can assure you they just set themselves back 10-20 years from achieving that. We no longer have any interest. The labour forces of Mexico and Canada are not at the US's disposal for these kind of games anymore. For several decades we have been exploited by the US for low wages and cheap resources -- and now there's a regime that's making cheap political points by accusing us of the opposite while trying to emmiserate our populace. So, yeah, no thanks.

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vsgherzi 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

we don't have to entirely replace Chinese manufacturing to build back American manufacturing that's a false dichotomy.To compete we'll just have to be more revolutionary than the manufacturing industry already is.

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Romario77 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

both are pretty big numbers and I think are pretty capable to do mass manufacturing. As evidenced by many industries that US had and still has.

it could be less economical, so Apple has to innovate to be competitive on pricing - with automation, robots, etc.