In reality, it was never about bringing manufacturing back to the US
this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2025
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TBH, there is no point in just moving the assembly stage to USA. They need to move component manufacturing too.
Exactly, unless you have a fully domestic supply chain that you control end to end, then you haven't removed dependence.
Let's be real though, they'd make it as automated as possible so even if we brought the entire production chain back to the USA, all we'd be doing is bringing down margins, increasing prices, and making some American investors a bit more money instead of sharing that with their Chinese manufacturing partners. It would not materially benefit the American proletariat unless they're going to be jobs that actually pay well, too. (I'm not against automation, it just needs to be benefiting the whole population, not just some rich asshole who happens to own a building and a brand)
The amount of automation that can be done is not that great for those type of things.
The cost of fully automating this process is insanely high, that's why the actual manufacturing is outsourced outside of the usa.
Producting a laptop from fully automated factory would boost the cost of the laptop to prohitive levels for most Americans as the cost of automation needs to be paid by the buyers.
Automated factories needs maintenance, which is not free at all.
Automated factories are cyber attack targets and needs great cybersecurity.
The material needed to build the components has to be mined and processed in other automated facilities with the same flaws.
With our current level of technology, fully automating this process is not cost effective at all.
Automated factories are cyber attack targets and needs great cybersecurity.
surely you could just not connect it to an outside network
Yeah well, that's a nice theory.
In practice we live in a world that is cloud computing powered, we also need to update the tooling from outside sources.
Zero day exploits still exist and you need to keep your stuff up to date or someone from inside will be able to attack your whole setup by using a known vulnerability.
It's a big can of worm...
This is capitalism trying to solve itself.
Of course it's not. It never was. Whole nation was founded on the principals of being one big Ponzi scheme.
Manufacturing will come back to the US, it's just that it will come back in the form of T-shirt and happy meal toy factories rather than Tech/Machinery factories like they expected.