business

Shipping snags prompt U.S. firms to mull retreat from China

9 Comments
By Paul Wiseman

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Just a little caution. Take some 1980s advertisements for Sears or Montgomery Wards for home appliances and furniture back when it was all made in the US and run the prices through the US Department of Commerce Consumer Price Index inflation tool. You can use this tool to convert prices for that 1980 or 1985 advert into todays dollars. You might be stunned to see how much stuff cost back then. Cleaning out a rental we found an interesting old Kenmore vacuum I intend to refurbish soon. For giggles I found the Sears Catalog page for it. It was first sold in 1984 for $499.95. That is the equivalent of over $1300.00 in 2021 Dollars. Even budget models fetching $200 back then would cost close to $500.00 in todays dollars, about what you pay for a top of the line Kenmore Elite vacuum today. Washer/dryer and refrigerator prices were likewise sky high in comparison to what we pay today. Price a modern Speed Queen washer/dryer to see what US manufactured goods will cost. Everyone wants cheap stuff yet they want a middle class income. It is hard to pay workers assembling consumer durables a US middle class wage and still expect these goods to cost as little as they do now.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Chinese know that American business will sell their mama ,if it meant making a buck off of Chinese goods

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Masters of the Universe (they are not). All my life I watched manufacturing move from first-world countries to Asia, Southeast Asia, and Mexico. Other than land and rail transport from Mexico, this problem of shipping bottlenecks is not limited to China. It is, however, exacerbated by a shortage of containers in the world other than in China. North American exporters cannot find containers heading any direction other than China. Container companies will make more money shipping empty containers to China right now, than they will shipping full containers to, say, Indonesia and hoping for a backhaul.

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The same global problems will impact industry in all countries.

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Oh NOW they think there might be a problem with sending jobs and manufacturing to a not very friendly nation halfway around the world with a very, very long distance shipping infrastructure.

Whocouldaknowed?!

7 ( +7 / -0 )

It would be interesting to know if European and Japanese companies have the same concerns and are looking for alternatives to manufacturing in China.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

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