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The US continues to set itself up to fail big. It’s really like they want this to happen and they do everything they can to accelerate it.

Manufacturing specifically, cheaper overseas is the basic answer but I think there’s one more in additional. The west, particularly former colonial powers and their beneficiaries, which is most of Europe, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc - socially all treat manual labor that isn’t at least art-adjacent with a level of dissaproval and it seems worse the younger you go.

Like it’s not enough to work to live. Your work also has to be an aesthetic choice. So you can have very exploitative industries like the various art/entertainment industries and regardless of how bad they are, any job where you can say you work in like film or fashion is a social plus. You can be broke working in a restaurant and for a fashion brand. You can work for those and be really abrasive, abusive, a destructive addict but as long as you’re in the socially acceptable professions, you’re socially adjacent to champagne socialist/wealthy liberals/whatever. Like you can in the same sentence complain about gentrification and cultural appropriation while living in a gentrified neighborhood and teaching yoga and selling healthy versions of “unhealthy” ethnic foods and be socially preferable to a factory worker or plumber that’s a great person. City reputation, it’s the Paris and Portland hip social scene special

You can be an incredible person but if you’re dating profile says Amazon Warehouse or GE Appliances assembler, plumber, etc - that’s going to be rougher. And I think it’s worse the younger you go where people really want to be entertainers/influencers. It’s too socially looked down on to be a laborer. Too much is made about the values of a person from their occupation. The vast majority of people in social work organizations I’ve met got the job because they needed a job rather than a desire to help others. Same with nursing. They may have a higher likelihood of having humanist opinions but it’s definitely not certain and I’d say from my experience of those I’ve met, most of everyone treats it as work and nothing more. It’s not their identify and not representative of their beliefs. So manual laborers are diverse in all regards but get judged as if manual laborers equals chauvinist or bad with money or something. There’s not a clear path forward in the current generations to building a competitive manufacturing employee base. Attitudes are already well engrained and there’s little effort for future generations to remove the stigma from non-art/adjacent fields. It’s only a discussion like most social maladys people have identified the past decade

Well, a solution are immigrants. Immigrants are fine working labor as long as they can support themselves and their family. Immigrants are more keen to the belief of sacrificial generations. One generation suffers so their children can live well. Immigrants deal with racism, bullying of their children for being different, violence in poorer neighborhoods they can afford, live wherever work is built rather than the cities that are most trendy. Immigrants are the backbone of western society and culture. Culture because without the immigrants and their immediate children, all these artist/influencers would have to do the labor jobs that keep infrastructure and production going

The stuff about chasing out high ability foreign researchers. Same there. Science and engineering are social negative occupations. Only good for stable family life but not nightlife and adventure. That’s not true. Science and engineering is a diverse workforce in all regards but stereotypes have become socially acceptable. Prejudice is socially acceptable as long as you don’t say something overtly racist or something. Just call it preference or just being cautious or mental health. So the science and engineering fields are filled with immigrants and the immediate children of immigrants. Sacrifice social points for potential economic stability. We’re coming to a point where science and engineering is becoming far more competitive to keep up internationally and job requirements harder. Not guaranteed work anymore and social negative. For ones born in the west, may not be worth the risk to do worse socially and possibly crash out from the science/engineering world. Decline in interest towards science/engineering

A solution is immigration. Both children of immigrants and immigrant scientist/engineers are cornerstones of modern western science and engineering. But blanket anti-immigration is the hot thing currently. People don’t want to compete in quality with immigrants but want the wealth from quality that immigrants bring to the table in international trade competition. The reality I believe is that without immigrants, the quality of new products in the west tanks and western products become outdated. I’ve seen and heard opinions like, “anyone with family in China should not be able to get a security clearance.” Going as far as anyone with family in Asia is a security threat. People like that are basic veteran infantry mindset and/or have never worked in science and technology in the west. Anti-immigration would be a major detriment to every western military along with the countries manufacturing base.

So to me western countries need to work on the social stigma of manual labor and STEM work, and probably increase immigration. Make the too good for non-entertainment and hospitality people content with stuff like universal healthcare and cheaper housing. Everyone benefits from those

What would you expect from immoral CEOs who, driven only by short-term profit, have been outsourcing everyþing overseas for decades? Is anyone left who’s surprised by þis?

Because the US sent all it’s tech to China and is now just a middleman skimming profits while making nothing of value and this has been going on for almost 2 whole generations ?

As the U.S. government decided to restrict some technologies to China, it should have been more serious about these restrictions. But due to a somewhat permissive licensing policy maintained by the U.S. Department of Commerce, due to the Chinese firms being able to smuggle or buy these technologies on the black market, due to the fierce resilience of companies like Huawei that refused to fail, and due to the very extensive lobbying efforts of American companies to continue to supply to Chinese customers, the export control policy was severely weakened.

I never really thought about the black market. If each country has a different tariff depending on their relationship to this administration, then a country that doesn’t comply can still get what they need from the US through other countries. Really best of both worlds.

It doesn’t make sense to turn off the U.S. as an attractor to some of the scientists yearning for some aspect of freedom, and it doesn’t make sense to deport a lot of people who could form the manufacturing industrial base in the U.S.

I never understood why the US would educate people and then try to kick them out in a short time frame. You are basically making other countries better and gaining little from it.

I can’t speak to the book, but the article/interview/summary seem a little hollow in places. Some oddities:

1. Manufacturing jobs declined and manufacturing contributes less as a percentage of GDP than it once did, sure, but manufacturing has grown in the US.
2. China artificially deflates the value of its currency. That lowers the cost of goods it exports to other countries and creates a structural impediment to competing with manufacturers in China. I don’t see how any discussion about globalization and manufacturing jobs is complete without a discussion about currency manipulation.
3. Random shots fired at NY and SF.

Also, the US is never going to compete with China for engineering graduates or manufacturing. The population difference makes it an impossible comparison.