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Yeah, it's called trade. Trade is good for the economy. Every economist will tell you that. But feel free to follow Trump, who says the economy will be better when everything is made in the US.

We all rely on each other. International trade has never been on a larger scale as it is right now. You can't have a complete production line in a single country. Like Nintendo said, it would cost billions to set up their entire production line of the swith 2 in the US, and even when they would try it would be impossible to do it a 100%. Resources come from all over the world. Rare earth metals are being imported into Taiwan, chips are being produced which are being imported into Japan. The chip machines are made in the Netherlands, which buys its resources from other European countries, the US, Asian countries like China. This is the entire process just to produce a chip. There's an entire different international production line for just the screens, as well as all the other parts.

Back in the days you needed copper for wiring and plastics to mold, and you basically had a rotary phone. Easy to produce in a single country. Not comparable to phones these days. Trading was expensive back then. These days trading is cheap. Beleving everything needs to be made in the US using US raw resources is completely dillusional. Like Trump.

Even for simple products like a grill scraper, the most economically efficient way is to use the international market. It might not feel nice to be reliant on other countries, especially when you start trade wars with everyone and make everyone your enemy. Look at Russia, and the European reliance on them with gass, oil and rare earth metals. Even now we buy Russian stuff, even though we don't want to. The alternative is to destroy our economy, like the US is doing right now. It isn't fun, but it's the reality. We slowly need to find substitutes. For that we can't just say we will do it ourselves, we need to look for new sources elsewhere.

The world isn't as simple as it was the 19th and early 20th century. You can't compare it to our current economy, products and lifestyles.

Fucking A. Printers back in the days used to just print and had refillable ink cartridges. Some expensive ones are still chugging. My dad has one from the 90s that still fucking works. The new one we got cries about colour missing when trying to print a black n white page 😩

That's kind of a pipe dream.

The reality of manufacturing is that unless people are physically in the building, the business isn't making money. Tool and die is largely a support role. We're not just making the tooling, we're making sure the press is still running all day.

That means that if the machine is running, we have to be here. The machine has to run frequently to make sense. They're simply aren't enough people for a 4 shift rotation, which is what we'd need to have reduced hours. We struggle to fill 2. Right now we're running 3 maintenance shifts and 2 production, and that's more than most manufacturers near me can handle. The labor just isn't there. We've tried 4x10 shifts and that's difficult to sell to 2nd and 3rd shifters. About half of first shift couldn't make it work. But it didn't really matter, ultimately.

The reality is that most of the building is working 5 ten hour shifts and a 6 hour Saturday for the foreseeable future. Could we attract young people with fewer hours? Maybe. It's manufacturing and it's a hard sell regardless. I love my job, I work with a lot of people who love their jobs, and that includes guys on the floor who do little more than plug parts in to machines. It can be immensely satisfying work, but it's hard, dirty, and loud. Ask 50 teenagers if they'd rather stand next to a punch press every day or throw burgers out of windows through college, 49 are gonna throw burgers.