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TheX
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With the recent events regarding China's role in the WuFlu, I want to stop buying everything electronic from them. It's not that easy.

My new phone will be here tomorrow, the OnePlus 8 Pro. 

https://www.oneplus.com/8-pro

Tried to find a phone made in the US, but there are ZERO. Next searched for a non-China phone, here is what I found.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/10-best-smartphones-not-made-in-china/

I didn't want Samsung this time, so China it is.

 

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Two things to consider: first, calling this the "wuflu" is pretty much racist. Second, it will be almost impossible to find any electronics that do not go through *some* country that you don't agree with. And even when the supply chain is not in China, subcons may be in China.

If you want to "buy American", good luck because almost every American company has some supply chain outside the US. As a country we never made it a priority to support American manufacturing, so as a consumer I see this as "not my problem.

If our government has made it easy for manufacturing to leave for the last 30+ years, then there is little I can do when buying my next phone that is going to change things. It's not my job to turn this around, it needs to start at the top.

But most importantly look at the value chain and profit pools. An iPhone, for instance, is "made in China", but ~90% of the value chain is not going to China, most is going to the US. 

Here is an example, it's 10 years old but still fairly representational:

https://master-iesc-angers.com/industrialization-and-global-value-chains-in-africa-challenges-and-strategies/

Look at the iPhone chart halfway down the page.

2016-05-02_1232.png.d5203f79f16ff8520b387617e04435c2.png 

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6 hours ago, TheX said:

With the recent events regarding China's role in the WuFlu,

 

I don't have an issue calling it the wuhan virus as that is ostensibly where it originated from. We currently have a divisive man-child running the country and that appears to have made a lot of people press pause on their common sense. 

here's some fun:

Zika virus (a forest)

Guinea worm (a country)

Japanese encephalitis (a country)

West Nile virus (a river)

German measles (a country)

Spanish flu (a country)

Ebola (a river)

Marburg virus (a German city)

Lassa fever (a Nigerian town)

 

6 hours ago, AustinBike said:

 

If you want to "buy American", good luck because almost every American company has some supply chain outside the US. As a country we never made it a priority to support American manufacturing, so as a consumer I see this as "not my problem.

If our government has made it easy for manufacturing to leave for the last 30+ years, then there is little I can do when buying my next phone that is going to change things. It's not my job to turn this around, it needs to start at the top.

 

100% this^

Tried buying american for my wheelset and got an extremely overpriced and substandard product. In today's "free market" economy, it seems products have to be made cheap, overseas, and exempt from environmental and labor laws so companies can meet earnings expectations.  On the other side, it's essential so the consumer economy can continue while american consumers are having less and less buying power. It's an unsustainable mess.

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1 hour ago, ATXZJ said:

I don't have an issue calling it the wuhan virus as that is ostensibly where it originated from. We currently have a divisive man-child running the country and that appears to have made a lot of people press pause on their common sense. 

here's some fun:

Spanish flu (a country)

 

Let's not forget that the Spanish flu did not come from Spain, it came from <checks notes> some country called "Kansas." 😉

And, since the US is the super spreader, can any of the countries that got it AFTER us call it the "US flu" if it came from us? Asking for a friend.

This is why calling it the wuhan flu is BS. It is meant to distract. We have 100,000+ dead here and we are trying to point the finger somewhere else. That is bullshit.

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I honestly don't care what they call it. It can be called Barney the dinosaur's asshole disease for all it matters. It's still deadly and not close to slowing down. The gameshow host in chief has everyone spun and it's getting really old.

Agree on the Spanish flu however, it did surface on a military base in KS and who TF knows where that bastard got it . But as always, f@ck Kansas regardless right?

 

No, seriously. Its awful

Edited by ATXZJ
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on topic though: I would like to buy domestically made goods (or at least North American) for a variety of reasons. neoliberal policies make it harder and harder to do that. if you really wanted to buy a US-made smart phone, it would be incredibly expensive. Why is that? it's true for many other items as well. is it because:

  • US production costs more due to workers' pay, environmental regulations
  • arbitrary "made in USA" markup
  • lack of pay and regulation in Asian markets

in other words, are Asian made goods so much cheaper because it would cost much more to make in a more developed economy, or because labor is just so darn cheap elsewhere? I know the answer is "both," but if you put the two sides on a scale, which is the bigger issue?

perhaps, if we considered the environmental and human cost of getting so much cheap stuff, we'd realize how much it really should cost and just buy less stuff.

I recently bought a Industry Nine wheel. I had other options that would have cost less, but I wanted to make at least one small effort to buy something that didn't have to come across an ocean first. the 1/1 hubs are a really nice product considering the quality of a domestic made product. 

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35 minutes ago, mack_turtle said:

 

perhaps, if we considered the environmental and human cost of getting so much cheap stuff, we'd realize how much it really should cost and just buy less stuff.

 

Pretty much this. Every time I hear one of our illustrious politicians say "we have to compete with china" I just get pissed. 

Our economy is built around buying crap we can't afford that in the end we don't really need. If your average TV was $2k we'd buy one a decade and repair it when it broke. Now we just buy a $300 POS thats "4k" made gawd knows where, and lasts a couple years. When it shits the bed, toss all that e-waste in a landfill. Yay us.

We've saved so much money by not going out and buying sh*t since the lockdown

Edited by ATXZJ
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 6/21/2020 at 8:01 AM, TheX said:

Tried to find a phone made in the US, but there are ZERO. Next searched for a non-China phone, here is what I found.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/10-best-smartphones-not-made-in-china/

I didn't want Samsung this time, so China it is.

 

What was wrong with the non-Samsung options that are made Taiwan, Japan, and India?

how much would you be willing to pay for an American-made phone?

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I was actually in this situation buying a new bike a couple months back. I went with Guerrilla Gravity because they are made in Colorado and most MTB frames are made in China. For the components I went with SRAM as it's a US company but their stuff is made in Taiwan. I'm cool with Taiwan as they don't like China either!

I did probably spend about $500 more than if I had gotten something from one of the Chinese manufacturers but I'm okay with that. It comes with the territory.

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7 hours ago, throet said:

Recently bought a S Korean made LG phone and no complaints at all. Much better price point than Samsung. 

If you dig into the supply chain you'd probably find most of the phone came from China. Saying an LG phone or a Samsung phone are Korean is about the same same as saying the Apple phone is American. Most supply chains run through china.

Here's an example - they shut down three of their Chinese factories earlier this year because of COVID:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/10/reuters-america-brief-lg-electronics-three-of-its-factories-in-china-remain-idled.html

 

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Don't know if this still applies but my understanding is that a product can say made in XYZ country if the final process happens in the country claiming manufacture. LOOK bicycles are French bicycles, the higher end carbon models are manufactured in Tunisia but they are painted in France allowing them to claim "MADE IN FRANCE". I would think that this could apply to any country.

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Pretty close to that, but typically there is some type of stipulation about actual assembly or percentage of the value chain.

I have been trying to find the recent article about Apple's value chain with respect to china. Here is an example from ~2010 or so:

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2014/05/22/china-a-manufactured-chimera-part-two/

For the typical iPhone, only ~$6.50 was value from China. These days I think the number is closer to $18 but the value of the phone is a lot higher, so there is an offset there.

It is almost impossible to avoid China and the smart money is not on trying to boycott china because it is literally impossible to determine the true origin of most products, regardless of what they say on them.

I've been going to China since the mid-90's and have watched their manufacturing explode. Literally every company has some component there that they are making passing through the China value chain. Most interestingly, their niche is assembly, not technology. You're more likely to find subcon vendors in Singapore or Malaysia sending the components to China where the assembly happens. Those Korean phones are probably built in China but the components come from all over. 

We're in a global economy now and we need to stop thinking about trade through the old lens and look at it as value add. From that perspective we trounce China. Where we really fall down is when our government goes to put pressure on a company like Apple for manufacturing in China when that is $20 of value on a $1000 phone. It just shows how ignorant we are.

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What i truly enjoy are the diehard neocons & neoliberals that tell us any time we as citizens want some social improvements i.e. universal heath care, free college, living wage, and justice reform they call it communism. However, these businesses (read donors) will gladly ship jobs overseas to communist and totalitarian countries in the name of the almighty dollar. Now who supports communism again?

Get fukt.

Edited by ATXZJ
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  • 2 weeks later...
1 minute ago, throet said:

Close enough for me 😆

Yep. I think bringing up Mexico to a higher standard of living through trade holds nothing but positives for both the US and Mexico. I would happily support moving our China trade to Mexico. 

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47 minutes ago, throet said:

Really would like to support US Business with the purchase of one of these! 

image.thumb.png.8101e03ca0840098686122425fb631b9.png

Was really sceptical about the off-road abilities of an IFS bronco, but looks like this one is pretty dialed. I like that you can actually option the damn thing the way you want it. Auto manufacturers have been pushing no choice packages on us for decades and it sucks.

That Sasquatch one is pretty sweet.

 

Edited by ATXZJ
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