[HN Gopher] Why Does Everyone Suddenly Care About Supply Chains?
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       Why Does Everyone Suddenly Care About Supply Chains?
        
       Author : adrian_mrd
       Score  : 11 points
       Date   : 2021-10-14 19:31 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
        
       | csense wrote:
       | The article says: "For P.P.E., that means budget-conscious
       | hospitals will look to buy cheaper, non-American-produced
       | options. The U.S. companies will want continuing subsidies or
       | protection from imports..."
       | 
       | The article doesn't go into _why_ foreign alternatives are
       | cheaper, despite the cost of shipping halfway around the world.
       | 
       |  _Of course_ it 's cheaper if you pay your people $50 for an
       | 80-hour workweek, dump all your toxic waste straight into the
       | environment, and have a totalitarian political system where you
       | can shoot anybody who complains.
       | 
       | Foreign firms operating in one of these countries will always be
       | able to push domestic industries out of business, unless tariffs
       | + shipping expenses are enough to negate the cost savings.
       | 
       | I live in the Rust Belt, and it continually amazes me how
       | thoughtful, cosmopolitan people struggle to understand that
       | "protectionism" isn't a dirty word.
       | 
       | It's also a little weird how the article seems to adopt a "have
       | your cake and eat it too" attitude -- that there's some magic
       | bullet that will allow us to swap out foreign sources for
       | domestic ones without any tariffs or increased costs.
       | 
       | I suspect such a thing doesn't exist. _Everyone_ wants to be
       | prepared for overseas disruption, and _everyone_ wants low prices
       | in normal times. The whole point of this entire debate is (or at
       | least ought to be) _prioritization_ or _trade-off_ : Is it okay
       | to pay higher prices in normal times _in exchange_ for being
       | insulated from the next global disruption? If we want both, but
       | can only have one, which one do we want more?
        
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       (page generated 2021-10-14 23:02 UTC)