Article

2020-02-28 Economy

'You can't get a straight answer': Businesses struggle to plan through coronavirus damage to Chinese supply chains

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Posted by Besoeker 2020-02-28 00:10|| || Front Page|| [11129 views ] Top

#1 Here's a "straight answer." As the Orange Man has attempted to tell us since he arrived in office, we've become too dependent upon Chinese manufacturing and the Chinese economy. If you have doubts, take a look at our stock market turn-down over the past few days.

The Chinese appear to be having a huge problem with the Conona virus. Luckily, we do not. The impact of their problem however, is wrecking our stock market. This is a problem of our own making and an obvious betrayal of the American worker and investor.

Posted by Besoeker 2020-02-28 00:24|| 2020-02-28 00:24|| Front Page Top

#2 Unbelievably stupid of our elites to hitch our economic wagon to this Communist-led shithole's star.

Stupidest decision of many stupid policy decisions our idiot elites made over the last 35 years.

Unbelievable folly, actually. Bordering on criminal.

Posted by Lex 2020-02-28 00:33|| 2020-02-28 00:33|| Front Page Top

#3 /\ Years in the making...chickens home to roost. That sort of thing.

Still no definitive answers to the origins of the virus. I suspect the origins are well known, simply not being shared.

Posted by Besoeker 2020-02-28 00:36|| 2020-02-28 00:36|| Front Page Top

#4 Why the fook did we - deliberately, consciously, willfully - raise up a harmless third-world backwater into our mortal rival?

Why?

To rescue Apple computer from oblivion?
To put a million pensioners in the black, and line the pockets of maybe 100,000 D.C. insiders and assorted tech employees?

For THIS? Really?

WAS IT WORTH IT?

Posted by Lex 2020-02-28 00:45|| 2020-02-28 00:45|| Front Page Top

#5 The same type as Israeli shitheads who believe in peace with Arabs.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-02-28 01:56|| 2020-02-28 01:56|| Front Page Top

#6 Why the fook did we - deliberately, consciously, willfully - raise up a harmless third-world backwater into our mortal rival?

Same folks who thought you could turn the Middle East and Central Asia into an oasis of democracy (ignoring they were throwing away democracy home at the same time). The best and brightest aren't. But, hey, the Chinese got missile and satellite technology and the Clinton Foundation got contributions.

Posted by Procopius2k 2020-02-28 06:37|| 2020-02-28 06:37|| Front Page Top

#7 What if all of a sudden a large number of Americans discover they can get along without most of the Chinese made crap they buy?

Posted by M. Murcek 2020-02-28 07:35|| 2020-02-28 07:35|| Front Page Top

#8 Why the fook did we - deliberately, consciously, willfully - raise up a harmless third-world backwater into our mortal rival?

It's the same greed that privatizes profits and socialized losses that gave us the 2008 crash. The gamed political-financial elite will always benefit from the shit they stir up.

Posted by Count Galeazzo Untervehr7098 2020-02-28 07:40|| 2020-02-28 07:40|| Front Page Top

#9 This has been a disaster in the making for a long time, at least from 1990 +/-. It was called outsourcing at the time. If we needed parts or sub-assemblies, they were farmed out willy-nilly to "offshore suppliers" and damn the quality. Supply chain management became the cry, and just in time delivery reigned. All fads, with some real benefit at core, but carried to extremes. These 'fads' reduced costs (American jobs), relocated warehousing out of reach of the IRS (reduced on-hand inventory subject to taxation), but increased profits. Short term gains weakened the economy as a whole, and many industries were hollowed out. I could write a book about how we off-shored our semiconductor manufacturing capabilities and lost control of our own well being and security. In all, very discouraging. People will still argue that was the correct course of action, but I disagree.

Posted by Whiskey Mike 2020-02-28 08:26|| 2020-02-28 08:26|| Front Page Top

#10 It would appear the decoupling is no longer a topic of idle discussion.

Posted by Cesare 2020-02-28 08:28|| 2020-02-28 08:28|| Front Page Top

#11

/\ Well said Mike.

Scrap iron was selling for top dollars in the 1930's. People were carrying buckets and walking RR tracks to pick up stray spikes and rail plates. I suppose it would be racist to tell you who owned a vast majority of the scrap yards. Who was the end user of the iron? Where was it going? Japan.

Posted by Besoeker 2020-02-28 08:31|| 2020-02-28 08:31|| Front Page Top

#12 Stupidest decision of many stupid policy decisions our idiot elites made over the last 35 years.

They were not interested in the wisdom or stupidity, they were interested in fattening their bank accounts.

Posted by Spanky Scourge of the Brontosaurs1917 2020-02-28 09:00|| 2020-02-28 09:00|| Front Page Top

#13 a harmless third-world backwater

Communist China had sponsoring Maoist revolutionaries all over the world, including Western/American universities. Harmless they were not. This diverted their attention into making widgets. But now that Maoist revolution is discredited and the teeth of the revolutionaries blunted, the cost of labour in China has been increasing, so we’ve been slowly moving manufacturing to lower cost countries, Even without the coronavirus panic, China would have ended up with a good deal less control of the world than they’d planned.

Posted by trailing wife 2020-02-28 09:33|| 2020-02-28 09:33|| Front Page Top

#14 Fair enough, TW, so not entirely harmless. But I would trade the giant monster we created for the spider that was piss-poor, 3rd-world Maoist China in a nanosecond.

Now our fortunes are hitched. A nightmarish, almost suicidal marriage that will take us many painful years - decades, perhaps - to unwind.

Posted by Lex 2020-02-28 10:28|| 2020-02-28 10:28|| Front Page Top

#15 People will still argue that was the correct course of action...

People like Mike Bloomburg? Henry Kissinger? Joe Biden and his son Hunter? Carly Fiorina? I could go on...

But they will blame Trump for the stock market crash and the empty shelves in the stores.

Posted by Abu Uluque 2020-02-28 11:41|| 2020-02-28 11:41|| Front Page Top

#16 they will blame Trump for the stock market crash and the empty shelves in the stores.

... after pocketing their millions in Sinegeld

Posted by Lex 2020-02-28 13:03|| 2020-02-28 13:03|| Front Page Top

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