How did the wealthiest, 3rd largest country in the world end up 4th in manufacturing?

Believe it or not OP. IT's actually due to limitations in the ports

the New York Port doesn't even let in post-panamax ships. There are other limitations to the LA and Miami port too.

Just look at the sizes here for biggest ports in the world:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_container_ports

Do you see USA there. Now ask yourself: How could USA become a bigger economy when its ports are always overcrowded and all port-slots are busy?

Just the Shanghai port alone is bigger than all of USA ports combined.

By bringing all the factories back but automating them.

You're just a little dull, famalam. Productive capacity is useless if you can't ship anything

Are you illiterate?

What, you think you won't need shipping because you move a few factories? Moving a few containers full of iphones is much simpler compared to moving the hundreds of tons of rare earths and other raw materials needed to manufacture them.

I'm telling you man. American ports are too small and too primitive and overall too shitty. They need a radical upgrade urgently. This would have a massively positive impact on american economy.

Just see it this way. How would you eat, If someone strangles you with a rope?

That strangle is the economic bottleneck of USA, which are its undersized ports.

Just look at that list man. 9 of chinas ports are bigger than the biggest port in USA. Doesn't this tell you anything?? How can usa possibly export to the world and compete with china when it can't even port the products? Do you know that cargo has to port in Iceland today because porting to New york is too expensive? Just one day porting+fuel can cost more than 1 million dollars. It's absurd. Sometimes the cargo returns to Hamburg (halfway to NewYork) simply because the trip to USA wouldn't be worth it.

You can simply look at the law of diminishing rate of profit(or whatever it was called). Increased automation means you get more commodities for the same amount of labor, but since less labor is required to make it, the value of the commodity drops and as other capitalists adapt the same automation techniques, the exchange value eventually drops correspondingly. This means that as you invest in more and more capital, while your total profit increases, your profit-per-dollar-invested decreases. And that's the metric porky is really interested in - not having lots of money, because porky never has enough money, but making even more money than they already have.

And so, if you want to increase your profit per dollar, you have to exploit your workers harder. Pay them less, have them work longer, make them do more things at the same time. And one very simple way to do that is to move the factory abroad to where labor is more exploitable.

China is going to be a net importer of rare earths pretty soon, while America has the 7th largest reserves of rare earths.

mining.com/china-become-net-importer-rare-earths/

investingnews.com/daily/resource-investing/critical-metals-investing/rare-earth-investing/rare-earth-reserves-country/

Removing the overseas labor and shipping component is a no brainer.

The largest market for American made goods is America.

Increasing the size of ports will not magically make American made goods more attractive, or cost competitive to people in other countries/markets.

The largest exported products from America, such as Machinery and Aeronautic parts, are already manufactured in America.

The specialization of labor on a world scale, right boys?
Stop Reddit spacing, you know who you are

I highly doubt involving a middle-man is necessary or beneficial…

Something like half of those ports are for chinamax ships bringing in ore and australian coal. They're not exactly exporting value added products with them that require so much capacity.

And China has the largest reserve of rare earths in the entire world, around 30 times the size of that in the US. If you want to match Chinese production you have to match their resource requirements as well, and since your reserves are smaller you're gonna have to import them, which means you need not only a shipping capacity that matches China, but one that outmatches it by a hefty margin. The US just doesn't have the capacity. Autarky is a meme

Just to emphasize: China is one of the most resource-rich countries in the world, and it still has to import a staggering amount of raw materials to support its industry. China produces 40% of the world's coal, and it's still importing.

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2478975/Shanghai-port-worlds-busiest-handles-736m-tonnes-year.html

America doesn't even export half that value. Hell, I doubt its export+import combined is even higher than that. (Remember that USA has a 3 times higher GDP, and should have 3 times higher export/import)

China only need those huge ports because their economy is somehow even more inefficient than the U.S

Yes, I'm sure those millions of tons of cargo just disappear into thin air

What do you mean?

Here are the top 3 exports from china:

1.Electrical machinery, equipment: US$557.1 billion (26.3% of total exports)

2.Machinery including computers: $344.8 billion (16.3%)

3.Furniture, bedding, lighting , signs, prefab buildings: $89.5 billion (4.2%)

Who the hell buys Chinese equipment or furniture in the U.S? The only thing of value they produce for us are computers I.E phones.

That is besides the point. They produce for the entire world. The point is that the american ports are shit. Simple as that.

Just look at that list man. Both the german and dutch ports are better than ALL american ports. This isn't right.

Top 10 US Imports from China
China's exports to America amounted to
$481.8 billion or 21.4% of its overall imports.
1. Electronic equipment: $131.7 billion
2. Machinery: $100 billion
3. Furniture, lighting, signs: $31.6 billion

washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/24/how-china-used-more-cement-in-3-years-than-the-u-s-did-in-the-entire-20th-century/

Basically there's very low building quality standards, poor urban management such as ghost cities that are being constructed in the interior, corruption such as that bridge that was made out of garbage. They those huge ports to feed them raw materials because they're so wasteful with it.

China is expecting a massive urbanization boom. They won't be empty for long.
You see, the interesting thing about China is that they actually have an economic strategy and plans things in advance, unlike the US

It really is just the computers. If we refused to buy from China there are dozens of other countries to fill the gap. And it's not light bulbs but Christmas lights. Not exactly something to build ports for.

piie.com/blogs/trade-investment-policy-watch/how-dependent-are-us-consumers-imports-china

This is not relevant to the case of USA having shitports man. USA's ports are shit, even if chinese people are used in nuclear reactors as fission fuel.

Btw, if you think their living standards are bad, you should have seen them 40 years ago. I'm talking medieval age horseshit street-tier infrastructure. The hardboard houses they have today is sci-fi tier to what they used to have.

Either way, USA ports are the supreme thiefs here. Free the ports, and USA will have the biggest economic boom since 1960's. And as a matter of fact, an upgrade on the ports would probably decrease the amount of contraband that pass trough as well. Enjoy 30trillion dollar GDP.

Imperialism is capitalism in decay.

You bring up a convincing point with the ports but by the same token wouldn't fixing the ports also make it easier to bring imports in as well? Granted, I don't know much about this issue, I'm just curious…

kikes
and niggers

And Germany had Weinmar period. "Utopia for tomorrow, or you failed", again.

Having greater capacity for import can only be good. There is nothing to be gained by reaching an upper limit on storage capacity. America has a massive coastline and its letting it all go to waste with these non-postpanamax tech ports.

If you want to see how bad it really is, there is a game you can play: Look up the game called "Transocean the shipping company". Pic related.

The game uses real data on modern ports and you will get a taste on how limited USA is in this aspect. American ports literally aren't even on par with third world, believe it or not.

...

because how much money you make determines your living standards and the overall health of a society. OOF

Eh, America didn't really export "colonial culture" to European countries who had been colonizing since the Middle Ages. Britain for example, had seized lands from the Irish for their plantations in the 1600s in Ulster.

Colour me surprised. Also Ford was unique in that regard, most other workers were bringing in a few dollars a week for 6 days of 10 or 12 hours. When they tried to strike and do something about it the national guard would come and shoot at them.

This is Otto Thälman, leader of the WinRAR Republic in Germany. His brutal regime opened over 100,000,000 brothels and spread decadence and Jewish physics across Europe. Still think communism is ok?

Porky wasn't making enough money and the greedy working class kept striking. So he got together with like minded leaders in China to use their infinite number of pseudo slaves to separate the worker from the product of his labor even further.

This whole ports conversation sounds like a chicken and egg scenario. How do you know largers ports don't come after a need is established? China produces more shit than the US because corporations can pay them less money to do so. This is what facilitates the need for a big shipping infrastructure in China.

This isn’t entirely true or else Africa would be the center of world manufacturing and not China. There are other reasons, the Chinese government is very protectionist especially when it comes to their essential industries. They use the state and provide subsidies to Chinese manufacturers which are illegal under the WTO agreements with a present going back to Bretton Woods.

Their workers are very well-educated and skilled for the price that companies pay for them.I’d also point out that China devalues it’s currency and it’s PPP skews to the lower-end meaning that it takes less money to buy similar commodities on the Chinese internal market than in America. This might change as China moves away from an export centered model