President Reagan promoted China as a manufacturer of U.S. corporations products. China made it Americans bought it. It was “Morning in America” we could spend family time at the pool while Chinese people made our stuff with what we called “slave labor.”
When the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spoke repeatedly of how to use China as a manufacturing facility for U.S. corporations I called it the U.S./China Chamber of Commerce. The location, location, location for manufacturing was China, China & China.
More recently the U.S. Chamber had conferences in the Middle East. Was the theme “look what extravagant wealth can get you” like an Amway rally? Or, Look what your government bailout can buy. I don’t really know.
The pandemic mostly strengthened the manufacture products in China that Americans consumed economic syndrome.
Furniture can be made to outlast the people that buy it, and passed on to future generations. Americans move from home to home a lot. When they do sometimes their furniture won't fit. There is a constant need for new furniture.
One of the few U.S. manufacturing industries not totally damaged by the pandemic is the furniture manufacturing industry.
In the mid-1960s I worked for a short time in a small furniture making shop in Hanover PA called Hans Koch Works. Hans was maybe 25 years old newly immigrated from Germany. Hans imported a carving machine from Austria. He offered to train me to operate it. It generated lots of dust and I have asthma. I refused the offer.
The real expert cabinet maker at Hans Koch Works was Ferdinand Wolf. Fred was trained in the German apprentice system in pre-II World War Germany.
Freddy made a scale model of a dresser I transferred from original size to a miniature size in a plan drawing. He pointed out that I got some of the transfers from metric to American wrong. He used mostly hand tools.
Fred was an artillery man in Hitler's Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. He forced marched with others to be captured by Americans. Fred saw Hanover PA on the map and decided to spend the rest of his life in Hanover.
“Still Made in the U.S.A."
“The rising tide of the global economy was supposed to float all boats, but as the Bassetts soon discovered, it didn’t. Yes, American consumers initially benefited from the availability of cheaper furniture made offshore, and the workers in poor countries started enjoying better lives. But the Americans who actually made things — and whose labor made families like the Bassetts rich — began to suffer.
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| https://www.amazon.com/Factory-Man- Furniture-Offshoring-American/dp/031623141X |
What had been a thriving business was soon decimated. From 2000 to 2002, furniture imports from China jumped 121 percent, and by 2003, offshoring had cost American furniture makers and related companies 73,000 jobs.
Faced with closing his factories and laying off loyal employees, Bassett chose to take a stand. Instead of capitulating — selling out for zillions and letting his workers go hang — he cut costs, upgraded product lines and kept layoffs to a minimum. Bassett, a “Republican-leaning independent,” in Macy’s words, even turned to the federal government for help, pushing representatives to enforce trade regulations against the Chinese. The company broke even in 2012, with shareholder equity at $114.5 million, which Bassett considered a victory.”
MORE AT:
Most U.S. furniture manufacturers relied on China to make their furniture. IKEA furniture shelves were empty during the pandemic.
A few U.S. furniture manufactures did not use China to make their products. They continued to operate and send furniture to stores during the pandemic. But they were the only furniture makers to do that. It’s why new furniture now sits on the store floors for minutes instead of months.
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“Mr. Wang noted that more than 80 countries at the United Nations Human Rights Council had expressed support for China’s actions in Xinjiang, the far western region where the authorities have detained and interned Uyghur Muslims in a campaign the United States declared a genocide.
As a result, the world is increasingly dividing into distinct, if not purely ideological, camps, with both China and the United States hoping to lure in supporters. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed that Mr. Wang secured an endorsement of its Xinjiang policies, as well as its quashing of dissent in Hong Kong, from Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, though a Saudi statement did not mention Xinjiang.
China’s most striking alignment is with Russia, where Mr. Putin has long complained about American hegemony and its use — abuse, in his view — of the global financial system as an instrument of foreign policy.”
The really scary part:
“The Russian foreign minister arrived in China last Monday railing about American sanctions and saying the world needed to reduce its reliance on the U.S. dollar.”
MUCH MORE AT:
An Alliance of Autocracies? China Wants to Lead a New World Order.
As President Biden predicts a struggle between democracies and their opponents, Beijing is eager to champion the other side.
March 29, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
***
Peeling back layers of secrecy, McCoy exposes a military and economic battle for global domination fought in the shadows, largely unknown to those outside the highest rungs of power. Can the United States extend the “American Century” or will China guide the globe for the next hundred years? McCoy devotes his final chapter to these questions, boldly laying out a series of scenarios that could lead to the end of Washington’s world domination by 2030.”
In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power (Dispatch Books) Paperback – September 12, 2017
by Alfred W. McCoy (Author)
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