Thread by @Noahpinion

1/@tculpan and I wrote a @bopinion post about supply chains!

Basically, Trump really screwed the pooch on this one, but we still need to do something about the fact that our supply chains are highly dependent on China.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

2/Joe Biden has also vowed to reshore our supply chains. For stuff we need in an emergency, that makes sense. But for a lot of stuff, it doesn't. We're not going back to the days when countries made most things in-house.

joebiden.com/build-back-bet…

3/The U.S. is still going to be good at the things it's good at. Capital-intensive businesses with lots of innovation (plus farming). We're not going back to an economy based on low-skilled assembly work -- nor should we.

4/Trump's Foxconn failure in Wisconsin was a perfect demonstration of how badly the "just move everything back to America" approach is destined to fail.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

5/And, like...would we want to do that kind of work, even if we could?

This is low-value, low-margin stuff.

6/Now, we CAN lure a lot of foreign investment in things like semiconductor manufacturing. Like TSMC's plant in Arizona.

That's good for our economy. But it's capital-intensive stuff that isn't going to create a lot of jobs.

6/So...where are we going to get jobs for the masses?

Services, mostly. Luckily Biden understands this.

joebiden.com/caregiving/

7/So that's our economy -- the capital-intensive knowledge industry stuff, including high-tech automated manufacturing, brings in the $$ from overseas, and most of us do service stuff here at home.

But OK, what do we do with those supply chains in China??

8/Answer: We relocate those supply chains out of China, and into countries that A) are allied with the U.S., and B) need the investment.

Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Philippines, Bangladesh, Mexico.

9/Our investment in these countries can be an alternative to what China is offering.

10/Globalized supply chains are here to stay. We just have to make sure that they're based as much as possible in allied countries, and that the money they generate is equitably distributed in the U.S.

(end)

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…