When will UK (+other countries) not be able to buy Chinese Electronics?

[Rick Law]

The British pound (+ maybe some other countries currency) is falling dramatically against the Chinese Yuan.....as the following chart shows...

(Pound vs Yuan over 20 years)
https://www.poundsterlinglive.com/bank-of-england-spot/historical-spot-exchange-rates/gbp/GBP-to-CNY

At what point in the future, will UK no longer be able to buy Electronics products from China? (eg lighting products, toys, TVs,  etc etc)

Also, if the Chinese Yuan, became extremely valuable, compared to the UK's £.

The Chinese would probably buy stuff from the UK like crazy, because so much of our stuff for sale, would appear to be so very cheap to them.

So we would be able to start all sorts of new business's, expand existing businesses and get a huge influx of Chinese tourists. Which would in time, partly resolve the currency situation.

That is the theory, but once an industry no longer exist in a country, it will take time to redevelop.  Just take an HDD for example,  I doubt UK or the USA can make an HDD with totally domestic parts/labor (without needing extensive time to rebuilt the infrastructure).

TV, toys, etc., are in a way optional kinds of things.  National defense is not.  Say the UK and China have a military conflict, would you want the UK's military to use an imported Chinese made drone to monitor the English channel for intrusion?

I don't think the world has a handle on this yet.  It is an issue beyond mere dollars.

For sure, the US is out of the garment business and have been for decades.  But it would be pretty easy to resurrect that business if the cost of imported goods rises.  OR, we just don't buy their stuff.

The garment business is in India, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh...

But the society is used to buy cheap and replace often, thus the inertia requires a continuum policy that goes across presidential mandates.

It is still too soon to see if this trade war will influence China's Intellectual Property practices... It is certainly a huge bet and the dude at the helm does not inspire confidence with his tweeting frenzy, but hopefully this is successful.

Current "trade war" is trade-balance targeted.  Stuff like soy-bean, milk/butter - there is not a lot of intellectual property associated with any of them.

For IP protection, I think it needs specifically targeted tariff - such as: "we will add 90% tariff to your cars imported into my country  until you stop unauthorized use of IP from our car manufacturers."  But then of course, they can use the IP to make cars for themselves or export it to another country...

Most impact is of course having a few B52's fly over their industrial area, but that would be shall we say a bit of an over reaction...

[MK14]

I think you'd find quite a few Americans can't do it either, I could probably name all of them with some effort and point to the approximate region on a map but being from the West coast the East is pretty foreign to me. It seems that people in many parts of the world have some difficulty grasping just how geographically enormous the USA is, it's spread across 5 time zones.

If you take a holiday, in a different US state each year, people may not see/visit all of the states in their lifetime (assuming they were not that young when they start doing that), the US is very big.

The increasing trade war between the US and China, may give an angle as to how easily or not. the Western world can "rain in" China's advances in technology and economic dominance.
Even if I am not a big fan of Trump's, it will be interesting to see how it pans out.

[MK14]

Also, if the Chinese Yuan, became extremely valuable, compared to the UK's £.

The Chinese would probably buy stuff from the UK like crazy, because so much of our stuff for sale, would appear to be so very cheap to them.

So we would be able to start all sorts of new business's, expand existing businesses and get a huge influx of Chinese tourists. Which would in time, partly resolve the currency situation.

That is the theory, but once an industry no longer exist in a country, it will take time to redevelop.  Just take an HDD for example,  I doubt UK or the USA can make an HDD with totally domestic parts/labor (without needing extensive time to rebuilt the infrastructure).

TV, toys, etc., are in a way optional kinds of things.  National defense is not.  Say the UK and China have a military conflict, would you want the UK's military to use an imported Chinese made drone to monitor the English channel for intrusion?

I don't think the world has a handle on this yet.  It is an issue beyond mere dollars.

If you look through the history books, over the last 1,000 or even 20,000 years. You see that all sorts of populations/countries/regions/industries/religions/etc etc, come and go.
I would imagine, that many of them, which were big in the past, haven't even made it to the history books.
Because they were too small or the evidence/information about their existence, has long since disappeared.

So, it is not clear, if this China situation is just a blip, and the "Roman Empire", will once again triumph again, with Donaldini Trumpatteta, the smart, sane and amazingly honest, US, "Roman Empire", leader/tweeter.

Or, as some suspect, it is the beginning of the "Fall, of the Roman Empire". History repeating itself.
If there is a big power shift, will it just be the US, or will the rest of the West, such as Europe, decline as well ?

The UK, is hopefully small enough, to somewhat quickly adapt to changing world-wide situations. So, hopefully it can cope with whatever way round, the world ends up.
It takes time to rebuild industries, but in time I hope the UK, gets there, as needed.

[floobydust]

It's too late, we're all crack addicts to the cheap chinese goods.

You do not speak for me in this post. I will be partying and dancing all night when the world announces no more buying from China

Will the USA ever make an iPhone? Or is it Foxconn from now on in.

You certainly missed Trump's message on bringing iPhone to the US

You are reading this post via tons of chinese-made gear- the mouse, LCD, keyboard, router, HDD, semi's etc.
Let me know what parts are made outside Asia, in today's electronics industry.
Who manufactures capacitors, resistors, IC's, LED's, LCD displays, PCB laminates, connectors etc. in USA/Canada/UK/Australia? There are only a few boutique companies.

So I don't think we will party in this lifetime.

Trump tweets "Make your products in the United States instead of China. Start building new plants now. Exciting!"
He ups the trade war by $200B and Beijing has $60B of counter-tariffs.  Phase three, if it goes to that is an additional $267B of tariffs.

Apple's Sept. 5 letter commenting on the $200B tariffs "... the U.S. will be hardest hit, and that will result in lower U.S. growth and competitiveness and higher prices for U.S. consumers". I think any transition is going to be painful and he'll lose votes.

The Foxconn LCD plant in Wisconsin has over $4B (tax breaks, infrastructure, free land) incentive package including the locals paying for the plant's $140M electric utility upgrades. "It will take until at least 2043 for the state to recoup that lost tax revenue, according to Wisconsin's estimates."

Look at any electronic component and I see no way to get manufacturing and technology back in North America or the UK.
Raspberry Pi is just token PCB stuffed in the UK, mostly made in china as far as parts and silicon, and other Pi's made in china.

But politically, it all looks good 

[james_s]

If you take a holiday, in a different US state each year, people may not see/visit all of the states in their lifetime (assuming they were not that young when they start doing that), the US is very big.

I think it would be interesting to see all the states, but really, I think if one were to take a holiday to many of the states they would be rather disappointed. I mean no disrespect to those who call the "flyover" states home and I'm sure there's some nice areas in all of them, but we have vast swaths of land where there is not a lot going on, where the climate is unpleasant much of the year and there isn't much to see. I drove about halfway across Texas one time and part of that I drove hours seeing nothing but flat brown ground with scrubby brush. I stopped for a pee break and didn't even bother to pull over, we just stopped in the middle of the highway and got out and walked around. I could see miles out to the horizon in each direction so an oncoming car would have taken minutes to reach that spot from the time it was visible.

I really wish some of the people flooding into my region would go settle in the more sparse areas because it's fer too crowded here, but everyone wants to live on the coasts.

[james_s]

Will the USA ever make an iPhone? Or is it Foxconn from now on in.

You certainly missed Trump's message on bringing iPhone to the US
[/quote]

IMHO it doesn't really matter. A person cannot make a living wage building products that sell anywhere near as cheap as people have come to expect, at least not in any useful scale. Maybe you have 4 or 5 employees making a good wage operating a production line that decades ago would have been staffed by several hundred skilled workers. If we build iPhones here they will be built by automated assembly lines and we still won't have a bunch of good manufacturing jobs.

Bottom line is that people have come to expect *cheap* toys, and the only way we get cheap toys is by exploiting labor that is far cheaper than anyone can live off of in this country.

[rstofer]

It takes time to rebuild industries, but in time I hope the UK, gets there, as needed.

How long did it take the US to tool up for WW II?  I don't know the answer but it must have been pretty darn quick.  True, we were building airplanes and battleships, no super high technology, but still, it didn't take long to set up the factories.

I worked at an aircraft plant in the early '70s and a lot of the machines were owned by the Federal Government.  The company didn't have the funds to buy all the necessary machines during the war so the government provided them.  Twenty five years later we were still using them.

Officially WW II started Sept 1, 1939 and ended Sept 2, 1945 - six years and a day.  The US wasn't involved with the war in the Pacific until Dec 7, 1941 and the war in Europe Dec 11, 1941 when Hitler declared war with the US.

So, what did we create during that 6 year period?  It was pretty amazing!

Don't sell the US short when we decide to do something.

[jmelson]

How long did it take the US to tool up for WW II?  I don't know the answer but it must have been pretty darn quick.  True, we were building airplanes and battleships, no super high technology, but still, it didn't take long to set up the factories.


Officially WW II started Sept 1, 1939 and ended Sept 2, 1945 - six years and a day.  The US wasn't involved with the war in the Pacific until Dec 7, 1941 and the war in Europe Dec 11, 1941 when Hitler declared war with the US.

Well, of course, this was a national emergency.  We converted ALL production over to "war work", so there were no major consumer goods produced other than food and a minimal amount of maintenance items.  Everything was rationed.  While Rolls Royce developed the Merlin aircraft engine, the Packard auto company improved it and made most of the Merlins used in various aircraft. A bunch of other auto factories were converted to make aircraft, and cranked them out at astonishing rates.  Alan Turing developed the "Bombe" to break the German's Enigma code, but then the design was turned over to the NCR company in the US.  The British made a couple dozen Bombes, but NCR made several HUNDRED, and theirs were at least 20 times faster.  One shipload of NCR Bombes were sent to England, but about 200 were put to work in a stadium-sized building about where the Smithsonian is now on the Mall in Washington DC.  With that huge bank of Bombes, they could break the first message of the day (when the order of rotors in the Enigmas were changed) in 20 minutes, and then break individual messages at the rate of a couple minutes each.

So, it was an all-out effort, that employed practically everyone in the entire US over the age of 18 in some way.  Rosie the riveter and all that.

Jon

[chris_leyson]

In terms of component manufacturing in the UK we've been manufacturing zero zip zilsch nothing for decades and no amount of optimism is going to turn that around and we've lost the knowledge and skill. We've become consumers rather than builders. We can put the "Lego" pieces together but we can't build the "Lego" pieces whereas Chinese industry can can do both.

[rstofer]

So, it was an all-out effort, that employed practically everyone in the entire US over the age of 18 in some way.  Rosie the riveter and all that.

Jon

And everybody was on the same page.

[Richard Crowley]

...It seems that people in many parts of the world have some difficulty grasping just how geographically enormous the USA is, it's spread across 5 time zones.

US Virgin islands is UTC-4,
Alaska and Hawaii are UTC -10
Guam is UTC +10

[rsjsouza]

...It seems that people in many parts of the world have some difficulty grasping just how geographically enormous the USA is, it's spread across 5 time zones.

US Virgin islands is UTC-4,
Alaska and Hawaii are UTC -10
Guam is UTC +10

The sun never sets on the American Empire... You forgot Iraq (UTC+3) and Afghanistan (UTC+4.5)

<duck and cover> 

[MK14]

I think it would be interesting to see all the states, but really, I think if one were to take a holiday to many of the states they would be rather disappointed. I mean no disrespect to those who call the "flyover" states home and I'm sure there's some nice areas in all of them, but we have vast swaths of land where there is not a lot going on, where the climate is unpleasant much of the year and there isn't much to see. I drove about halfway across Texas one time and part of that I drove hours seeing nothing but flat brown ground with scrubby brush. I stopped for a pee break and didn't even bother to pull over, we just stopped in the middle of the highway and got out and walked around. I could see miles out to the horizon in each direction so an oncoming car would have taken minutes to reach that spot from the time it was visible.

I really wish some of the people flooding into my region would go settle in the more sparse areas because it's fer too crowded here, but everyone wants to live on the coasts.

The UK gets the same thing. I don't know for sure, what the mechanisms are, as to why imigrants to the UK, choose where to live.

But, (my guess is) London is often chosen as a settling place, because that is what everyone has heard of and talks about, as regards the UK.
The reality is most other places are arguably better than London. Because London has got pollution (relatively worse than elsewhere), is somewhat over crowded, has very heavy traffic making it tricky and a pain, to drive there.
The house prices are through the roof, various measures of things, are usually significantly worse than other parts of the UK. E.g. Crime rates, car accident rates, etc.
Hence the cost of living there, is significantly worse than most other parts of the UK.

Yet, lots of people, choose London to live in.
Now, if you are visiting (holidaying) in the UK, and tour London. Fair enough.

If you have an occupation that really needs to be in London, such as politics, TV broadcasting, Stock exchange stuff, film making and many other things. Than again, fair enough.

But I guess, such is life. So people are free to choose, and so many of them choose the same place (unfortunately).

Even hundreds of years ago, London seems to have suffered from over crowding.

[MK14]

It takes time to rebuild industries, but in time I hope the UK, gets there, as needed.

How long did it take the US to tool up for WW II?  I don't know the answer but it must have been pretty darn quick.  True, we were building airplanes and battleships, no super high technology, but still, it didn't take long to set up the factories.

I worked at an aircraft plant in the early '70s and a lot of the machines were owned by the Federal Government.  The company didn't have the funds to buy all the necessary machines during the war so the government provided them.  Twenty five years later we were still using them.

Officially WW II started Sept 1, 1939 and ended Sept 2, 1945 - six years and a day.  The US wasn't involved with the war in the Pacific until Dec 7, 1941 and the war in Europe Dec 11, 1941 when Hitler declared war with the US.

So, what did we create during that 6 year period?  It was pretty amazing!

Don't sell the US short when we decide to do something.

Between about 1940 to (around) 1980 or 1990, America seems to have been very successful.

But after that era, things may not be doing so well.
Part of the issue might be taking on too many wars, putting in unsuitable president(s) and China's increasing success as it gets closer and closer to becoming a very rich superpower, or whatever you want to call it.

It's not clear, if in twenty years time, the US will be back up there at the top, or get over taken by China, India, Europe and maybe other countries or groups of countries.

[floobydust]

The 2007 documentary "Manufactured Landscapes" is absolutely stunning, showing the scale of transformation and manufacturing in china. It's worth hunting down... also found as a paid youtube movie or not.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=manufactured+landscapes
Low rez pictures from it in the TedTalk.

The photographer's belief is it's not sustainable - china is cashing in by sacrificing the environment, working the workers to death in long hours and health problems etc.

The 18km coal stockyard, the 90,000 staff at the shoe factory, the 500m long electric motor plant, the IC disassembly for recycling the metals... it's all a jaw dropper.

[MT]

It takes time to rebuild industries, but in time I hope the UK, gets there, as needed.

How long did it take the US to tool up for WW II?  I don't know the answer but it must have been pretty darn quick.  True, we were building airplanes and battleships, no super high technology, but still, it didn't take long to set up the factories.

I worked at an aircraft plant in the early '70s and a lot of the machines were owned by the Federal Government.  The company didn't have the funds to buy all the necessary machines during the war so the government provided them.  Twenty five years later we were still using them.

Officially WW II started Sept 1, 1939 and ended Sept 2, 1945 - six years and a day.  The US wasn't involved with the war in the Pacific until Dec 7, 1941 and the war in Europe Dec 11, 1941 when Hitler declared war with the US.

So, what did we create during that 6 year period?  It was pretty amazing!

Don't sell the US short when we decide to do something.

No wonder US cars from the 70'ies where all crap, beyond crap! Not to mention the lousy
quality of the standard logic chip series that even forced Feynman to investigate why.

Anyhow, one reason why US could enter the war so quickly was because of all the auto manufacturers, the plants was allready there. One example , when Ford took over the manufacturing of a 2 engine bomber from the original aircraft
manufacturer due to the way autos was assembled did 6 bombers a week compared to the original aircraft manufacturer who did one every month with more people as they showed in an american documentary just recently.

[rstofer]

Between about 1940 to (around) 1980 or 1990, America seems to have been very successful.

But after that era, things may not be doing so well.
Part of the issue might be taking on too many wars, putting in unsuitable president(s) and China's increasing success as it gets closer and closer to becoming a very rich superpower, or whatever you want to call it.

It's not clear, if in twenty years time, the US will be back up there at the top, or get over taken by China, India, Europe and maybe other countries or groups of countries.

Have you looked at numbers?  Say GDP and growth of GDP?.  US is about 50% larger than China and while China represents 20% of world GDP, the US is 30%.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp
https://tradingeconomics.com/china/gdp

The UK's GDP doesn't look good over the last 4 years and represents 4% of the world economy:
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp

I do agree, however, that we should quit spending our country's money on useless wars and defense of other countries.  We have more important things to do with the money right here at home.  A trillion dollars or so would have fixed a lot of bridges and repaved a lot of roads.

[rsjsouza]

Just one detail about IC manufacturing in the US... IIRC the US law requires that state-of-the-art technology nodes cannot be shared outside of the US (or NATO countries). I know that the vast majority of advanced processors and advanced analog/special purpose wafer dies are manufactured in the US or allied countries and are packaged in Asia. Packaging is a dirty process, thus the off-shoring.

I can't speak for other segments of the industry, though.

[MK14]

Have you looked at numbers?  Say GDP and growth of GDP?.  US is about 50% larger than China and while China represents 20% of world GDP, the US is 30%.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp
https://tradingeconomics.com/china/gdp

The UK's GDP doesn't look good over the last 4 years and represents 4% of the world economy:
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp

I do agree, however, that we should quit spending our country's money on useless wars and defense of other countries.  We have more important things to do with the money right here at home.  A trillion dollars or so would have fixed a lot of bridges and repaved a lot of roads.

The UK is a relatively small country, representing a fraction of 1%  (internet says 0.87%) of the worlds population. So capturing >4% GDP, is rather good (relatively speaking).

The US (4.28% of world population) is many times bigger (population and physical size), than the UK. The GDP gets multiplied up as a result.

The thing is, that what I remember of future trend news articles, for 10, 20 or 30 years time. Predict China (and other countries), rising up the charts. With the US lagging behind.

[MK14]

Just one detail about IC manufacturing in the US... IIRC the US law requires that state-of-the-art technology nodes cannot be shared outside of the US (or NATO countries). I know that the vast majority of advanced processors and advanced analog/special purpose wafer dies are manufactured in the US or allied countries and are packaged in Asia. Packaging is a dirty process, thus the off-shoring.

I can't speak for other segments of the industry, though.

While the US was leading, IC development, such laws could be successful.

But Intel is getting great difficulty, going down to 10nm feature size in the US. It has been running VERY late, and they still don't seem to be selling such chips.

Whereas, others have gone down to 7nm, and they are beginning (or soon will be), to be available for purchase. These are (or will be) made in  (I think) Taiwan and South Korea (e.g. TSMC) and maybe other producers in that region.

I.e. AMD's upcoming range of processors and graphics processors. (The 7nm ones), and other companies mobile phone chips (e.g. Arm cpus), and probably a number of other things.

tl;dr
The US (Intel) seem to be losing their manufacturing advantage over the best, ICs.

EDIT:
The rumours and what is going to happen in real life, in the future. Are not necessarily the same.
It is still early days, to know for sure, if the 7nm will be available for lots of products, in large quantities, significantly before 10nm gets released.
It depends on which rumours one believes!

[Cerebus]

Just one detail about IC manufacturing in the US... IIRC the US law requires that state-of-the-art technology nodes cannot be shared outside of the US (or NATO countries). I know that the vast majority of advanced processors and advanced analog/special purpose wafer dies are manufactured in the US or allied countries and are packaged in Asia. Packaging is a dirty process, thus the off-shoring.

I can't speak for other segments of the industry, though.

While the US was leading, IC development, such laws could be successful.

But Intel is getting great difficulty, going down to 10nm feature size in the US. It has been running VERY late, and they still don't seem to be selling such chips.[snip]

The principal things that are controlled (or kept under control if you prefer) are not the commercial run-of-the-mill CMOS processes but the more exotic InP and SiGe processes that are useful in making the front ends of high bandwidth radar and similarly militarily significant equipment, also processes used for sensors (IR imaging etc.). HPAK still runs its own on-shore fab for these processes, I imagine that the military industrial complex companies do too.

I suspect that is is no accident that one of the 7 remaining fabs in the UK is run by Raytheon and one of the others is run by micron making "CMOS sensors".

[MK14]

The principal things that are controlled (or kept under control if you prefer) are not the commercial run-of-the-mill CMOS processes but the more exotic InP and SiGe processes that are useful in making the front ends of high bandwidth radar and similarly militarily significant equipment, also processes used for sensors (IR imaging etc.). HPAK still runs its own on-shore fab for these processes, I imagine that the military industrial complex companies do too.

I suspect that is is no accident that one of the 7 remaining fabs in the UK is run by Raytheon and one of the others is run by micron making "CMOS sensors".

Very good point.
Some people worry about how much of modern fighter jets stuff is manufactured in China.

In theory, none of it.

But there are rumours floating about that because of fake (and probably substandard parts), and because the procurement process is so long and complicated. That some Chinese manufactured components may have crept in.

So some jet fighter, large box of electronics is made up of lots of modules. Those various modules might come from various sources. Then those sub-modules are made of of even smaller modules.
So as you follow the supply chain downwards. It could be that one of the smaller assemblies and/or components e.g. A tiny little sensor component. Is actually made in China.

But my sources of such information, are usually from somewhat unreliable, internet scare-mongering, and rumour producing sites. So what the actual reality is really like, I don't know.
Since military stuff, tends to be kept tight lipped, it is difficult to get reliable sources of information about it.

E.g. There are worries about China's control of rare Earth metals. Which could be important, if serious shooting war(s) break out. (The US has substantial stockpiles of various, "war essential/important" materials, buried in the desert or somewhere, for just such emergencies, I have seen mentioned in various places).

[mtdoc]

Their main strategy is to undersell and take a loss, in order to choke the competition. Government sponsored shipping.

Wait, are we talking about Amazon now?

[Cerebus]

But my sources of such information, are usually from somewhat unreliable, internet scare-mongering, and rumour producing sites. So what the actual reality is really like, I don't know.
Since military stuff, tends to be kept tight lipped, it is difficult to get reliable sources of information about it.

Indeed, it's one of those areas where "Those that know don't say, those that say, don't know". Back in the day I knew enough people in the right places to probably have had, should I have wanted to, a fair picture of the real situation. Nowadays I'm as blissfully ignorant as the rest of the public. What I can say, based on previous insider knowledge and comparing it to what's said publicly is that the Politicians and people senior enough in the Forces/Police/Whatever to be regarded as members of the political class are almost always clueless about the real situation, and the journalists and pundits that talk to them, also equally devoid of clue.

Even were I still in a position to know what's what, I'm sufficient of a patriot that I doubt that I'd do more than make comforting noises in public if all was well or, if all was not well, keep quiet and go and hassle my (useless, careerist, spineless, party-line-towing) local MP.

[rstofer]

The UK is a relatively small country, representing a fraction of 1%  (internet says 0.87%) of the worlds population. So capturing >4% GDP, is rather good (relatively speaking).

The US (4.28% of world population) is many times bigger (population and physical size), than the UK. The GDP gets multiplied up as a result.

The thing is, that what I remember of future trend news articles, for 10, 20 or 30 years time. Predict China (and other countries), rising up the charts. With the US lagging behind.

I have been following BREXIT closely because, in my view, it is the most significant global political event of our times.  I wish the UK all the best and I hope the US can work with the UK to make sure they don't suffer from the withdrawal.

I don't spend a lot of times on predictions.  If they were any indicator of reality, Hillary would be President.  Everybody said she was going to win in a landslide.  Biggest blowout in history.  Until the votes got counted...