Can we still manufacture computer parts here in the USA, like they do overseas. and or it is to late for the USA?
Who knows.
Its one of those things where I could see it happening tomorrow just as easily as I could see it never happening at all.
I know crucial and a couple other places still make stuff in the US.
Or at least I keep running into a bunch of employees who seem to be doing something with silicon.
You can do anything anywhere.
The question is not can we manufacture, it's can we compete -- but I believe we could compete, given the innovation we're somewhat famous for.
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The largest manufacturing industries in the US are petroleum, steel, automobiles, aerospace, telecommunications, chemicals, electronics, food processing, consumer goods, lumber, and mining ect ect
In fact we lead the world in most of those most notably airplanes both civilian and military and yes we produce most of the planes for other countries.
In the Iran revolution of 1979 and we stationed the aircraft carrier coral sea there with f4 phantoms while the Iranians had f 14 tomcats which we gave them and trained them how to use. it wasnt long till we upgraded to f 16 falcon which we promptly canceled the shipment to Iran.
In short yes.
How much effort will it require to do so? Probably alot.
Depends on what the government will let the people do and what the people/ big companies want to do.
Gonna play devil's advocate here
Short answer No
tl;dr
1. US has more costs involved with workers and unions can with scheduling
2. Other countries have overall cheaper costs
3. Robots
4. History
In the United States an employer needs to pay the worker at minimum wage, then needs to pay for workman's compensation, health insurance, then taxes. On top of that, if there are unions allowed, there is the potential for organized strikes.
In manufacturing countries the labor is much cheaper because of the difference in currency (USD>manufacturing country), the amount of people willing to work exceeds the amount that don't, and the manufacturer does not need to pay at minimum wage or workman's compensation.
So unless robot assembly is cheaper and faster than the oversees workers then it would be impossible to bring manufacturing back. Furthermore it might be more expensive if bills like EU's robots electronic persons are allowed in the United States
If we look back to Micheal Dell's early 2000s built to configure factories, it costed his company a fortune and eventually the manufacturing was sent oversees.
Even recently, Motorola which was known to have their phones manufacturered in the US moved their factory to oversees.
Taboo person Steve Jobs and Apple
Although he is disliked by the forum, the example is another reason why manufacturing won't come back
Finally Steve Jobs is another example take this article for example which basically explained how easy it was to make a quick adjustment to the manufacturering process.
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Thats all true for making shit like toys tho.
The US produces complex very expensive parts that are hard to powder cast and require hours of machine time and accuracy to micron level. You might not see US made products in stores but industrial stuff that needs to be good all comes from america.
Yes its true they are more expensive you arent really paying for the manufacturing cost you are paying for the life time of the tool. Industrial shit is so expensive for two reasons. One it works every time all the time and the reason why it is so damn expensive is bc it works every time all the time you dont need to replace it unless you need a new feature or you break something. Ever wonder why if you look at machining channels on youtube all their stuff is from the 80's and before. It isnt that the stuff today isnt good its the stuff they have is still good.
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They could manufacture stuff in the United State of America but because commerce is in place well companies want to make money and so your country is not the best place to do it. They have to make sure they do business in Mexico and other countries that allow their citizens to be abused/used by being paid poor wages and often working in poor conditions. Die commerce die.
Fully automated robotics fabrication will bring manufacturing back to the US/AU/NZ and anywhere really. It won't result in increased jobs however....
Obama outsourced his campaign slogan in 2008 to 'Bob the Builder' from the UK.
'YES WE CAN'
As far as I know, there are still a few computer parts manufacturers in USA. For desktop PC computer parts, I only know Mushkin and VisionTek that are from USA. Kingston also has a manufacturing in USA.
Most others are for custom / client-specific "computers" (not really PC desktop parts, but computer none the less)
Anyway I do not know about manufacturing everything but I do think the USA excels in tech and can produce or add a great deal of value to products as it tends to attract expertise from all over the world.
Freedom of innovation and entrepreneurship with a more free flowing capital market tends to make America shine in the landscape of business invention and transformation. In tech terms this also means the number of products coming out of the USA can often be significantly ahead of international markets.
In the western world manufacturing and production of goods in a more industrialized structure has diminished since the 70s we have seen the decline and the transformation of economies from those that produce requiring higher level skills to those that produce nothing much and require low level office and political process. It is sad because by this very decline we are losing our quality and soon if not already the young people will have very few real skills to fall back on because in some cases they have simply had it too easy..
China has become the worlds greatest economic story of the last 25years transforming itself into a manufacturing hub, the rest of the world cannot justify producing anything since they do it so cheap in china but as the population of China gets wealthier the opportunities in low level jobs start to shift as they seek a higher value economy much like what the Western countries including the US have done. With this in mind another economic shift takes place where the cash boom of China will shift to south east asia for manufacturing for 1 key reason, to keep costs down.
Where the focus needs to be for developed economies whether it is USA or Europe or even China soon, needs to be producing higher value things. Perhaps expanding scientific and engineering capacity to the extent that they can be catalysts of transformation globally. We are failing in this respect since the comfort driven lifestyle of the more affluent economies on earth has led to laziness among future generations. Where many youth or millennials seem to want things without effort.
Not unlike any other comfortable country though America will have to set a standard, it will also have to create importance around a different set of role models, those who can apply themselves and are skillful artisans at what they do but also can add high value to whatever they are working on. Sadly the role models that the West seems to have at the moment are shallow, celebrities, mainstream pop idols and all of the wishy washy dreamers that young people follow religiously fill their heads with 0 substance and this leads to people not having genuine willingness to learn that which is useful but instead they tend to desire that which is popular and in most cases not feasible.
Americas current economy depends on a few industries of mention that are value and Military technology is one of those. But I guess rather than making tech that seeks to be problematic to the world in generations to come perhaps those same resources could be pulled together to create genuine opportunity for space exploration or other such endeavors that once again encourage people to invest in higher level skillsets such as Science, engineering etc.