[TheDude]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('OilFinder2', 'I') rest my case.

[copious.abundance]

Still another thing to consider that I just thought of . . .

Most of your essential daily items are made in the US, Canada or Mexico. Your soap and shampoo for your shower in the morning, the food for your breakfast, lunch and dinner, the detergent to clean your clothes, the paper you use in the office during the day. etc. etc., are still overwhelmingly made in the USA (unless you exclusively eat imported Asian noodle soups, in which case I say too bad for you! ).

Most of the stuff we import from Asia is stuff we can easily postpone purchasing decisions on if worst came to worse. If by February there emerge shortages of Made-in-Bangladesh dresses in the Liz Claiborne section in Macys, or if there develop shortages of Made-in-China Nike shoes at the Foot Locker by March, or if it becomes hard to find the latest Made-in-Taiwan Canon digital camera at Best Buy sometime in April . . . life will go on! Really!



Also, with the exception of oil and possibly a few other minor things, most of the dry bulk goods we either have in abundance here or at least in Canada. Much of the paper for your office comes from Canadian and American timber. The coal for our electricity is overwhelmingly produced here. The two nations easily produce enough grain for themselves, and then some. Heck, even bananas might not become a problem (see prior comments on Central American production - this goes for agricultural goods too).

Frankly, if this does become a serious problem, the nation which will probably suffer the most is China, who are far more dependent upon imports of dry goods and commodities than is the US. The most pressing thing we'll have to do without might be Made-in-Pakistan underwear.

[Snowrunner]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('OilFinder2', 'S')till another thing to consider that I just thought of . . .
Most of your essential daily items are made in the US, Canada or Mexico. Your soap and shampoo for your shower in the morning, the food for your breakfast, lunch and dinner, the detergent to clean your clothes, the paper you use in the office during the day. etc. etc., are still overwhelmingly made in the USA (unless you exclusively eat imported Asian noodle soups, in which case I say too bad for you!

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TheDude', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('OilFinder2', 'I') rest my case.

[copious.abundance]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Snowrunner', 'W')hat about the raw materials that go INTO the finished products? "Made in Canada" just means that a certain percentage of the money spent was spent in Canada. I am sure the US has a similar regulation. There may very well be shortages.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Hogan', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Snowrunner', 'W')hat about the raw materials that go INTO the finished products? "Made in Canada" just means that a certain percentage of the money spent was spent in Canada. I am sure the US has a similar regulation.
There may very well be shortages.

[Daniel_Plainview]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Hogan', 'H')ere's another interesting article:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')Now, all the major shipping lines are losing money in that trade, and the more cargo they carry, the more they lose

[copious.abundance]

Oh yeah, one more thing . . .
You know what all these idled ships means? It means less oil consumption, putting further downward pressure on prices.

Sorry guys, you can't have your doom and eat it, too.

[Snowrunner]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('OilFinder2', 'T')he ingredients lists on my toothpaste and deodorant list various chemicals which don't mean much to me. If anyone can prove to me that there is an essential ingredient in toothpaste and deodorant which can only be sourced from Asia or somewhere else overseas, I'll concede we might have shortages of that, too.

[Snowrunner]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Hogan', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Snowrunner', 'W')hat about the raw materials that go INTO the finished products? "Made in Canada" just means that a certain percentage of the money spent was spent in Canada. I am sure the US has a similar regulation.There may very well be shortages.

[oswald622]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('oilfinder2', '3')) According to this article here, written just yesterday, shipping volume on the Asia-US route to fall about 8% this year:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')ontainer shipping lines have said they expect cargo demand on the US-Asia route to fall by as much as eight percent in 2008.

[galacticsurfer]

From my MBA learning way back when:

JIT was invented I guess by Toyota and co. post WWII as they had no chpoice due to shortages of everything. This became later a premanent way tosave money and a competitive advantage over USA. In USA the Big Three, UAW and whoever had a lot of own manufacture of parts (delphi, etc.) and the product cycle was a lot slower so that it did not much matter if goods sat around, replacement parts etc. This gave flexibility but cost money. The discussion about Taleb's critique of modern systems being hyperefficient hits here. The old systems had longer product life cycles and greater redundancies. There was more waste to be sure and the old UAW run big Three were incompetently run in the 60s-70s before the big competitve drive by the JApanese car makers came and ran them against the wall of bankruptcy. The hyper efficient Japanese had learned first hand QM at the hands of the master inventor of this system:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming

QUOTE
JUSE members had studied Shewhart's techniques, and as part of Japan's reconstruction efforts, they sought an expert to teach statistical control. During June–August 1950, Deming trained hundreds of engineers, managers, and scholars in statistical process control (SPC) and concepts of quality. He also conducted at least one session for top management.[10] Deming's message to Japan's chief executives: improving quality will reduce expenses while increasing productivity and market share.[1] Perhaps the best known of these management lectures was delivered at the Mt. Hakone Conference Center in August 1950.

A number of Japanese manufacturers applied his techniques widely and experienced theretofore unheard of levels of quality and productivity. The improved quality combined with the lowered cost created new international demand for Japanese products.

Deming declined to receive royalties from the transcripts of his 1950 lectures, so JUSE's board of directors established the Deming Prize (December 1950) to repay him for his friendship and kindness.[10] The Deming Prize—especially the Deming Application Prize, which is given to companies—has exerted an immeasurable influence directly or indirectly on the development of quality control and quality management in Japan.[11][12]

[edit] Honors

In 1960, the Prime Minister of Japan (Nobusuke Kishi), acting on behalf of Emperor Hirohito, awarded Dr. Deming Japan’s Order of the Sacred Treasure, Second Class.[13] The citation on the medal recognizes Deming's contributions to Japan’s industrial rebirth and its worldwide success. The first section of the meritorious service record describes his work in Japan:[10]
UNQUOTE

So understanding Deming's influence and the effects of his statisitcal QM tachniques on Japan (combinded with forced JIT due to shortages there) explains the hyperefficiencies which took over the USA and the whole western wold imported form Asia in the 80s(when we worshipped Japanese management). This expanded into the search for theprefect management technique in endless books and fads and into acceptance of more "scientific" management techniques as in Deming's work. So profit by scientific management ignored people values and purely experiential relaitonships (think Germany) in favor of abstract mathematical concepts like Deming used. So jobs were shipped offshore and so on as transport costss were cheap and labour was cheap to make JIt a global thing. AS computer communications and flights were easy and cheap and English more and more a global lingua franca and USD a global currency the controls over far flung trade empires were manageable. With fall of communism the picutre was perfect, the End Of History and Neocons wanted to finish the job. Overstretch and overefficient systems have led to Taleb's Black Swan catastrophe. Thank Demings and Macarthur and The Japanese for this one.

Edit: this reminds me of the Marxist concept (Americandream said recently) that capitalism wil collapse when it has gone global. Also similar idea with Dieoff and others. It all seems to come backdown to an overstretched system which experiences decay back down to another level through a black swan. Every Marxist or doomer wants to see it happen but it seems the description is accurate and mathematically correct (bacterial growth,etc.)

[galacticsurfer]

Reading the first two pages of the thread I can only say that this would be perfect for relocalization if globalization collapses. Reestablishment of factories in Europe and North America would occur if the situation continued. Somehow it seems unlikely that a purely technical financially caused artificial price drop would last long enough to completely reverse the globalization trend.

I think a real shortage of fuel causing excessively high prices for contianer ships as was complained about as a cause for the end of globalization just a month or two back would be more likely.

However, the general prediction for PO was that prices would swing wildly and it seems that the entire system (credit, transport, trade) is hitting up against total limits in terms of energy and other resources that produce extremely wild swings in pricing and therefore make any credit for a car, house, ship, mall, container or whatever dangerous to make as the time period one needs to pay something off or manufacture is between several months to several years for any project and the price swings are just crazy on a daily basis so business becomes impossible. Without a controlled/planned economy as in Depletion Protocol or central planning system on a global basis this situation will continue bringing about WWIII. The winner will impose a central planning or will be forced to.

[dohboi]

The percentage of the economy is not as important as the roll the segment plays in the economy. Much of our service-, information- and financial- based economy is essentially each person doing somebody elses laundry.

Actual production of tangible goods has mostly gone off shore.

How many computers are made completely in North America?

What happens to the US economy (and to the US PO forums!) if there are no more replacement computers?

How many shoes are made in the US? What happens when there are no more shoes on the shelves of stores in the US?

Having said that, it does seem to me that eventually this will be self correcting. When there is a big enough demand for new goods, someone will find a way to get it to that market. But the much-vaunted globalization that was going to raise all boats does not seem to be working quite as smoothly as advertised, to say the least.

If not the end of globalization, this is certainly a major hiatus in what was supposed to be a new global order. If its promoters were right about the advantages of globalization, surely the same voices should be expressing some major concern about this interuption.