Cheap LABOR force is the key to it all now, Look at even the Euro major manufactures where they have gone to assemble and make product........wherever the world's cheapest labor force is.

Competition drives manufactures to always seek ways to supply products cheaper.
Customers are attracted to cheaper goods.

If you enact policies that change those two driving forces, you can affect the market.


How do they make a profit?
- Because we buy their products.

Why do we buy their products?
- Because they are cheaper than American made.

Why do we buy cheaper products? Are they not a much lesser quality?
- This question has multifaceted, complicated answers. Ask a group of different people and you'll probably get a variety of answers.

- Because our real wages have not kept up with the costs of living in America.
- Because the incentive to Buy American isn't as strong as the incentive to save money and buy more Chinese crap.
- Because corporate America maximizes their shareholder value over the value of offering employees a living wage.
- Because shareholders demand corporations make profits on their investments instead of demanding a corporation pays a wage that offers a quality of life for American employees.
.. and on and on..

However, the trend and market impact of buyers switching to the cheaper goods is nothing new -
.. it happens within our own borders: Once US industrialization took hold from the mid-1800s, local manufacturing of consumer goods like furniture, textiles, clothes, were out-competed by large manufactures and sellers like Sears, Westinghouse, GE, etc. because they were cheaper. Think of that example on a global scale. Instead of small manufacturing being replaced by a factory in a different state, it is a large US manufacturer being replaced by a giant plant in China. But first - remember what happened after WW2? Japan was rebuilt with US funding, and their manufacturers and engineers hit the ground running, exporting cheaper consumer goods to the Good ol' US of A. You can look up newspaper articles of Americans protesting the avalanche of Made in Japan products of the modern age; Radios, TVs', Stereos, and on to cars of course. Japan grew a large middle class with more affluence, more education, demanding higher wages, and their manufacturing sector moved up to upscale goods. That left the bottom of the consumer product market to a less-costly, lower-wage newcomer like China. China was a closed society under Mao, but have opened to the West for trade and revenue purposes.

As someone mentioned above, China is already seeing wage increases and an emerging middle-class, especially in the tech industries and cosmopolitan areas like Shanghai.

Must we fear China's economic and manufacturing power?
- I suggest the answer is yes and no. China has been a source of cheap knock-off goods for a very long time. There was a scandalous incident where the Chinese got hold of the latest fashion in silk dresses from a Spanish source. The Chinese made a load of cheap silk knock-offs and sold them to Spanish suppliers who no longer bought them from Spanish dress-makers. Spain had to enact import restrictions to save their domestic dress makers.

That happened in the late 1400s.

We should not fear the Chinese because China is STILL copying Western products and technologies, over 500 years later.
We should fear Chinese industrial espionage and theft of intellectual property.

Enough said for now, it's time to take my son to practice,
Be good and Buy American,
- Art

You don’t have to bet on that. China sets the exchange rate below what a free market would and that’s what you have to play by. Artificially devalued against the dollar.

If they made 25cents total on that sale they'd be happy, being so penny-pitching minded.

Man everytime I step in this forum it's like going back 5-10 years ago. China is done folks, it's been done for a few years now, if you're in the know, you'd know that companies have been pulling their manufacturing and moving to cheaper markets like Vietnam etc (as was mentioned earlier in this thread). And that was before all the supply chain issues these past few years, even more are pulling manufacturing back here. China hasn't been super cheap like it has been for at least 4-5 years now, add COVID, supply chain issues, world politics turning against them and a currently collapsing financial market due to the largest housing bubble the world has ever seen popping and soon you be seeing alot less of "made in China".

Why are you looking on ebay is the question? They should change those ebay commercials to "Ebay motors, Everything that's made in china!"

They are a communist country. The state own all aspects of production. They can undercut pricing in some areas and make it up with volume in other areas to ensure they become a globally preferred supplier. Once they corner a market, prices will rise.

as much as i really hate to say this, the last swap meet i went to, there was this guy that was selling used tools. [of course there was. ]
while browsing through his collection, he had some snap-on ratchet box wrenches, as well as some stanley [made in china] versions.
both seemed to be very gently used, and i was astonished at how much smoother the stanley mechanisms felt, compared to the snap-on ones.
the stanley wrenches seemed to also have a closer [shorter ?] degree of movement between teeth.
the bodies of the stanley wrenches were more comfortable in my hands, as well as being polished more than the snap-on wrenches.
as to the long term use between the two brands, i don't have a clue. however, at my age, i wouldn't be afraid to use the stanley's, as i don't wrench for a living.
this is just my observation of a certain comparison between like items.
your mileage will vary.

Why in the past 30 years have many items been sold at hard to understand prices?

Well one reason this has happened in the USA, Canada and Australia is
“wise, long view, anticommunist”
family business wealth planning.

A family owning a manufacturing industry in an iffy country will pick trusted family members and send them to Canada, Australia, and to an extent USA and Europe.
The family members will get overseas citizenship and set up a “wholesale warehouse distribution” type company.
The iffy contry company will ship them product “priced to sell quickly” to create overseas profit.
This is a type of “international money transfer” to get wealth out of a country where “rule of constitutional law” hardly exists.
If this unusual “transfer fee” amounts to 10% to 30% of item manufacturing cost, the family in the unsafe country may still consider it “good investment”.

The overseas family members usually are instructed to invest in real estate, gold - but also to make donations to influential politicians who can help with Visas, etc.

If your family still had vivid memories of
“The Great Leap Forward”
or teenage Red Guards throwing people to their deaths off the tops of building,
or what happened to the Kulaks,
you would understand getting around “Capital Export Control Laws” to create safe havens overseas.

Lose some money on paper,
save lives in the real world.

Because sometimes I really have no choice. Time, convenience, selection.