America's Manufacturing Resurgence Will Be Powered by These Robots
Posted3 months agoActive3 months ago
wsj.comTechstory
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RoboticsManufacturingAutomation
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Robotics
Manufacturing
Automation
The article discusses how robots are driving America's manufacturing resurgence, with HN commenters generally supporting the idea while raising concerns about job displacement and the need for complementary technologies.
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Oct 10, 2025 at 4:30 PM EDT
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No, automation is not going to save you. Cheap labor, great engineers and energy are the key to manufacturing competitively. The US has none of that. Some EU countries still have the engineers, but labor and energy is prohibitively expensive.
China has cultivated a culture of excellence in engineering, especially in manufacturing, which outclasses everything the US has. The greater productivity gains will happen where the best engineering talent is, China. That China has cost advantages only make an US attempt at competition more ridiculous.
China is already the best in the world at making most things. The idea of overcoming that by just increasing productivity a bit is absurd.
Almost every single consumer product is made in China. Almost no consumer products are made in China.
Mechanical engineering, especially manufacturing, has been totally overshadowed in the US by Software, as it is a low demand skill since no company is manufacturing in the US. China has a workforce of some of the best engineers in the entire world, which continue to drive down prices in all markets.
It is also delusional to think that humans can be replaced by robots, robots are expensive and even right now car manufacturers in Europe, with very high labor costs, can not afford to replace humans with robots.
China's advantage is not that their labor is cheaper. It is that they are outclassing the US in engineering, especially automation, and they have a cheaper labor force.
Outsourcing is attractive, because then you don't need to care about all the environment protection violations and any other exploitations.
Your local customers don't begin to resent you for poisoning their water.