We're all too busy filling out forms to manufacture anything in the West. They don't have to declare their conflict minerals contents (which seem impossible to verify), or even try to measure the PFAS in their products (good luck figuring out the PFAS contents of complex products like electronics).
More like we've spent decades offshoring every step of the manufacturing pipeline - from material processing to manufacturing tooling and all the skills and expertise in between - and now it's reached a state where even if you wanted to spin up manufacturing on the same scale locally, you need those decades again to bring every part of the economy back to support it.
That's true, but the GP still has a point. Manufacturing is easier in countries with less regulation about it. Yet we have to ask ourselves, how do we want to live?
I mean, we have those regulations because nobody wants to live in Lahore, Pakistan.
Are you arguing that USA can no longer build parking lots due to environmental concerns? If so, that would indeed be remarkable since parking lots seem to be the facility that almost every US town has been able to build more than enough of.
