When it shifted a Southern California factory to making medical masks this year, QYK Brands had to import the fabric-cutting machines from China.Credit...Bryan Denton for The New York Times
New York Times: China Dominates Medical Supplies, In This Outbreak And In The Next
Government support and protectionism have built a low-cost industry making masks, testing kits and other health gear. Other countries will find it tough to compete.
BEIJING — Alarmed at China’s stranglehold over supplies of masks, gowns, test kits and other front-line weapons for batting the coronavirus, countries around the world have set up their own factories to cope with this pandemic and outbreaks of the future.
When the outbreak subsides, those factories may struggle to survive. China has laid the groundwork to dominate the market for protective and medical supplies for years to come.
Factory owners get cheap land, courtesy of the Chinese government. Loans and subsidies are plentiful. Chinese hospitals are often told to buy locally, giving China’s suppliers a vast and captive market.
Once vaccines emerge, demand will plummet. Factories will close. But Chinese companies are likely to have the lowest costs by far and be best positioned for the next global outbreak.
“The Chinese have been successful weaving global personal protection equipment dominance with supply-chain command and control,” said Omar Allam, a former Canadian trade official trying to establish production of in-demand N95 medical respirators in his country.
China’s grip on the market is a testament to its drive to dominate important cogs in the global industrial machine.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: The only way that countries can break hina's dominance in the production and trade of PPEs is to put up tariffs on Chinese medical goods, and provide a safe and profitable market for private manufacturers to step in and take their place. Otherwise we will be back to square one in the next pandemic.
That picture right there.
ReplyDeleteWe have too many people getting degrees in English, fine lit, or some such bullshit and not enough in textiles.
English and lit. degrees are good degrees for a limited number of people, but they are over represented given the current demand and situation.
College should be a much cheaper and a 3 year program. People start making money earlier with less of no debt. They make that down payment sooner, yada, yada, yada, ... then they reach the next level in Maslow's hierarchy. That is when those underemployed English majors set the hook and make a killing.
ReplyDeleteThe downside of the once much vaunted WTO idea. Often imported goods, once made in country, less jobs at home.
The old man has habit of playing devil's advocate. So I was extolling the benefits of NAFTA and stuff. I believed the Greenspan line, the knowledge economy and all that.
ReplyDeleteSo the old man asks me about Frank. Frank spent 15 years in the pen. Frank cannot work by himself. Bossman say Frank works just fine if you pair him up with someone on the assembly line. Then he works very well at a steady pace. Frank was a nice guy. I figured him for a lettered athlete in high school with good prospects given the right guidance, but he must have fallen in with the wrong crowd. So the old man asked me what Frank would do if we shipped off all the manual labor jobs like assembly line.
Old man wins a lot of arguments.