The article mentions access to NBR latex being an issue, but doesn’t explain that this is less commonly produced in America because they produces much more shale gas these days which doesn’t result in enough butadiene needed. So the most important supply chain to build the product is mostly coming out of Asian and European crackers. Giving an advantage to the Malaysian factories on top of the other lower costs of business there.
Which makes you wonder why the government thought it was a feasible investment or if they didn’t care and hand waved it with ‘national security’.
Some of my early research (elementary school) suggested that certain glues can form a peelable, skin-like layer. Maybe that could be a promising way forward?
How are these types of awards usually structured? Are they just grants? If so, doesn't that create a perverse incentive to take the money even if you never intend to deliver the result?
Ballpoint pen tips was proxy Li Keqiang used to shame PRC industry to build precision micromachining capabilities (tungsten carbide for high-end munitions etc), TISCO did it in like a year and it upgraded entire PRC metallurgy chain. US struggling to make 100% indigenized gloves 5+ years after covid... is well maybe not something new relative to US industrial decline, but certainly something else. I'm sure US can... but at what cost and all that.
The article states some of the companies successfully made gloves, but customers such as hospitals considered the prices too high, which is why they're looking to the federal government to be the primary customer now.
More like the new "America can't manufacture a grill scrubber" [1].
For those who haven't seen the video, YouTuber Destin Sandlin ("Smarter every day") tried to build a grill scrubber using 100% materials from the US and failed.
Asking this question only a handful of years after a global pandemic...
If the next pandemic is 50% deadly, not being able to make gloves is surely the canary in the coal mine proving we wouldn't be able to make any other PPE.
And no country can rely on another if it's do or die. Other blocs will keep to themselves.
You don't need to optimise for the market. The market is the optimising machine. Get in its way with slow regulators or subsidies or bailouts and you get all the problems.
Looks like most/all manufacturing happens in the SEA/China, so I can see the logic that it could be considered a military risk for it to not be manufactured/possibility to scale manufacturing in America.
Someone already decided US should. The important question is whether 1B should have gotten the job done, and if not... is it matter of throwing good $$$ after bad $$$... or is it just bad sign 1B wasn't enough.
It's all a question of price, based on the article. And not planning how much it takes to start up. In any case it's also not feasible to keep a plant on standby, just in case you need it one day.
In most of the west, technically talented people are fully subjugated to suits so I'm not surprised.
Sometimes, there are brief moments when technical people are given the control they need to deliver... But after a few years, they are again subjugated to MBAs in suits again and the capacity is lost.
I see this constantly nowadays. As a technical person, there are many companies/roles where the constraints set you up for failure from the beginning. I've delivered some very complex projects but I've also worked at jobs on far simpler projects where I knew since day 1 that the project wouldn't pan out due to counter-productive technical constraints being imposed... but you know the company is well positioned in the financial system and that the outcome won't matter; so you take the job anyway. You still get the high pay and the prestige from the brand name. There are many companies like this where people seem to keep failing upwards and stock price always goes up.
Shouldn't free market reward companies that go the other way and where people don't "fail upwards"? It is kind of demoralising to think otherwise, but it seems it is true.
We see it everywhere. Bad companies making bad decisions keep surviving, and actually the vast majority of companies are like this.
One implication is that MBAs in suits that make bad decisions are actually right and their decisions are not bad. The other implication is that there is no free market, no meritocracy and the truth is, game was rigged from the start.
Edit: I should add that most of this is anegdotal evidence and a general feeling I have. It is not a very powerful argument I'm making.
I agree, a free market would work that way... Yet 'fail upwards' and zombie companies seem to be the default. Personally I don't believe that what we have in the west is a free market. I think these days, it's probably less free than the one in China. The market here is completely smothered by regulations.
For example, about a month ago, I saw a video about people farming frogs in China... To collect secretions for medical use. At first I thought WTF. But then they mentioned how much it sells for and I thought "Wow. We have a lot of cane toads here everywhere, it would be a great business to do here." I actually started thinking of doing this... This is really out there for me because I'm a software engineer; but I started seriously considering this. But guess what? I did my research and turns out it's illegal to do it in my country (Australia) because the frog secretions would be considered an illicit substance and you need to go through some expensive process to obtain a license. Yes, you need a license to farm frogs...
A few weeks back, I read news about someone who got arrested for farming cockroaches (as reptile food for zoos)... It's like all the entry-point business opportunities have become illegal.
Every time I heard of a case like this where some really good niche business opportunity is illegal in Australia, I asked my AI if this practice is legal in China and the answer is almost always yes.
The other day, I was watching a documentary about Philippines and I saw a kind of makeshift resort built literally on top of a coral reef. Really amazing looking. They seemed to be getting good reviews and actually making money... This would NEVER be allowed in my country. At best, you could purchase a ship for millions of dollars then apply for expensive licenses, then you'd have limits on how many people you can take at a time, etc... So many constraints and regulations. Such artificially high capital requirements. It would be a worse experience and less profitable; and you'd have to be filthy rich just to get a chance to engage in that highly constrained, mediocre business activity.
But further down it says that the cost was double and factories couldn't get buyers.
These are very different failure modes, and speak to very different solutions.
Which makes you wonder why the government thought it was a feasible investment or if they didn’t care and hand waved it with ‘national security’.
For those who haven't seen the video, YouTuber Destin Sandlin ("Smarter every day") tried to build a grill scrubber using 100% materials from the US and failed.
[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/decline-and-fall-of-the-a...
On the other hand the US is still very good at bombing small, poor countries...
Should the US make medical gloves?
If the next pandemic is 50% deadly, not being able to make gloves is surely the canary in the coal mine proving we wouldn't be able to make any other PPE.
And no country can rely on another if it's do or die. Other blocs will keep to themselves.
Who cares about silly stuff like health emergencies, the climate catastrophe or war. Number must go up!
It's not like you need a metric ton of it to produce a box of gloves.
Sometimes, there are brief moments when technical people are given the control they need to deliver... But after a few years, they are again subjugated to MBAs in suits again and the capacity is lost.
I see this constantly nowadays. As a technical person, there are many companies/roles where the constraints set you up for failure from the beginning. I've delivered some very complex projects but I've also worked at jobs on far simpler projects where I knew since day 1 that the project wouldn't pan out due to counter-productive technical constraints being imposed... but you know the company is well positioned in the financial system and that the outcome won't matter; so you take the job anyway. You still get the high pay and the prestige from the brand name. There are many companies like this where people seem to keep failing upwards and stock price always goes up.
We see it everywhere. Bad companies making bad decisions keep surviving, and actually the vast majority of companies are like this.
One implication is that MBAs in suits that make bad decisions are actually right and their decisions are not bad. The other implication is that there is no free market, no meritocracy and the truth is, game was rigged from the start.
Edit: I should add that most of this is anegdotal evidence and a general feeling I have. It is not a very powerful argument I'm making.
For example, about a month ago, I saw a video about people farming frogs in China... To collect secretions for medical use. At first I thought WTF. But then they mentioned how much it sells for and I thought "Wow. We have a lot of cane toads here everywhere, it would be a great business to do here." I actually started thinking of doing this... This is really out there for me because I'm a software engineer; but I started seriously considering this. But guess what? I did my research and turns out it's illegal to do it in my country (Australia) because the frog secretions would be considered an illicit substance and you need to go through some expensive process to obtain a license. Yes, you need a license to farm frogs...
A few weeks back, I read news about someone who got arrested for farming cockroaches (as reptile food for zoos)... It's like all the entry-point business opportunities have become illegal.
Every time I heard of a case like this where some really good niche business opportunity is illegal in Australia, I asked my AI if this practice is legal in China and the answer is almost always yes.
The other day, I was watching a documentary about Philippines and I saw a kind of makeshift resort built literally on top of a coral reef. Really amazing looking. They seemed to be getting good reviews and actually making money... This would NEVER be allowed in my country. At best, you could purchase a ship for millions of dollars then apply for expensive licenses, then you'd have limits on how many people you can take at a time, etc... So many constraints and regulations. Such artificially high capital requirements. It would be a worse experience and less profitable; and you'd have to be filthy rich just to get a chance to engage in that highly constrained, mediocre business activity.
For 500m i'll make all the gloves you want, we can slap as many X's on the size as you desire/require.
Let me know. Waiting for your call.
I was kind of able to read that on my Android phone, but something on the page made panning really janky so I gave up.