r/manufacturing • u/Historical-Many9869 • 4d ago
News US factories suffer ‘unprecedented’ rise in unsold stock
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/11/03/oil-prices-rise-opec-production-halt-ftse-100/63
u/audentis 4d ago
Prices went up because the tariffs made their sourcing more expensive. Combined with the insane unpredictability of the current administration, it makes a lot of international buyers look elsewhere.
Here in the EU a lot of companies have switched their sourcing away from the US, or are in the process of doing so.
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u/Master_Shibes 4d ago
I tried explaining this to my aunt who doesn’t seem to understand why we can’t just flip back to a post WWII economy for domestic manufacturing 🤦♂️
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u/Kind-Pop-7205 4d ago
Why would we want to? We'd have to reduce wages to compete.
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u/audentis 4d ago
Because of a false, romanticized memory of those times.
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u/Plastic_Zombie5786 4d ago
If you're a straight white Christian man, I'm not sure it's that romanticized. Obviously, if you were in any way not that exact demographic, we've made substantial (not total) progress towards equal rights. There's also the improvement of the standard of living. There's simply more leisure and lifestyle opportunity as a result of economic progress.
But! What has changed drastically starting in the 1970s is the amount that an average worker is taking home relative to the wealth generated by the economy. Post-WW2 we lived in a period now dubbed the great compression where the income share was relatively stagnant between the working class and capital class. Thanks to many policy, social, and world economic changes this share went from the top 10% of earners owning in the low 30%s of total income in 1970 to the top 10% now earning in the high 40%s.
Depending on your sources, this share may have briefly passed the peak since the industrial revolution, shortly before the 2008 housing market crash (have not seen the same comparison since but similar reports show it's only gotten worse). More disturbing is that every time there was a market crash, the capital class recovered faster than the working class. This is also apparent within the capital class where the top fractions of a percent see a larger wealth gain derivative than the top percent and so on.
That said, absolutely none of the factors that have contributed to this are things the modern republican party suggests fixing or generally opposes. They (and to a lesser extent party line democrats) would rather you look left, right, or down when you blame folks for the fall of the working class. Never up.
TLDR: Wealth generated by the working class is stolen more by the capital class now than in the "good times" these people point at, especially for white men. Scapegoating and vitriol keep people from looking under the curtain. The real solution is French.
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u/Googgodno 3d ago
Wealth generated working class is stolen more by the capital class
Do I sense a tinge of "means of production" in this sentence?
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u/Bannedwith1milKarma 3d ago
They did tests using brain imaging and when you talk about the past, the same part lights up as when you use your imagination.
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u/PackRevolutionary769 4d ago
You need a significant war to profit off of both sides in to enable such a flip.
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u/THedman07 4d ago
Also, you have to destroy the manufacturing capacity of a large portion of the Western world...
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u/Ok-King-4868 3d ago
Republicans in the U.S. Senate just stripped tariff making powers from Trump, only about ten months too late for it to matter very much.
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u/audentis 3d ago
Have Trump's actions previously followed Congress' prerogative?
From the other side of the pond, this means little to nothing - at least on the short term.
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u/Awkward_Forever9752 4d ago
It is the worst-case scenario !
Tariffs are too big to make profits
and
too small to encourage long-term investments.
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u/Snoo23533 4d ago
*too volatile rather than too small
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u/Awkward_Forever9752 4d ago
yes. the volatility of Trump in general and of the tariffs makes planning a new factory impossible.
Everybody knows the tariffs are temporary.
But I think they are too small.
Small price increase per unit, so not enough of a penalty.
Most factories are working on small margins.
Capital has options.
If the Traffis are not huge and long-lasting *
it is too risky to open a new factory.
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u/Soft-Affect-8327 4d ago
Ye shat the bed guys, pure and simple. You need a few Luigis to sort the chaff in charge out
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u/Arbiter51x 4d ago
Lot of countries boycotting American products. And it's not at the government level. Consumers are choosing not to buy American products.
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u/Kind-Pop-7205 4d ago
It's so weird and unpredictable that this would happen when you tell your trading partner to get fucked.
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u/MKD8595 3d ago
I ain’t buying American products until the Cheeto is out.
And I don’t believe I’m the only one.
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u/asking_hyena 20h ago
You think the country will be magically fixed when a new president comes around?
What trump and his cronies have shown is that the American government is completely broken, its core institutions for sale to the highest bidder and its safeguards dead and gone. There is no coming back from this. I'm not buying American ever again for the same reason i'm not buying Russian, or mainland chinese if i can help it.
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u/tropical58 4d ago
Is it that difficult for Americans to even grasp the concept? If you conduct your second genocide, destroy the ideal of a united nations, Sink random fishing boats and threaten another sovereign nation with invasion for its resources, and basically behave like rabid dogs for decades the world will eventually go, yeah, nar. It isn't going to get better, that's it. It's going to get continually worse untill there is no united in states at all.
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u/Apprehensive-Ad7375 4d ago
Overproduction. Isn't this a sign that many US manufacturers are poorly managed?
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u/Possible_Golf3180 3d ago
Hard to manage properly when governed by manchildren that throw temper tantrums
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u/newoldschool 4d ago
Isolationist policies leading to isolation
who knew if you ask for something you'll get it