I grew up in a small machine shop.  When I was a kid in the 80's we machined parts for all kinds of stuff.  High end lawn mowers, motor housings, but mainly aircraft.  All that business went offshore by the late 90's except aircraft.    And aircraft is steadily headed offshore to Brazil, China, and Japan.

It's a damn shame.  But what can one guy do?  I was a 4th generation machinist and threw the towel in.

Americans insist on buying cheap stuff instead of good american made stuff.

Yeah, I've been making things in this country professionally my whole life.

I just got another order of one of my favorite things.  An assembly that I make that gets shipped to China.  

I've made tens of thousands of them.  Most of our steel is domestic or western Europe.  I just ran some 316 from Sweden, that was nice stuff.  I have machines built in my state and machines from Japan and Korea.  

We try to avoid China products simply from a quality and service standpoint but it's damn near impossible all the time.

Buy union made ………and prop up organizations that 100% support Dems.

Seems like we are fucked either way.

Since the late '50s and early '60s we've been discouraging kids from getting their hands dirty.  It was a slow process and I was fortunate to have some shop classes.  By high school, there was only wood shop and auto shop.  No machine shop (which is what I wanted).  Now most of the shops aren't around in high school anymore.

As for corporate America, in the Reagan era which is sometimes called the decade of greed American Corporations went from long term planning to short term profits for better golden parachutes for CEOs, managers and directors.  Then when offshore incorporation kicked in, the corporations ceased to be American and they eagerly outsourced production overseas and enabled them to take great profits (because of reduced labor cost and no OSHA/EPA regulations).  Naughty Orange Man tried to steer production back to America but wasn't around long enough to accomplish this.

You didn't buy Serv-Equip from Winona Van Norman did you?

Facts and stuff.

1994 was a bad year.

And to kick the other nut the good american stuff has been cheapened to try and compete so you now can buy admittedly junk but low cost or more expensive made here and still junk.

A lot of the stuff the companies I work for for as long as I can remember call out US rolled steel in the bid packets for the petrochemical industry.

However have done some work for power plants. The HRSG industry - heat recovery steam generators - is now moved to the Phillipines and such. When needed they will buy US rolled steel and ship it to Brownsville, TX and then ship via freighter to the Phillipines. Fabricate there and then ship these large structures back on special ships to be hauled to and installed in the power plants.

Every so often I have to import an alloy of steel from Europe and mainly that is due to availability since we do quick turn around work. It's a lot of paperwork to do it for sometimes a few things that would have fit in the back of a pickup truck. A LOT of the odds and ends stuff that sometimes have to get from Europe in a hurry is because the original item we are replacing was cast and that industry has left the US so they make it out of a steel alloy welded up now.

So much stuff now used in manufacturing that even if you had the ability and money to actually make it in the US you're dependent at least in the start to get those things from Asia or another foreign company. A multi million dollar CNC 5 axis multi head plasma torch beamline made by a subsidary of Lincoln electric is now import to the US from...Canada.

Nope tooling and hand tools, not machine tools.  CCA Racing Products.  I make torque/honing plates and other fixturing for automotive machinists, and a bunch of hand tools for engine assembly.  New website was gonna go live today but hit a snag...

China makes a shit load of stuff, as our costs increase we tend to make lower volumes of higher priced things.

Lots of games get played with import/export regs too.  

It's not cheap to send manufactured goods to China.  Tariffs and then VAT...those fuckers know how to play the game.

Ok when you said engine rebuilding equipment it gave me deja vu because we used to own Serv-Equip and sold it 15+ years ago because even then people just weren't rebuilding engines anymore

If you are blaming unions or greedy companies wanting to maximize profits you are only partially right. If a people are not able to produce necessities locally they will be easier to control when necessary.

The performance automotive aftermarket had its best year ever in 2020 by a long shot.  Components are months out on backorder and all my customers are turning down work.  Some of my high end customers took a hit from NASCAR and NHRA/IHRA class racing not really happening last year but they all had plenty of fill in work.  Many are expanding.  My large quantity (10k plus engines per year)  customers seem to be on cruise control or a little slower due to less driving in commuter type cars last year.

The thing is most shops are moving over to CNC equipment now and there are a handful of companies that got in early.  Rottler and Centroid come to mind immediately.  When the hone can run itself while you set up the next block, or cut some valve seats, or get something on the decking machine, etc. you are worlds ahead of the guys that use all manual equipment.  The smaller the shop, the more pronounced the benefits... so long as the work is coming in the door to make a $5-6k/mo machine payment.

Great book by Rande Somma called, "Leadershit".  Walks through the decline of leadership as corporate execs in the automotive world started rewarding themselves for short term gains, but long term failures.  Very similar to what's happening in DC where the same people are shuffled around.

Yep.   That's what I'm seeing as well.  Those with disposable income, and some without are spending it on toys.   The builders I know are staying busy.   Racing is mostly socially distant

Centroids are garbage. Rottlers are pretty nice.  They are just a VMC with a 4th but they have a lot of specialization on the software side that makes banging out block work pretty easy.

One of the shops in my world has the Sunnen hone that can measure the tight spots in a bore and it'll short stroke until it evens things out then put the finish hone on the whole cylinder.  Pretty neat, and the blocks done with that machine keep excellent compression/leak down.

They had lots of help from greedy management.

 I’ve always said in multiple threads that you have to pick and chose your battles.  My thought  is winning enough small ones will make a difference.
Avoiding China as a whole is currently impossible. It is however something that can be done way more that most realistically believe.   Also buying only American isn’t the goal even though it would be nice to do so when possible.  
My frustration lies in the purchase of items easily avoided.  Even more so when I see postings of “ clones”.  I guess calling it a clone vs counterfeit makes people feel better.  

 The “your posting on a Chinese device” is used almost exclusively when these threads creep up.   I assure everyone that if China were only making our phones we would be doing much better than what we are.   The guys that think they are just saving a buck are going to be the final nail in the coffin. That doesn’t mean they are bad people. I just think they are in denial or feel it’s of no use trying  
We become addicted to cheap labor plain and simple. We’ve enjoyed it for so long but now the dollar has been devalued and the ride is coming to an end.
From my perspective my father died fighting communism from medical complications of Vietnam.  All the lives that have been sacrificed for this country and we pay it back only in disrespect.

  There’s no point in arguing with a lot of people on this website though. They would much rather enjoy dissecting the issues and the points of hypocrisy to ridicule. They fully understand the big picture of fighting the battle you can win but it’s no fun to agree with someone.  

I remember when we gave them a gift of canned sunshine -- twice.

Yeah, when I don't buy American I try to buy any other country than China.

I agree man. Do I think if everyone on ARFCOM stopped buying anything Chinese made right now and forever, would it even matter? Well, no. That's not why you do it. It's the moral principle. If you have no moral principle then you're a worthless walking husk.

There’s a market for good quality
Chris Reeve knives sells like wildfire.  There are a lot of brands like that. The big box stores have really hurt the distribution for quality though. Look at Cabela’s the last of anything decent they had bass pro has pretty much put a halt to .
The Business MBA has a lot of blood on their hands. How many great brands have been ruined like Remington and Gerber.  Taking out gigantic loans lining your pockets then going bankrupt seems to be a solid business plan for that crowd.

I’m not disagreeing with you but I know quite a few union members who are definitely not Democrats. For that matter they don’t care for the union but you’re either a part of it or you’re not if you want to work at those establishments.
While it’s tragic money is spent by the union itself there’s a lot of money that goes to members who have conservative values.
  I’m willing to bet we have a lot of conservative UAW and Teamsters on this board.

Yeah they already have all the bore centers and all that programmed in for most engine families.  VERY simple for guys just getting into CNC.  Rottler and Sunnen both have hones that do that; it is crazy to watch the cylindricity readout change on the screen in real time.  Centroid also has a lot going on for cylinder head porting machines.  I'd rather have a Haas (and I will never buy a Haas) than a Centroid but for specialty work like that there isn't much else in the market.

What are REALLY cool are the valve seat machines that cut proper elliptical throats/transitions.  Single point cutters that are oscillating instead of swinging in a circle.  They can make a perfect transition.

Good to know, it's very hard to find stainless steel stuff that isn't made in China.