this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2024
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I feel I need to point out that there have been those who for years have been crowing about the imminent collapse of the US, how they're helpless, powerless.
How there's no hope of re-shoring, how it's all boondoggle with all the profits pocketed but seeing this along with some news on Intel's progress on a US fab has left a need in me to push back on that.
There are frankly some people here who are optimistic to the point of being misleading about how things are going to go.
The US is still incredibly strong. They still have incredible assets, decent universities, they can attract talent from Europe and many other parts of the world and they can build these facilities.
Let's not forget the Americans were the first to develop this field of technology. It was exported to Asia for cost cutting but the knowledge was never burned and the key chip-making tech of perhaps the rest of this decade is in western controlled hands in the Netherlands.
I want to point out this is a very real re-shoring achievement. And how it means even with inefficiencies compared to production in reactionary occupied Chinese Taiwan the US will hardly suffer their ability to make electronics imploding should they start something over Taiwan and blow up the factories or have them denied use of them through extended PLAN naval blockade.
Frankly I feel the US still has decades of life in it left not as a uni-polar hegemon (I believe the Ukraine situation has been the start of that, the end of their unipolarity) but as a great power, as the perhaps dominant power with advantages as it was vs the Soviet Union despite the many proud achievements.
This is not exactly news any of us want to hear but I think it's important to swallow and understand. What broke the spirits and brains of so many comrades in the 90s was the fall of the USSR and the loss of hope. I believe it is ultimately counter-productive and dangerous to rigidly insist all is going great and that our victory is very close at hand with all these very specific predictions like the US being helpless about this or that or how they can't reshore this or that when practice is bearing out they can. Because when you do that, many comrades when it doesn't come to pass become dispirited because they were told to be ready for a 100m dash race when in reality the race is a marathon spanning 4000m and they must pace themselves accordingly.
Now obviously some of this has a cost but the contradictions aren't going to really hit home at crushing levels that might overcome all the propaganda I feel for some decades yet in the US even in a situation of extensive decoupling from China and enforcement of cold war era bloc politics including blockades and sanctions. I just think the US has a lot of reserves of strength to draw on and that they're beginning to fortify their position and prepare to hammer China, hence the project is going to take longer and most likely though conditions in the imperial core will get worse they will not get revolutionary I fear in this decade and maybe not even in next.
A couple of things come to mind with this. Firstly, this reshoring has required a colossal subvention by the state. The money printer can currently go brr all day long, but if every reshoring that was needed required such intervention then this would not be feasible, especially considering the balancing act that's currently needed to counter inflation. Dedollarisation that's continuing apace further threatens this model. Already we have Trump recently threatening states that plan to trade in non-dollar currencies.
The reason for the deindustrialisation in the first place has not gone away. The inevitable march towards the export of finance capital being of primary importance to the imperialist state will continue. This seems to be a panicky flagship example. Root causes have not been addressed, and won't be.
But at the same time I do take your point that we're probably overstating the situation. I hope not by much.