That's the point American industry got out of the television biz long ago because they could not compete economically, consumers wanted a cheaper product. See where this is going?
First off you need to get your facts right, the reason most television manufacturing moved out of the United States was not because they could not compete, far from it. I was the VP/GM for a company who the the primary producer of stamping tools for single sided and double side circuit boards and automation from 1994 to 2000 that was used in the big three TV producers, Thomson Consumer Electronics (RCA, GE, etc.) Philips Consumer Electronics and Zenith Electronics.
First off the biggest hit was that circuit board laminate that was used to make all/most of the circuit boards was fiberglass based. This laminate is produced in mills that are continuous run - 24/7 operations, the main producers were Westinghouse, GE and Glassteel. The biggest single factor for production moving was laminate, which typically constitutes 50 to 65% of the circuit board manufacturing cost.
Now for the longest times there were other laminates, mostly paper based out there but they could not obtain UL approval. This was until a mill in Asia - Pacific rim produced a paper based laminate that succeeded in getting UL approval. Side Note- Fiberglass based laminate is very hard on tooling, it is abrasive so the punches and cutters wear out very fast. This is not a problem with paper based laminate.
So in under a 6 month period Thomson and Philips moved production, to Asia since none of the American laminate mills could convert over fast enough and the Asian mills were already producing. Thomson had union issues that compounded this and they initially outsourced circuit board manufacturing to a Japanese company who had a facility in Mexico.
Philips had just built a new highly automated plant in Tennessee, which only had 1/10th the number of employees their previous manufacturing plant had. The problem was getting this new lower cost laminate into the United States, so it was easier and less costly to move production over to Singapore where they already had plants.
Now remember both Thomson and Philips are not American companies, Thomson was owned by the French government and Philips is a European concern.
Zenith was bought by LG (Lucky Goldstar). Many thought it was to get their tube plant, but the real reason was to buy the hotel & hospital market, which is one of the largest markets out there. Now LG did come in and tour our facility and the weird thing was we were told that we were a critical vendor to them and that nothing would change. Of course 60 days later they called and canceled over $2 million worth of stamping tools. Now during their tour one of our die-makers who was Korean spoke to a few of their guys who we were told were managers. My guy told me they were the managers of the die making and CNC tool programming portion of LG's 1,300 die maker/machinist tool shop that ran 24/7. So for their little lie, I will never buy another LG product, since their manipulation caused me to have to lay off over 30 guys.
As to tools being produced in China and bitching about it you guys are missing a big part of the reason for them to move over there, not just for lower manufacturing costs but for logistic reasons. The largest developing countries in the world are China and India, both of whom are growing extremely fast even when compared to the industrial growth in the US after WWII.
Now this growth is going to need tools, so it is cheaper to to produce tools in Asia and sell them in Asia. Realize that even Ford and the other automakers see Asia and the next great big thing.
Throw in from a producer/vendor standpoint, like McMaster-Carr's attitude as not listing brand in their tool descriptions, to them it doesn't matter as long as they provide their customer with a quality product.
TheGrooveking
