> So, if we do shift manufacturing back, we need to either be cool with shit-tons of pollution, or be searching desperately, now, for solutions to that pollution.

If we want to bring manufacturing back, and we want to continue to with today's low prices, then we need to be cool with pollution.

Dealing with byproducts can definitely be done. It just has costs and those costs have to be passed to the consumer in way way or another.

And that's true regardless of the factory's physical location. It's just a lot easier for Americans to ignore when it's out of their sight.

You're absolutely right – modern supply chains are incredibly complex with lot of upstream dependences that are hard to control. It's not going to be an overnight shift, but I hope it changes the outsourcing-for-lowest cost mentality.

There are other tech innovations on the horizon that I hope will further improve the issue. For example, Canada now has technology that's upending Al manufacturing reducing GHG emissions. There's a demo smelter with this new tech running in Canada. Pretty secretive, and not yet producing at scale, but it's game-changing. I have some knowledge of this speaking to experts in the Al industry. Here's a snippet from an article[0] that talks about it:

Elysis has developed a process that substitutes carbon with inert materials—it won’t say what they are—to make the anode that conducts the electricity causing the chemical reaction. “We use noncarbon materials that do not react, and as a consequence you get the separation of aluminum on the one side and oxygen on the other,” says Christ, who’s spent 36 years working to create carbonless aluminum. “It’s absolutely magic how we do that, but the explanation is very simple, actually.

After successfully developing an emissions-free prototype smelter that produced a small amount of green aluminum used in some Apple laptops in 2019, Elysis built a pilot plant in Saguenay, Quebec, about five hours northeast of Montreal. Rio Tinto and Alcoa don’t allow photos to be taken of the closely guarded factory. Even knowing the measurements of the layout could tip off competitors, says Vincent, who’s now chief executive officer of the joint venture. “You’re the only person on the planet who will see this, other than our board,” Christ said to a Bloomberg writer.

Not a problem that can be solved overnight – we've eroded manufacturing expertise and capacity for various reasons over the years, but I hope culturally and politically, we push ourselves to create new, greener tech and move towards local manufacturing.

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-21/with-a-pu...

> The reason was because of environmental regulations.

It's also because shipping a 100 pound lump of iron from China is too stupidly cheap.

Shipping something of that weight halfway around the globe should not be cheap. That causes a lot of perverse incentives.

At some point, China might actually put in restrictions on pollution as well. With their interest in Africa, I would not be surprised to see China being intersted in moving some of their dirty manufacturing to Africa.

I think the quality issue has more to do with consumers by and large having no money to grant choice within the market for anything except the cheapest available. The GDP growth all goes to the rich, and the dwindling wages go to rent seekers