Could there come a time when Americans wouldn't be able to afford products made in China?

I wondered that too. What happens of the US has run away inflation and/or the dollar is drastically devaluated against the renminbi (Chinese yuan).
If the rest of the world decides to move from US $ to something else it is possible.

Something big would need to happen first. Something like a pandemic that cuts our GDP in half, negative interest rates, foreign policy that cuts all trade agreements with other countries, loss of respect for our leadership. Oops!

@LuckyGuy I see what you did !

Yes. Soon after Biden is elected US President and he ushers in full blown socialism. Soon to follow that there would likely be hyper inflation and the collapse of the middle class.

If the US is smart and that seems like it will happen, we ought to learn to manufacture in the US again.

China is dominating the global supply of lithium. Lithium is needed for the next gen batteries for electric cars and batteries for electronic devices.
I couldn’t read the link from my concentration issues.

Products have been made in China because the hourly rate for workers there is less than that of Americans. Thus, they can build products cheaper than we can here. But Chinese workers want what Americans want so their hourly wages have increased almost to what Americans make. So now it isn’t worthwhile to have those products made in China, so manufacturing will now come back to the United States. China can charge whatever they like because Americans won’t care anymore.
But China charging more than the market will allow is self-defeating for them. Why manufacture a product that is so expensive nobody wants to buy it?
Chinese wages being the same as in the US is also a defeat for Americans because, no matter who makes those products now, they’re expensive as hell for everybody.

@RedDeerGuy1 A vast amount of lithium is available from South America.

@kritiper I thought that Venezuela is not processing it properly. That they nationalized the mining industry and not producing as much as desired.

Also China was reported from my news to almost cornering the worlds market for other materials.

China has effectively utilized the greed aspects inherent with capitalism to deindustrialize the United States. The thing about this that most of us missed is that the process continues and it’s now China’s turn to watch manufacturing flee to more exploitive lands. Already the cheaper throwaway manufacturing is fleeing China in regimental numbers with the more sophisticated industries in tow. The current trade war serves only to accelerate the process.

@gondwanalon ”Soon after Biden is elected US President and he ushers in full blown socialism.”

Give me a fucking break. Biden is MORE conservative than Trump.

@gorillapaws HA! You crack me up. Oh Trump is such a socialist! Good one!

@gondwanalon “HA! You crack me up. Oh Trump is such a socialist! Good one!”

Trump on healthcare (Biden promised to veto Medicare-for-all).

Trump is giving away Billions to farmers, from $11.5 billion in 2017 to more than $32 billion in 2020. That’s something like a 3x increase in socialized agriculture from where it was under Obama-Biden.

Trump wanted his signature on the stimulus checks, which were a form of socialism, not to mention the trillions of dollars of public funds going to buy the debt of corporations, that’s also Socialism, perhaps the largest act of Socialism that has ever occurred in world history from a dollar amount standpoint.

@gorillapaws These are hard times. Hard enough to mark hard decisions. Attempting to spend our way out seems to be the only way.

As far as Trump’s conservative record:
-Signed the biggest package on tax cuts and reform in history.
-Record number of regulations eliminated.
-Obamacare individual mandate penalty is gone.
-Provided more affordable healthcare options.
-Nominated 2 Supreme Court judges.
-Continues to build a southern boarder wall to help slow the continual flow of human trafficking and illegal drugs.
-Trump is anti abortion.
-Protective of the Second Amendment.