this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2024
647 points (98.9% liked)
Political Memes
5337 readers
2367 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Trump absolutely obliterated profits from manufacturing with the steel tariffs. That's the whole reason that I'm struggling really hard right now. It forced me to order even lower quality steel because as the buyer, you're the one paying the markups. It isn't the affected country. This forced me to really put my limited metallurgical knowledge to the test because I had to ship critical components that wouldn't fail to the best of my ability. I had to adjust everything from tool paths to cutting times because they both affect the integrity of the material. I already had to charge way more for the parts I make because I'm not in India or China making $2/hr. I really hate to say it, but American made steel is just too expensive and I can get it from Japan for maybe 3/4 the price. China is even cheaper with nearly the same quality. And, no, I don't order it directly shipped. There are distributors.
I've been screaming at colleagues for years now that Trump has absolutely no clue about real world manufacturing or how it works. He wants to destroy NAFTA, which would absolutely destroy the supply chain I rely on for non-metallic (mostly glass-filled plastics) materials. I make a fair amount of G-10 and G-11 fiberglass parts for nuclear power - from GE, to Hitachi, WestingHouse, to (oddly) Mitsubishi. Want to talk about how nuclear is expensive already? Yeah, go ahead and erase NAFTA. It would go from improbable and financially impractical to absolutely impossible. Get an order from some local business to make some parts? You have to charge at least an estimate of $70/hour just for labor and machine time. With the tariffs, I've had to bump that to about $90/hour.
However, because the costs for me have gone up so much I've had to go from making money to paying to live. I have the skill, equipment, and knowledge to run a machine shop by myself. That orange fuck set it up that if I didn't already have well-established long term contracts, I'd be in a ditch after selling my dog for a month's worth of food. Trump knowing manufacturing, or how it impacts the manufacturers? Get the fuck out.
Sincerely, A trans woman that has been in manufacturing her whole life.
Source: Being a 20+ year career machinist.