Wondering where your stuff from overseas is? Shipaggedon!

[Manatee Diver]

Perfect example is Seaskin vs DUI. Granted the UK isn’t China...

I personally have concerns about our trade imbalances. So I think Western Europe, and other countries where our trade balance is close to equal is ok. Though that won't fix this issue.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I'd hope that the US as a whole and especially the national security people have learned a very valuable lesson here about the economic security of the US is just as important as any other type of national security parts. Manufacturing almost everything in China and its neighbors is the greatest threat to the national security of the US. China is the greatest threat to the US national security in the medium and long terms.

I blame the corporations for always looking for a one up on their competition which means having stuff made cheaper to increase profits. One guy does it and all of them have to do it or else face extinction. The problem is the government never did anything about unchecked offshoring, why would they? Those same corporations feed their political campaigns.
What they need to do is place some heavy tariffs on imported goods then use that money to give some handsome tax breaks to those willing to manufacture here and use only components made here. Give them cheap loans for financing on manufacturing infrastructure. We can somehow justify spending trillions $$$$$ on Afghanistan with nothing to show for it, but we can’t do this?
How much Chinese junk needs to go into our landfills that breaks or fails as opposed to stuff made here that is still working? 10:1? 20:1?
If they are so worried about climate change why aren’t they more concerned about mass consumption of disposable goods. China has no concern over how much pollution they puke into the atmosphere making all those disposable cheap goods that will all end up in a land fill. All we’re doing is enabling them by continuing to buy all those cheap hairdryers and crappy plastic patio chairs that break six months after you buy them.
I say sink every one of those god damn 70 plus cargo ships in the bay and let’s go do some wreck diving!

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

This is a once in a lifetime event.

We do need to bring more manufacturing back Stateside, but most Americans like cheap. Stuff made here isn’t cheap.

It may seem cheap now but eventually it will be a very expensive lesson learned.

 

[Marie13]

I personally have concerns about our trade imbalances. So I think Western Europe, and other countries where our trade balance is close to equal is ok. Though that won't fix this issue.

I have a COO hierarchy. First Canada, then Europe. Then Asia, but Japan, Korea, Taiwan before China or other Asian counties.

MX is on the very bottom of the list. My dealings with MX day to day on the job have massively soured me on MX, but I’ve never had a good opinion of MX ever. Then there was the fiasco with the AL Fusion inner suits being made in MX and all the leaks. Red headed bastard stepchild of NAFTA, now the USMCA. I refer to it as the USCMA. Instead. I’m half Canadian. Canada will always have precedence over MX.

 

[Jared0425]

We are idling both Canadian plants to get us (Stellantis) more chips. We will be idling Mexico too next week. Our new flagship vehicle has been a disaster for rollout and half our stuff is on those ships!

 

[Aqua-Andy]

I just found this thread and find it fascinating but at the same time scary. I have seen this coming for years. Everything made now is designed to be disposable. I have spoken to many engineers that design the crap we now have to purchase and they all say the same thing, it’s game that all manufacturers play (design the product so that it last just long enough to get it past the end of the warranty period). The other game is to make the products impossible to repair so that your only choice is to purchase a new product. How many of us have a 40 or 50 year old refrigerator at a cabin or in the basemen/garage? We purchased a new Kenmore refrigerator three years ago, the compressor quit less than a month out of warranty. This particular refrigerator and most out there use an LG compressor. For over ten years this LG compressor has been a know problem but LG keeps producing it and manufacturers keep installing it into their products. fortunately (I guess) LG has extended the warranty period on this compressor but it still cost us over $500 in labor to replace it. I did file all the paperwork so that I could get in on the class action lawsuit that applies to these compressors but I’m not expecting to see more than $20 to $30 if anything when it is settled. Apple along with other manufacturers purposefully make it hard to impossible to repair a device once broken. They would rather trash the product and give you a discount on a new one or just have you purchase a new product outright. I remember when American companies used to pride themselves in the fact that their products would last so long that you could hand them down to your grandkids. Maybe we will see those days again? This reminds me of the dive shops that have their instructors wear a “dive instructor uniform” usually just the latest and greatest top-tier items that the shop sells. When I took my first SCUBA class I thought that this was odd as the latest and greatest products usually don’t impress me that much and most products are great in the honeymoon period. Now show me some twenty year old gear that has lived it’s life in chlorine, traveled the world, while being used everyday and stored wet in the the trunk of the instructors vehicle. Show me some dive gear that has been treated this way and is still functional, that would sell me on a product!

 

[BoltSnap]

Now show me some twenty year old gear that has lived it’s life in chlorine, traveled the world, while being used everyday and stored wet in the the trunk of the instructors vehicle. Show me some dive gear that has been treated this way and is still functional, that would sell me on a product!

So you want a dive shop and their staff to wear legacy equipment that is probably way out of date and isn't available for sale anymore and convince you to buy it? That's called flea market or "garage sale."

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

So you want a dive shop and their staff to wear legacy equipment that is probably way out of date and isn't available for sale anymore and convince you to buy it? That's called flea market or "garage sale."

I don’t think that was his point.
It was more along the lines of: build stuff that lasts and stop with the latest greatest that is designed to fail to keep the machine fed. In the case of scuba gear it would be too much liability to make stuff that fails so the alternative to get you to buy new stuff is to tout the ‘latest and greatest’.
The last new regulator I bought new was a Scubapro MK2 back in 2001 and that was for a stage bottle. I still have it and use it all the time.
Scuba gear is one of the things that has held it’s own for many years. You can still get service kits for regs that were made in the late 60’s like Conshelf. Many other companies are the same way. If they decided to be a throw away society with scuba gear then they would make new regs every few years that use different parts and or non replaceable wear parts and stop supporting anything over a few years old. But the silver bullet we have in this is that we would just all buy the brand that continues to support their product over the years and the rest would dry up.
Cars are the other one that I can honestly say have dramatically increased in longevity and quality over the years. I have almost 300K miles on my 2002 Toyota Tacoma with just standard maintenance. The only time I’ll consider getting something new is if something better comes out that makes it worth it. Back in the old days you had to beg for 100K and 10 years out of those great old cars, and the paint was all faded with rust spots. These new cars aren’t even broke in at 100K and the new paints last for decades.

I know a guy who found a 1947 refrigerator at a salvage place and it still works!

 

[BoltSnap]

I don’t think that was his point.
It was more along the lines of: build stuff that lasts and stop with the latest greatest that is designed to fail to keep the machine fed. In the case of scuba gear it would be too much liability to make stuff that fails so the alternative to get you to buy new stuff is to tout the ‘latest and greatest’.
The last new regulator I bought new was a Scubapro MK2 back in 2001 and that was for a stage bottle. I still have it and use it all the time.
Scuba gear is one of the things that has held it’s own for many years. You can still get service kits for regs that were made in the late 60’s like Conshelf. Many other companies are the same way. If they decided to be a throw away society with scuba gear then they would make new regs every few years that use different parts and or non replaceable wear parts and stop supporting anything over a few years old. But the silver bullet we have in this is that we would just all buy the brand that continues to support their product over the years and the rest would dry up.
Cars are the other one that I can honestly say have dramatically increased in longevity and quality over the years. I have almost 300K miles on my 2002 Toyota Tacoma with just standard maintenance. The only time I’ll consider getting something new is if something better comes out that makes it worth it. Back in the old days you had to beg for 100K and 10 years out of those great old cars, and the paint was all faded with rust spots. These new cars aren’t even broke in at 100K and the new paints last for decades.

I know a guy who found a 1947 refrigerator at a salvage place and it still works!

That is his point, wear crappy looking equipment that is very old and out of date and EoS/EoL. His reasoning is invalid and irrelevant to diving. We don't have quality issues with new equipment vs. the old. I don't hear about equipment, regulators for example, that are falling apart or become out of support or difficult to service in our industry. Mixing complaints about other industries here is confusing and gives very wrong impressions and implications of the dive industry. I know that people want to complain just for the sake of complaining but this isn't relevant at all.

P.S. In the US you may have issues getting your home appliances serviced because you are rich and don't want to be bothered, but here where I am now, we can get everything fixed even if we had to scavenge parts for it from the junk yard or aftermarket cheap spare parts. Nothing goes to waste, even if it did, it gets recycled and used for spare parts. My Daewoo washing machine is 20 years old and works. The only time it went down when the "motor" went and the repair man found a replacement for it. This was 4 years ago.

 

[dmaziuk]

Cars are the other one that I can honestly say have dramatically increased in longevity and quality over the years. I have almost 300K miles on my 2002 Toyota Tacoma with just standard maintenance.

And yet

Moore’s law of ever-increasing miniaturization seemingly never reached
the automotive industry. Dozens of chips found in everything from
electronic brake systems to airbag control units tend to rely on
obsolete technology often well over a decade old. These employ
comparatively simple transistors that can be anywhere from 45 nanometers
to as much as 90 nanometers in size, far too large—and too primitive—to
be suitable for today’s smartphones.

When the pandemic hit, replacement demand for big-ticket items like new
cars was pushed back while sales of all kinds of home devices soared.
When the car market roared back months later, chipmakers had already
reallocated their capacity.

Now these processors are in short supply, and chipmakers are telling car
companies to wake up and finally join the 2010s.

Chip makers to carmakers: time to get out of the semiconductor Stone Age