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One sounds incapable from a skill perspective, the other is incapable from a market perspective. I’ll take the later over the former any day.
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Agree. The problem is over extended lengths of time the people with the skills to make these things—or make tools that make them—will leave the workforce.

That's how this goes from being a market issue to a skill issue.

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The later form was part of the design from the beginning: relying on imports for something this critical in times of an epidemic was a supply chain risk. It was never intended to compete in terms of pricing.

It baffles me that this wasn’t made more explicit? That seems to be the root cause of the failure.

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Once the epidemic was over, stakeholders forgot about the original motives.
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Also, the stakeholders decided the epidemic was a hoax in the first place.
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Good thing the country isn't run by shareholders.

Note that a federal jobs program has something like 60-80% support by voters across all political spectrums in the USA.

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If the price is too high you aren’t skilled enough to make them cheaper
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Over time, the latter becomes the former.
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Only for a time until the market conditions improve. Humans are incredibly talented and we have a knack for picking up skills.
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I wish it were so. It's not.

For an object-level example, look at the difficulties the Russians had reconstituting their industrial base in the post-apocalyptic wasteland they found themselves after the 90s. It took them a decade to figure out how to restart production of the Tu-160M bomber, and they had all the original blueprints! Likewise, for a while, we forgot how to make this "FOGBANK" substance that's somehow important for nuclear weapons.

It's all too easy to forget how to do something if you stop doing it for a while.

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Exactly, the article also mentions "Only about 1% of those used in the US are made domestically".

It's already being done so it seems more a cost related issue than lack of knowledge.

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That might have been a bargain if you could have done it during peak Covid. Having the capability to make them is worth a lot in resilience.
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Who’s paying to bring online a factory that sites idle just in case? Are you also paying workers to sit there idle?
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Well I wouldn't pay for it to be idle; if you want to ensure you have the ability to do it, then you buy some proportion of it's potential output at their increased costs; but while that's happening you work on all the reasons it's more expensive.
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The logical thing is that the government buys them continually at the higher price which justifies the existence of the factory with the requirement that it is made here and if this is not sufficient motivation you make buying something more buying something profitable contingent
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Or stockpile a two year supply. You can get a lot with a billion dollars.
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These things expire you know, for latex gloves it's only 3 years.
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The US already has their Strategic National Stockpile for medicines.

Shorter expirations are managed by constantly selling the old to the domestic industry and purchasing new, like China does for grain and frozen meat while simultaneously being able to keep the market more stable by selling high and buying low. Switzerland has a lot of stockpiles, even including coffee[0], which the companies also go through FIFO.

0: "The 15 big Swiss coffee retailers, roasters and importers, such as Nestlé, are required by law to store heaps of raw coffee. Together, these mandated coffee reserves amount to about 15,000 tonnes—enough for three months’ consumption. The government finances the storage costs through a levy on imports of coffee. All 15 companies are in favour of maintaining the coffee reserve—as long as they are paid for it." Economist 2019

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To be clear, I think a plan like that makes a ton of sense, because the only costs you have are the ongoing storage and admin costs, and in the grand scheme of things a big warehouse to store a 6 month rotating supply of PPE would have huge potential benefit and would also be a rounding error compared to things like the Iran war. I was just objecting to the idea that you buy "a billion dollars" worth of gloves because that's not a sensible or sane solution.
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You could rotate the inventory. Normally companies try to minimize inventory, but someone could pay them to keep six month’s or a year’s supply as a buffer.
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It depends on the rationale. If the intent is self-reliance in the event of a trade war (or worse) with China, then even a year's buffer isn't enough to bootstrap home manufacturing from scratch.

It needs to be in-service and available before any serious conflict.

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Stockpiles of masks and gloves where maintained in Canada, and I believe the US after SARS.

But a year before COVID, these warehouses were shut down, as the stockpiles were old, and needed a refresh, and politicians didnt see the need to spend tens of millions on new stockpiles.

The has happened several times over the last 100 years.

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Republicans didn't see the need to be precise
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Seems the decision to deprioritize n95s was done by the Obama administration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_National_Stockpile
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