The Domestic Life Raft
Buying boards and electronic components from China has become less popular and more difficult. In fact, there are not many American companies bragging or even whispering about buying these necessary goods from there. One thing that came to light during COVID was our unsteady and insecure dependency on China for our most basic and critical products.
Combining the Asian supply chain disruptions and the war in Ukraine has done nothing but affirm that we need to create some sort of solid supply network based on our own domestic capabilities.
In short, we are going to have to rely on ourselves to survive in this dynamic global environment. I spoke with someone today who claimed that at least we were safe and self-contained when it came to our defense, aerospace, and security industries. I told him, “I beg to differ… I greatly beg to differ.”
As we sleep at night thinking that our national security is based on American suppliers, some of our customers, those very defense, aerospace and security manufacturers, are trying to convince the government that they need to be permitted to go outside the U.S. for some of their components, from semiconductors to PCBs, since they no longer feel that our own domestic supply web can handle and meet their needs.
This leads me to call on our government to deny these requests and urge them to start buying American, even if they must invest in their critical suppliers by paying a bit more. Hopefully our own government (always ready to grant money to these big guys) will make sure that some of these funds are earmarked down to our level as well.
It is well known that the Chinese government committed to investing into its own industries to assist them towards gaining more market share. What is stopping our government from doing the same?
How many more crises will it take for our own government to start supporting us? How much deeper will our own ships have to sink before our own government starts investing and building our own life rafts?