Really MerryLander??? Really JJIII?
I don't think your community would welcome a new Printed Circuit Board in your community.
Do YOU? What's the sense of making IPads here if we can't open a PCBoard shop? Using this industry as an example is instructive because it is NOT highly dependent on large workforces. Most of it is automated and operators are in charge of multiple jobs at once. So DESPITE MerryLander's failure to recognize REGULATION as the cause --- It's one of the largest reason this business is GONE.
http://www.ndia.org/Divisions/Divisi...%20ES%20V2.pdf
Quote:
Printed Circuit Boards
As the underpinning of nearly all electronics systems, printed circuit boards (PCBs) are critical technologies for numerous military applications. The PCB industry, including its two main divisions, printed circuit assembly (NAICS 334412) and bare printed circuit board manufacturing (NAICS 334418), have experienced significant losses in its domestic production capacity and position in global PCB markets over the last decade.
The U.S. PCB industry has shrunk an estimated 74 percent since 2000.24 The number of U.S. PCB manufacturers fell from 400 in 2004, only 20 of which made military boards, to 300 by 2009. The industry’s revenues fell dramatically, from $11 billion to $4 billion between 2000-2008.
The U.S. PCB industry once dominated global PCB production, with 42 percent of global revenues in 1984, falling to 30 percent in 1998 and to less than 8 percent in 2008.
By 2005, between forty and fifty percent of North America’s PCB orders had migrated offshore. Between 1997- 2007, the PCB industry’s import penetration rate increased from 24 percent to 35 percent, and the PCB assembly import rate rose from 37 percent to 47 percent.27
Parts and materials suppliers to the PCB industry—including suppliers of laminates, drillbits, imaging materials, specialty chemicals, film and capital equipment—have also largely disappeared from the United States.
While the U.S. PCB industry eroded, the PCB industries in America’s major trade competitors grew, with China the chief beneficiary. By 2003, while Japan’s top ten PCB producers dominated with 29 percent of the global market share, the United States had fallen behind China. By 2007, China/Hong Kong had moved to the top position, accounting for 28 percent of
worldwide PCB production. Today, high-volume, low-cost, PCB suppliers of components used in commercial durable goods (automobiles, appliances, heavy equipment) can provide few defense-specific components that
meet sophisticated DOD requirements. Analysts in the defense electronics community are even skeptical that the DOD’s “trusted” approach to preserve U.S. PCB supplies will be sufficient.
They view it as a stop-gap—like “putting a Band-Aid on a bullet hole.”
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Meanwhile --
http://www.ipc.org/ContentPage.aspx?...ompetitiveness
Quote:
Ensuring a Competitive Regulatory Environment in North America
IPC Suggests Congressional Oversight on Three Burdensome Regulations
On January 7, 2011, IPC sent a letter to the new chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee regarding burdensome regulations in need of Congressional oversight. The letter highlighted three regulations that have or will have a significant either impact on electronics manufacturers: the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) proposed modifications to the Toxic Substances Control Act Inventory Update Reporting rule, the EPA's re-opening of the Definition of Solid Waste rule and the Security and Exchange Commission's proposed regulations on conflict minerals.
The letter was sent in response to Chairman Darrell Issa's (R-CA-49) request for IPC's assistance in identifying existing regulations that have negatively impacted job growth within our industry. Rep. Issa also invited IPC to name proposed regulations, which if finalized, would negatively impact job growth. Our letter to Chairman Issa details three regulations that will impose costly and unnecessary regulatory requirements on U.S. electronics manufacturers and therefore deserve Congressional oversight.
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If you're not wondering what a "conflict mineral" is -- you shouldn't be asserting that regulation is not a problem (MerryLander).
Like I said -- NOT primarily the cost of labor. But the cost of workplace compliance, energy, facilities, taxes, and REGULATION of what can be a very dirty business.
So I'm not suggesting that regulation isn't required in this instance -- Just that we've overdone it with attention to such crap as required reporting on the use of "conflict minerals".