Well I am getting off the Chinese nipple. I closed Temu, sold my chinese stocks, and am gonna take some broken stuff back to harbour frieght for them to replace. If China wants to be our enemy then it we may see drastic changes in what we buy.

What about your phone?

Will be hard to do. Good luck with it. Even some American Flags are made in China.

At least your nice Carhardt Jack's outfit is made in Bangladesh.

Crack is hard to quit.

I saw an interview where most of the political banners were made there

buy a horse & solely ride it - your vehicles most likely have a lot of Chinese parts
boycott Walmart & the vast majority of retail - tons of China in them
give up your cellphone & computers
get a vintage knife (or make one from an old file)
on & on it goes

It’s literally everything we touch daily. I think Shimano reels are the best made and I’ll be dammed if I didn’t disassemble mine to clean it and it’s stamped Made in China.

If enough states follow DeSantis’ lead and try to legalize overnight shifts for 14 year olds, we’ll catch up on the labor required to take it all back pretty quick.

/s

Yeah........we can't even get 24 and 34 year olds to work. And yes, I know you are being sarcastic.........but I'm not.

This

Yup

Feed them enough Driveby and they'll stay for a day LOL

Yeah I was being tongue in cheek. But I mean I hear people say that but I can think of one trust fund kid I know close to my age that has never had a job. But literally every single person I know has at least one job. Granted, I’m not the most socializing person but I literally can’t think of anyone.

A lot of the low tier places that claim they can’t find anyone.. to be honest I wouldn’t want to work there either, and I’ve had consecutive employment since I was 16. If I got laid off and absolutely had to, to feed my family, sure. But if I could live off savings and sell some non-essentials till I found a better job, I probably would.

I think there are a lot of factors to it. Covid made a lot of people retire early. So there was an upward shift there. We blanket deported a huge workforce, even though I can’t seem to get people to decide if the immigrants were stealing our jobs, or taking our money by welfare. And if they weren’t paying taxes, or working, why ICE forced the IRS to help them, but I digress.

I did see Trump’s plan (or idea, idk if there is any action to it). to allow self deports to come back if their employer vouches for them. I haven’t seen a thread on that made yet, to get an everyone’s opinion.

But yeah I’m with Dave Chappell. If we gotta get our early teens out of school to make iPhones, just for them to cost $4000 a phone, then “leave that shit in China where it belongs.”

I am all about buying "Made in the USA" when I can, but there simply are not that many things made here any more so you end up being things made elsewhere and China has a ton of it that we as a country have imported and have available here.

And, as for legalizing 14 year olds to work overnight, I doubt most parents would be in favor of them doing so, but don't want the gov't regulating how many hours their kids can work or how late they can work. Each kid is different and what their plans are after high school are different. If a kid can work a good number of hours and keep their grades up (if that is the desire of the kid and the parents) then I don't see the problem. I think kids being able to work in high school and start paying for some of their own stuff is a good thing. Kids who have everything handed to them don't seem to have a work ethic as good as those who worked and started paying their own way earlier in life. That has been my observation anyway. Sometimes a kid can't have a job because of their involvement with extracurricular activities and that is fine, too. At least they are not just sitting at home on the couch spending all their time looking at a screen.

I ain’t gonna throw away or even stop buying Chinese. I just feel that we need to help the negotiations along. At some point china may even become an all out enemy that kills Americans, and if that happens I won’t want to support them at all.

Well that Covid virus already killed thousands of Americans and everywhere else across the globe. That should have been viewed as an act of war for every country. China should be paying for all the damage that caused into the trillions of dollars. If everyone wasn’t pissed enough then, why now.

I love how someone suggests ways to cut economic ties and reduce reliance on our #1 enemy and good old conservative country boys rush in to tell you how wrong you are for even trying.

For those who don't realize it, those are the same folk who would call the police on you for not wearing a mask or complying. Mark em. Know em. Don't trust em. They aren't worthy of trust. They'll turn belly up to save themselves and sacrifice you and your entire family if it saved their skin when shit hits the fan. Don't think they're your ally, they absolutely are not.

I support buying in America too when it’s reasonable to do so. Like if a tool to change something on the car costs $20 for Chineseum pot metal part and $30 for an American forged product, hell yeah, buy American.

But if a Chinese cable from mono price costs a $5 and an American cable costs $30, and you truly can’t tell a difference in performance, I’m probably buying the Chinese cable (I say that with a drawer full of Apple OEM cables).

Kind of the same thing when they support local businesses. If my LGS sells a S&W 5.7 for $649 and I can order it $509.. I’m gonna be ordering it. I know it’s not their fault they can’t compete on wholesale margin but I also can’t afford 20% premiums on things just because.

Plus, some of the manufacturing processes for some of this stuff, especially electronics, is just downright nasty and toxic. If China is willing to smog their air and pollute their water to do it, and our air and water stay clean, that’s worth a little bit to me too.

We buy 700 million worth of toilet paper from china a year. Thats pretty pathetic, huh?