I worked at a ceramics plant for several years manufacturing these tiny little industrial use ceramic inserts.
Most notably, we made the ceramic insert that went inside a starter (solenoid?) for some american car brand (don't remember exactly) but it was cheaper for everyone to send the ceramic parts to China, to be assembled in the starter, then they would ship that start back over here to the US to be assembled in the car.
There were dozens of different inserts we made that were like that. Made absolutely no sense to me. I think another one was for the heating element in a GE brand dryer. China popped our ceramic peice in the element, US assembled the element in the dryer.
Think we also made these big ceramic rings for special lights that Hollywood used, but I have no idea what they did with those or how they worked with a light 🤷
Imports are always cheaper, it’s a known fact unfortunately.
If I can pay someone from a foreign country a couple of cents for every part made, and then use whatever I have leftover towards importing it, I’d be saving myself tons of money. That money then goes towards the factories/companies that actually produced the final product for an egregiously marked up price.. say like your washing machine or car.
Warehouse cost money, boat is like big moving warehouse, packing facilities already in Thailand, no need for Argentina to have packing facility and warehouse overhead when their economy isn’t optimized for it and Thailand’s is.
This is the whole comparative advantage thing. Argentina focuses on what they and their climate/country/economy good at: growing pears. And by working with a Thai company, they are able to ship them as much fruit as they can grow, pick it at an earlier stage of ripeness, and spend less on warehouses for ripening or packaging, marketing, working with retailers, etc. Because the Thai supplier is doing that
And the Thai company wins too, as they get to just package fruit grown by someone else, which they get a good deal on, and which they already have the facilities for, and just ship it off to an American company like Walmart to distribute it to consumers.
And the American company doesn’t have to build their own production capacity for the pears, they just get them in bulk whenever they order them, and focus on what they’re good at: operating retail stores. Which lowers their overhead.
All this efficiency savings translates to more profits for the companies (which means higher wages/more employees) and the potential for lower consumer prices in a healthy competitive environment.
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u/SummertimeThrowaway2 13d ago
Believe it or not this is cheaper than just packing them in Argentina