Hegseth himself is a bigger threat to the US than China will ever be.

Yes, I think he will (except the ones that fall over to threats, and give in to 47’s demands).

But that’s not the point. It’s possible to have a safe factory staffed by happy, well-paid workers. If it were actually true that manufacturing would return to the US as a result of the tariffs, that manufacturing shouldn’t be considered an inherently bad thing.

Are they trying to say it’s inherently miserable to work in a factory? So let Chinese workers do it instead of Americans?

It shouldn’t be miserable to work in a factory. The overhead pneumatic drill shown towards the end is just like a drill I used when I worked in a factory one summer in Chicago. It was perfectly safe, and the people I worked with were well compensated. (I was not, because I was only 16.)

I think people in China might have this attitude because to them, it usually is unsafe, miserable, and underpaid. There is no proper unionization in China, and no OSHA, so it’s always bad.

In 2019, when I visited a Chinese factory for work, the assembly line was tight enough that all the workers bumped elbows constantly. One person had a very loud compressed air tube to clean off components, and wore hearing protection and safety glasses. The person next to them had no hearing protection. Another person was testing blindingly bright LED shop lights, and wore sunglasses, but the people next to them had no protection. This would have been considered totally unsafe in the US.

I doubt much manufacturing will return to the US, but if it does, then even by 2025 standards it wouldn’t be as bad as in China. With OSHA gutted by the current Republican administration, it’s getting worse, but we still have more worker’s rights than workers in China.

That is not a reasonable living condition. I can’t pretend that it’s normal to live like that. A person deserves way more than 15m^2 of space.

Themselves. It’s a civil war. The military in Burma/Myanmar has been out of control for many decades. Currently, the military controls the country, after overthrowing the 2020 democratically elected government.

People there are probably avoiding conscription not because they fear the danger of war, but because they disagree with the military’s position, and don’t want to have to kill peaceful protesters.