an interesting comment

INTERESTING COMMENT AND OTHER INTERESTING THINGS

A fellow named Zack commented on my U TUBE web site how much he enjoyed the ‘Tour of the Factory” video. However, he also commented twice that I was not the only sleeping bag maker in the country.

I beg to disagree. If you make a sleeping bag as I do its purpose is to allow you the occupant of the bag to sleep whilst in the bag at the temperature rating applied to the bag. Which my bags do.

All other companies that make what they call sleeping bags whether in the USA or elsewhere in the world make products that I call “no sleep sleeping bags” which I have stated many times in the past.

Maybe Zack has not read my articles about the subject.

I keep getting emails from companies in China trying to sell me face masks, hospital gowns and an array of other medical products. I know that I am not the only company receiving these emails.

If it is true and I have no idea if it is or not that the coronavirus was purposely let out of China that is ironic that now they want to supply us with the medical products.

Because of the virus American companies that buy textile products from Chinese factories are not taking in what they ordered because all of the retail stores they sell to are closed. So, the Chinese have to try and sell what they can make that could be sent to the USA that is exempt from the 25 percent tariff. Medical products!

Some think the tariff business was a catalyst to allow the virus to run rampart around the world. It only worked against their benefit.

We in the USA at one time had what I call a “built in economy”, which means we were making all of what we needed here in the USA. As China has grown economically, they have not developed an internal economy as we had. If they had developed one when the economy of the USA started to slow their factories would have adjusted to the lesser sales that were coming from the USA as well as European countries.

At this point I want to make it clear that I am specifically referring to the textile industry, although it may have been happening with other industries as well.

For the past four years I have been reading in the online publications I receive daily about more and more retailers closing, I have also read about the large chains like Dicks, REI, L.L. Bean etc. expanding, but they could not replace the slow sales they were experiencing at their existing locations. So, they rent space and open up another store believing that they will make up the lack of sales in the existing locations except I believe the sales they get at the new locations probably weren’t enough to cover the costs. I know this to be true with the local REI store in Grand Junction. For about 5 years they were in a prime location in about 30,000 plus square feet. When the lease was up for renewal, they moved to a space half the size in a location that was in my opinion not very desirable.

Dicks has chosen not to pay the rents based upon a law that says if the reason you can’t pay the rent is beyond your control you don’t have too. I think the words are and I do not know if I am spelling it correctly is “MORCHEMA JURES”.

I suppose all of the chain stores in the country are invoking the same reason for not paying their rents. Actually, I do not blame them as it is a legal cause of action.

However, I believe these stores were reducing their purchases based upon their unsold inventories. So, the incorporating of higher tariffs was not going to be a factor if the coronavirus did not occur. Imports would have been down anyway since these stores had deep unsold inventories.

It is at this point it would have been in the Chinese best interest to have developed an internal economy. Considering that they have a population of 1.2 billion people they wouldn’t need the rest of the world to prosper. But they were relying on the sales of product to the capitalist world. The problem with the capitalist world at this time has to do with too much government interference.

I also read that Vietnam is the world’s largest producer of athletic work out clothing. The Vietnamese are sitting on a vast store of produced product for USA companies that obviously cannot be shipped here and the companies that ordered the merchandise are not paying for it. The retail stores are not open that sell these products.

I also read that the factories located in Bangladesh have laid off one million of the sewing operators there of a pool of 3.5 million.

Unfortunately, things will not get better in these Asian countries when this coronavirus situation ends. We and the rest of the capitalist world will have to start building here in the USA production to serve the USA population first.

Some compare the present situation of rebuilding as we did after WW11, but this is different. I remember growing up from the age of 5 seeing my uncles returning from Europe and working. My father was in a security position here loading munitions going to Europe and after the war he had a job building walls on cargo ships separating different products. Of course, today everything is containerized. All of my friend’s fathers were working as well. I never saw a moment’s downturn. That is not going to happen now because after WW11 there was a shortage of raw materials and finished product and a ready work force and today we have a shortage of materials that are not available in the USA as there was material available with a work force ready to supply it. We had factories ready to receive these materials to fabricate product.

We had factories that were changed over from war production to civilian production. Today we do not have factories that can be converted because they do not exist.

The other thing I am not sure of is if we have the people willing to step to the plate and do the work?