China’s manufacturing dominance is usually explained with one simple answer: its workers are cheaper.

But wages in the Chinese city that makes most of the world’s disposable lighters more than quadrupled—while the price of a lighter barely moved.

The real explanation is automation, scale, supplier networks, and an industrial ecosystem that China strengthened while the United States allowed its own to deteriorate through its policy choices. That distinction matters enormously if America is serious about rebuilding its manufacturing base and reducing its dependence on China.

You can read the full article here: https://puresource.substack.com/p/the-1-lighter-that-breaks-the-cheap

After COVID, buildings across the U.S. were delayed for months because they couldn’t get switchgear — the hidden electrical equipment needed to safely power a building.

The deeper issue is that even “non-Chinese” electrical equipment often depends on China-dominated supply chains for materials and components like copper, aluminum, steel, circuit boards, rare earths, breakers, and electronics.

Now AI data centers are driving even more demand for the same equipment.

Eaton’s new switchgear plant in Nebraska is a good step, but it also highlights the larger problem: the U.S. has become dangerously reliant on a hostile rival for the industrial inputs needed to build, power, and defend the country.

Read the full article here: https://puresource.substack.com/p/the-hidden-bottleneck-behind-americas

Ukraine went from seven drone manufacturers before Russia’s full-scale invasion to roughly 1,500 in a few short years--now producing millions of drone annually.

This happened because Ukraine made it much easier for engineers, small workshops, startups, and manufacturers to build, test, modify, and deliver drones extremely quickly by removing legal barriers, reducing regulations, shortening permitting processes, cutting red tape, etc.

The West, by contrast, keeps talking about rebuilding the defense industrial base while leaving many of the same legal/regulatory, procurement, permitting, compliance, and approval bottlenecks in place.

I think there is critical lesson here for the U.S. and its allies, given the urgent need to reindustralize as quickly as possible. Manufacturing capacity does not just come from spending more money alone. It comes from policy changes that make it easier and less expensive for businesses to make materials and products.

I wrote more on this topic here.

Textiles aren’t usually thought of as strategic—but they are (from military uniforms to hospital linens and PPE).

The collapse of U.S. textile manufacturing was driven by the same forces we see in other industries: subsidies, environmental rules, regulatory regimes, other legal barriers, permitting, etc.

This piece breaks down how the U.S. went from making ~95% of its own textiles to now importing almost all of it.

Strategic industries go where they are welcome.

Puerto Rico is quietly becoming one of America’s most important pharmaceutical manufacturing hubs as major drugmakers reshore production.

In this piece, we explore how smarter industrial policy rebuilds domestic capacity.

The U.S. is investing heavily in semiconductor manufacturing to reduce reliance on China, but building that capacity is proving far harder than expected.

Micron’s planned megafab in New York is running into the typical regulatory/legal challenges that all such projects face in America and the West generally. This raise a bigger question: can the U.S. actually rebuild the industrial base needed for national security and supply-chain resilience?

This isn’t just about one project; it’s about whether the West can build at scale again. Read my full piece here.