Yep, China is light years ahead of the US in pretty much every way. Clean, safe, technology and infrastructure light years ahead. They are like the Japan of the 80s..
Chinese tech is so strong now that the only hope the us has is to poach top international tech talent , and that has already gone sideways thanks to trump.
The smartest and brightest and most privileged kids in the us want to become private equity bankers or corporate executives who donāt do any of the actual science needed to power America. Itās been this way for awhile but itāll be a lot more pronounced if tech immigration dries up.
Just wait until Chinese robots land, itās going to be something else entirely.
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There are a few areas where China lags behind the US: civil rights, average income, workplace safety, environmental protections, freedom to live where you want, read what you want, believe what you want, freedom to get rich without government scrutiny, freedom to go bankrupt ā¦. And on and on.
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Oh I know. But tech will be the most dominant area for future world power. The us should be leveraging US freedoms and civil rights etc to attract and poach top international talent as we have been doing for the past few decades.
Once we stop attracting top talent or keep sending the message they are no longer wanted, bye bye to our once mighty tech lead.
Nike factory store. Must major metro areas have one. Itās always a needle in a haystack to find the right show size etc, but my last trip got me that one plus the streak fly 2 for 65 ea after the new account signup discount. Other great place to go is goinggoinggone.com. Check out of they have a physical store near you. The pricing can be pretty great there too on some models.
I recently picked up a pair of Xtep 2000km pros. Havenāt put a ton of mileage on them but seem pretty good so far. Iām a little reluctant to experiment too much considering that opportunities to try on and return are essentially nil, but definitely interested, especially at the lower end of the price scale.
Why we shredded our industry to give it to them has to be studied.
Well, most of my wardrobe is green. Because thatās my color. I just is.
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Oh thereās no mystery there. That was the time tariffs should have been imposed but the easy money was too much of a draw for both political parties. And now we have trump doing it way too late but winning political points for at least trying from His party.
Much tangent, but maybe interesting to some.
The USA has long had various the tariffs from 5-30%n(occasionally more) depending on the goods, materials and nation. I know as Iāve been paying them for a couple decades.
Youāll note we penalized imports about $50-60 billion annually before Trump, and it went up nearly double in Trump 1.0, new and improved Trump 2.0 figured out doubling taxes didnāt hurt trade at all and filled government with more money, so he quadrupled them, trade still continued to all time highs, hammering the economy and increasing prices and filling government with even more cash. The presumed affect of returning all the ālucrativeā low margin high volume heavy industrial polluting industries that China specialized in doesnāt seemed to have happened but everything is more expensive.
Itās important to note Trumpās unconstitutional tariff policy was overturned and still being untangled but will cost many hundreds of billions. Of equal importance, but not often reported is the multiple lawsuits for Trumpās actions which clearly violate the WTO to which the US is a signatory. At some point itās likely some retaliatory the tariffs will be authorized there further penalizing the US.
But as an aside to why we will never rival China to the degree they produce so much for us Iāll just illustrate with a simple product my company made here years ago. Injection molding tooling was made in one state, and the injection of parts made in another, packaging came from Mexico, and there was no good option for assembly and packaging so that was done in house. We ended up having a better made product, assembled faster and cheaper, packaged nicer, all from the overseas factory. Everything was better and weāre not employing full time people that inefficiently bounce from assembly to packaging to sweeping the floor and organizing things waiting for the next job. The additional profits went into extending the product line into higher value items and hiring different employees to do different things. Thatās pretty much the story of the massive amount of growth that trade had brought us. And why even if we quadruple taxes on trade, there is no answer in the next 20 years in most cases to just make it here.
Road Trail Run, Believe in the Run are usually reasonable. Run Testers too are quite reliable.
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I pretty much only wear green on Sundays, from beginning of September to the end of December (or longer if lucky)
#GoBirds
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None of these tariffs are high enough or widespread enough to get investment back into the US for varying manufacturing things. As an example, the tariff on Japanese Steel, it was one steel for buildings but not steel used in finished products. So foreign bike manufacturers did not face much pressure.
https://www.npr.org/2026/03/29/nx-s1-5746807/trump-bike-children-competition-tariffs-opposition
Example.
We offloaded blue collar but high skilled jobs to cheaper economies, it created all sorts of random wealth, but now our economy is super vulnerable as it is not insulated from things like War. Thatās why you let oil companies drill. The WTO and NAFTA did horrible things to the economy. I donāt really care about whether or not the US is a signatory to the WTO as other governments violate it all the time.
But the biggest thing today is that whether it is your shoes or your iPhone, China uses essentially slave labor. The Company Towns and Barrracks/Dormitories they have donāt even rival the ones we had in the 1910s, they far surpass them as they donāt have things like Unions protecting the worker.
But this is a discussion for the board that I donāt venture in. Point being our economy s actually fragile.
I disagree about vulnerability. The US economy is probably the least vulnerable major economy. Yes there are some weak areas, like rare earths, but compared to Chinaās vulnerability on food and energy, the US is very self sufficient. We import vast amounts of manufactured goods but there are plenty of willing sellers of these products. If China decided to restrict exports we would be screwed but why would they? The damage to China would be greater than the damage to the US because unemployment and labor unrest scare the Chinese government.
People seem to forget that while the US is a big customer the rest of the world is catching up. There are plenty of other people buying what they are selling and willing to sell what they need.
The short term allure of using trade to control the world is just as fool hardy as the communist theory that they needed to control their neighbors in order to make their failed economic theories work.
I would agree with all of that and more but itās laughable to go quality control in high value manufacturing is an issue thereā¦ā¦.
I have the Li Ning Red Hare Ultra 9 and they are great for a non carbon daily trainer. I prefer them to my Asics Megablast now. They have the right amount of bounce and I can do reps closer to Marathon pace without much issue. Almost remind me the first Pegasus Turbo if you liked that version of ZoomX. I tried the Dynafish Xioananās and the rocker is pretty interesting. Iād say the foam isnāt as exciting as the Adidas Evo SLās, but they are very light for a non carbon trainer. I donāt think either are a ton better than whatās on the market (eg: Asics Super, Novablast or Adidas Evo SL), but if you find them for under $120 USD, they provide a great value.
Maybe I missed it, but are there any brick and mortar shops that carry these or other Chinese shoes? Iām curious to try them on. (DC area ideally)
Not yet but just wait - Steph curry just signed with LiNing for a 400 million 10 year deal that aims to bring curry branded retail stores to the us.
Yeah, I just donāt know whether theyāll carry anything outside of the basketball / streetwear / lifestyle line. Rumor is that it will stay pretty focused to the sub-brand (kinda like a Jordan store experience versus a Nike one).