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Businesses China The Almighty Buck United States Hardware

PC Case Maker CaseLabs Closes Permanently (pcgamer.com) 401

Posted by BeauHD from the rest-in-peace dept.
U.S.-based PC case manufacturer, CaseLabs, announced on social media that it is "closing permanently" and will not be able to fill all current orders. "We have been forced into bankruptcy and liquidation," CaseLabs said in a statement. "The tariffs have played a major role raising prices by almost 80 percent (partly due to associated shortages), which cut deeply into our margins. The default of a large account added greatly to the problem... We reached out for a possible deal that would allow us to continue on and persevere through these difficult times, but in the end, it didn't happen." PC Gamer reports: CaseLabs is likely referring to the growing number of tariffs being enforced on Chinese imports by the United States government. China and the US are currently engaged in a trade war, causing many U.S. companies to lose money, lay off employees, or close entirely. CaseLabs went on to say that it won't be able to fill the backlog of case orders, but other parts will most likely ship to customers. "We are so incredibly sorry this is happening. Our user community has been very devoted to us and it's awful to think that we have let any of you down."
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PC Case Maker CaseLabs Closes Permanently More

PC Case Maker CaseLabs Closes Permanently

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  • ... that Trump has made for America!

    • Re:Look at all these jobs... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12, 2018 @10:23AM (#57111500)

      ... that Trump has made for America!

      Look at all these "made in USA" companies going bankrupt the minute taxes are imposed on imports from China!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dk20 ( 914954 )

      This is really odd.. as trump stated that the other countries would be paying these terrifs and the US woudl be making "a lot of money" as a result of them so the US was in a "no lose" position?

      i guess the importer pays them?

      the best part so far.. when trump was praising HarleyDavidson one moment as a "Great american company" then slamming them the next over actions they had to take over his own crazy policy.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hazem ( 472289 )

        i guess the importer pays them?

        I believe import tariffs are paid by the party doing the importing. In the US, that extra payment goes directly to the federal government.

        From: http://www.chicagotribune.com/... [chicagotribune.com]

        "Tariffs are a tax on imports. They're typically charged as a percentage of the transaction price that a buyer pays a foreign seller. Say an American retailer buys 100 garden umbrellas from China for $5 apiece, or $500. The U.S. tariff rate for the umbrellas is 6.5 percent for umbrellas. The retailer would have to pay a $32.50 tarif

        • There are two possible results from the $32.50 increase in cost to the umbrella company: raise the sale price of umbrellas by $0.325 each to keep profit constant or eat the price increase and reduce profits by $0.325 per umbrella. The latter choice may not be viable if profits are at or below $0.325 per umbrella. Who pays the tariff if the company stays in business? The persons/customers who buy the umbrellas. Another result is the tariff increases inflation leading to increased interest rates on borrowed m

      • Re:Look at all these jobs... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by gtall ( 79522 ) on Sunday August 12, 2018 @01:26PM (#57112340)

        To put a finer point on your point, Trump says the tariffs will pay down the U.S. debt. Hmmm....so if taxed $500 Billion of Chinese exports at 25%, we have $125 Billion. The U.S. has a roughly $20 Trillion dollar debt, that'd be $20,000 Billion. So Trump has a way to go...waaayyy...waayyys to go because... ...courtesy of his and the R's tax give away, we will now have $1 Trillion deficit this year and in succeeding years, it only gets worse. And they promised us that the tax give away would pay for itself. Hmmm...Voodoo Economics rises from the Dead, Repeat ye of Little Faith.

      • i guess the importer pays them?

        The end consumer always pays in the end. Trump is betting that increased prices for US consumers will hurt America less than reduced sales for foreign vendors will hurt their respective countries. I think he is betting wrong. Everyone else is doing free trade deals among themselves and diversifying to reduce their reliance on US markets. That weakening of the importance of the US to global trade will last long after Trump is gone.

  • "The tariffs have played a major role raising prices by almost 80 percent (partly due to associated shortages), which cut deeply into our margins.

    I hope our president will reconsider his stance on tarrifs. Folks are struggling. It's rumored that a kinda distant neighbor has lost his house to foreclosure.

    On the other hand though, I won't be surprised if I hear of those asking the president to double down on tarrifs.

    • Re:Time to double down...Mr. President (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12, 2018 @10:31AM (#57111538)

      Or, if China has such massive control over manufacturing that tarrifs on sheet metal kill companies, maybe it makes sense to boost the supply on our side?

      • Well the problem is, for metals, we went from a depressed priced market to a limited monopoly market. Out of the fryer and into the pan is what overnight "fixing" the market has done. The policy would have been better had the President actually allowed markets to naturally progress via small changes in policy over a course of several decades. But nah, let's just change course 180 right now deal with fall out later. All it will do is cause smaller players to exit, while larger players get an even tighter g
        • Only outcome of natural progress of market would be move of all useful work to China since labor costs are cheaper there. Either that or equalize living costs in US and China, but nobody would actually let that happen. After all they'd prefer to have all costs higher in US just to show third world trash who is the boss, even though money is just abstraction and it results in weird situation when same amount of dollars can buy a lot better living in a "third world" country than in US.

  • Not *just* due to tariffs (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12, 2018 @10:37AM (#57111560)

    FT company website:

    "We are very sad to announce that CaseLabs and its parent company will be closing permanently. We have been forced into bankruptcy and liquidation. The tariffs have played a major role raising prices by almost 80% (partly due to associated shortages), which cut deeply into our margins. The default of a large account added greatly to the problem. It hit us at the worst possible time. We reached out for a possible deal that would allow us to continue on and persevere through these difficult times, but in the end, it didn’t happen.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      In other words a bad thing that they could normally have survived happened, but due to the tariffs on top they went bankrupt.

    • breaking the camel's back. Anyone here old enough to remember 3DFX? They went out of business while their cards were flying off the shelves. It really doesn't take much to kill a business. Cases are steel and aluminum, both of which just got slapped with a 20% increase. If you're already struggling to compete because of supply problems and your costs go up 20% what do you suppose happens?

  • Can Someone Explain? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wisnoskij ( 1206448 ) on Sunday August 12, 2018 @10:43AM (#57111586) Homepage

    U.S.-based PC case manufacturer

    The tariffs have played a major role raising prices by almost 80 percent (partly due to associated shortages)

    Can someone explain? The tariffs are designed to help American manufacturing, they make American products cheaper than foreign products. And as for shortages, a PC case manufacturer needs thin sheet steel, paint, plastic, and LEDs. Don't tell me you cannot get sheet steel in America any longer? Also, the margins on cases should be astronomical, 5 lbs of steel and a few LEDs, an ounce of black paint and a few plastic parts probably take 5-8 dollars in material costs. The only problem in the industree should be that China can make them cheaper which can be solved with the appropriate tariffs.

    • Re:Can Someone Explain? (Score:5, Informative)

      by narcc ( 412956 ) on Sunday August 12, 2018 @10:57AM (#57111642) Journal

      The tariffs are designed to help American manufacturing, they make American products cheaper than foreign products.

      In the same way that killing everyone smarter than you will make you the smartest person in the world.

      Tariffs don't make US products cheaper, they make foreign products more expensive.

      • Re:Can Someone Explain? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12, 2018 @11:31AM (#57111786)

        Yeah, amazing how many people don't get this.

        Local steel is $100, import is $80.

        Add tariffs...

        Local steel is $100, import is $120.

        You now buy the 'cheaper' local steel, meaning your production costs go up, leading to fewer sales; thus you close down and so do the steel makers. Good job, idiots.

        We figured this crap out in the 70's, just shows there are plenty of slow learners out there.

        • Re: Can Someone Explain? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12, 2018 @11:59AM (#57111926)

          The 70s... you mean the decade when American heavy industry was gutted and the working class standard of living began its steep decline?

        • Re:Can Someone Explain? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by scubamage ( 727538 ) on Sunday August 12, 2018 @12:34PM (#57112102)
          You're forgetting one thing in your example - if foreign steel goes up to $120, that means there is now a massive run for domestic steel. That means domestic steel prices skyrocket due to demand - this is basic supply/demand curve stuff from economics class. So, the price will rise to that of the foreign steel, or even higher. So, if you make finished steel goods, no matter what, you pay a much higher price, and domestic companies get screwed.
          • Also domestic output might not be high enough and everyone will have to pay 120$ and import anyway before domestic producers have time scale up.

        • You also forgot to mention that the end product price goes up, the market shrinks, and the economy follows it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kaenneth ( 82978 )

        > killing everyone smarter than you will make you the smartest person in the world

        Don't give Trump any ideas, we don't need 99% of humanity, and most of the smarter dogs killed.

    • Re:Can Someone Explain? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bartwol ( 117819 ) on Sunday August 12, 2018 @11:03AM (#57111676)

      1) Tariffs don't make American products cheaper...they make foreign products more costly (by adding taxes at import time).
      2) Yes, you _can_ get all those materials (steel, paint, plastic, LEDs) in the U.S., but at least some of them are available at a substantially lower cost from other countries (e.g. steel from China).
      3) The margins on almost all competitive consumer products in the U.S., including computer cases, are VERY thin no matter what kind of optimizations you try to make to the production process. That's what competitive markets do...offer consumers a variety of prices, qualities and relative values. Consumers pick their preferences, and all other things being equal (e.g. relatively similar computer cases), consumers will typically select the lower priced one.

      The short term effect of increased tariffs will be increased prices for the same goods you bought cheaper before the tariffs. The political and longer term effects are more uncertain, especially when you factor in the possibility that unfair players (like China with respect to intellectual property violations and government subsidies) will also hurt in the short run, and may improve their behaviors in the longer run. But you won't find many consumers who will prefer the fairly certain near-term increase in sticker prices [dripping with understatement].

      • Also consider that the other countries are putting selective tariffs in place, targeting industries in specific states and districts, with an eye towards giving GOP lawmakers, who have thus far been largely unwilling to intervene in the trade wars, as much grief as possible.

      • offer consumers a variety of prices, qualities and relative values.

        Yes, and but many companies offer luxury goods. And the cost to produce luxury goods never scales identically with the price. Case Labs sold luxury cases, and I guarantee that it did not cost them $450 to produce the cases they sold for $500.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jmccue ( 834797 )

      The tariffs are designed to help American manufacturing, they make American products cheaper than foreign products.

      These days economies of many nations are integrated with each other that tariffs will hurt many industries.

      In the 1930s, when the great depression occurred many economists know/believe the tariffs imposed in the US made the depression much worse that it should have been. And that was well before "globalization"

    • It's bias in the media (Score:5, Informative)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Sunday August 12, 2018 @11:15AM (#57111732)

      China and the US are currently engaged in a trade war, causing many U.S. companies to lose money, lay off employees, or close entirely.

      The way the media portrays it:

      If a trade policy is implemented by a Democrat:

      • Open trade is good for the economy.
      • Tariffs protect American jobs by preventing them from being sent overseas.

      If a trade policy is implemented by a Republican:

      • Open trade causes American jobs to be sent overseas.
      • Tariffs cost American jobs by stifling the economy.

      The reality is that both are true. The press just likes to spin it in favor of or against the party in power.

      • Open trade causes American jobs to be sent overseas (assuming there are foreign countries with a lower standard of living than the U.S., which means they have lower labor costs). But the increased economic activity due to imported goods being cheaper than domestic goods results in a net boost to the domestic economy and the standard of living in the U.S.
      • Trade tariffs protect American jobs from being sent overseas. But do so by increasing the price of goods sold in the U.S., resulting in a net decrease to the domestic economy and the standard of living.

      The tariffs are designed to help American manufacturing, they make American products cheaper than foreign products

      Nope. They're designed to help American manufacturing by making foreign products more expensive than American products. That is, they protect American jobs, but do so by making the products you buy more expensive.

      That's why I generally fall on the pro-open trade side of this. It's a Prisoner's dilemma [wikipedia.org] situation, where if one side implements tariffs, they get a better result than open trade, while the other side gets the worst possible result. But if both sides implement tariffs, they both end up worse off than with open trade. The best solution for both sides overall is open trade.

      Trump's rationale (which I partly agree with but mostly don't) is that China has been abusing our policy of open import of Chinese goods by restricting export of American goods to China and/or subsidizing some of their goods which the U.S. imports which artificially kills off U.S. producers, thus giving China the advantage in the Prisoner's dilemma (and puts the U.S. at a disadvantage). The best solution found thus far to the iterated Prisoner's dilemma is the tit for tat [wikipedia.org] strategy. If one side abuses the Prisoner's dilemma, the other side abuses it right back thus signaling that it won't take such abuse lying down. And eventually the side which started the abuse backs down, and the other side also backs down, reverting both sides to the best possible strategy for both (in this case, open trade).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hawk ( 1151 )

        Note that an economist who just plain *blasted* the initial round of tariffs, but noting that the only *possible* justifications for such actions was as a negotiating chip . . . rather than being cut off from access to high administration officials, was instead snatched up a week or two later as chief economic advisor, and is now, if not fully in charge, preaching this at those actually pulling the strings.

        tariffs are generally horrible and counterproductive, and *usually* there is no credible threat to u

    • Can someone explain? The tariffs are designed to help American manufacturing, they make American products cheaper than foreign products.

      This is a fallacy - when you impose tariffs on imports, domestic producers typically increase their prices, otherwise they'd be leaving money on the table.
    • It's mainly the shortages, and not the tariffs. A 25% tariff won't create an 80% cost increase - other things do that, especially given the raw steel (which is what the tariff is based on, not finished goods) is a small percentage of the entire case. I do know that other things in China are way up, including boxes - about a 130% increase this year, making US-made boxes cheaper than those from China.

    • Can someone explain? The tariffs are designed to help American manufacturing, they make American products cheaper than foreign products.

      No, they make foreign products more expensive than American products. And they make American products more expensive because they raise the price floor; without effective competition from overseas, American suppliers are free to raise their prices, and they do. The resulting profit is overwhelmingly kept by the upper echelons, as the worker's share of profit has been on a downward trend since the industrial revolution.

      And as for shortages, a PC case manufacturer needs thin sheet steel, paint, plastic, and LEDs.

      All of which have gone up in price because of tariffs, for the aforementioned reasons.

      Don't tell me you cannot get sheet steel in America any longer?

      You

    • Re:Can Someone Explain? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pesho ( 843750 ) on Sunday August 12, 2018 @12:10PM (#57111972)

      U.S.-based PC case manufacturer

      The tariffs have played a major role raising prices by almost 80 percent (partly due to associated shortages)

      Can someone explain? The tariffs are designed to help American manufacturing, they make American products cheaper than foreign products.

      That seems to be the case if you don't think about it. As several comments pointed out tariffs are not making American products cheaper, they are making imports more expensive. By implementing tariffs you are chocking the supply, which allows the local suppliers to raise their prices. So instead of lowering the cost of American products, you are actually increasing it. This is econ 101 stuff.

      You can argue that this would incentivize US steel producers to open new plants and boost output. This is not happening (only one manufacturer activated a single furnace they already had) for several reason. Building a steel plant is a major investment that can only be justified if there is a long term strong demand. The plant also cannot stand on its own - you need supply of ore, coke (the fuel not the drink), qualified workforce, transport infrastructure, etc. As things stand now, none of these is in place and the potential clients are going out of business. So no, nobody is going to build a new steel plant anytime soon. Even if production ramps up, volume is not the only problem. There are a number of varieties of steel that are used in US. The user base for some of them does not justify production for the local market. These varieties become viable only of you have access to the world market, which you don't thanks to the tariffs

      The tariffs ignore the basic fact that in the 21st century the world economy is highly integrated. US may not produce much steel, but has a large number of thriving businesses that consume steel and other metals to make more lucrative products. Think cars and airplanes. If you are one of those manufacturers, your product now costs more to build and thanks to the retaliatory tariffs cost even more to export. To sell products that use steel outside of US you now need to move production abroad (that's what Harley Davidson is doing). Your alternative is to sell only to US customers. Either way you will employ fewer people in US. If you notice I am not even touching the effect retaliatory tariffs have on unrelated businesses such as farming. Taken together, in a futile attempt to protect a minor set of companies, the tariffs are destroying a large chunk of the economy.

    • Can someone explain?

      Due to some strange, unexpected quirk, steps taken to protect the nation's industries somehow didn't manage to deliver the immediate results that certain idiots - *cough* shills *cough* - were pretending to expect.

    • Others have pointed out that tariffs only make foreign products more expensive and do nothing to make American products cheaper. In fact, the US tariffs as implemented are almost surgically designed to put US manufacturers at a disadvantage since so many of the tariffs are being applied to components, like steel and electric motors, that are used to build consumer and industrial goods and to final goods like finished computer cases.

      So a company like this gets hurt by import taxes increasing costs for the

    • Also, the margins on cases should be astronomical, 5 lbs of steel and a few LEDs, an ounce of black paint and a few plastic parts probably take 5-8 dollars in material costs. The only problem in the industree should be that China can make them cheaper which can be solved with the appropriate tariffs.

      I would say if you know how to make cases that cheaply you ought to go into business. Yo'd have half the cost and twice the margin of everyone else. It costs much more to produce the case than the raw BoM cost.

      Y

    • Re:Can Someone Explain? (Score:4, Informative)

      by gordguide ( 307383 ) on Sunday August 12, 2018 @03:53PM (#57112992)

      U.S.-based PC case manufacturer

      The tariffs have played a major role raising prices by almost 80 percent (partly due to associated shortages)

      Can someone explain? The tariffs are designed to help American manufacturing, they make American products cheaper than foreign products. And as for shortages, a PC case manufacturer needs thin sheet steel, paint, plastic, and LEDs. Don't tell me you cannot get sheet steel in America any longer? Also, the margins on cases should be astronomical, 5 lbs of steel and a few LEDs, an ounce of black paint and a few plastic parts probably take 5-8 dollars in material costs. The only problem in the industry should be that China can make them cheaper which can be solved with the appropriate tariffs.

      Probably the effect of the tariffs being "recent".

      This causes disruption in the supply chain, as any predictable price adjustment would. What importers do is make large orders based on expected mid-term demand, in contrast to their usual (what business school teaches these days) on-demand or "just-in-time" parts inventory practice. This can stress the financials of the importer, as they have new, unplanned costs (large order financing, new inventory & storage costs, delayed return on investment ... parts will be in inventory, paid for, for a longer period of time before they can recover the cost through sales, versus "normal" import volumes ).

      Or Not. It may also be that downstream wholesale buyers will have upped their orders from the importer, eliminating the long term storage and cost recovery period issues but possibly causing shortages (cannot fill all orders completely) amongst businesses that are ultimately competitors. Prices may rise (as they always do to reflect higher demand than supply) out of proportion to the increased import cost. If you have unfilled orders and the price of a part in shortage has risen 400% (even though the tariff might have only increased cost to the importer by 10%) ... what do you do? Allow the buyer to cancel the order and hit your annual bottom line, or pay the 400% and ship the product, possibly at a loss, to keep people working and customers happy?

      I would imaging the parts the OP's firm is referring to as increasing product cost would be power supplies typically included with case orders. (Just a guess, I've never looked at their site but if they don't offer PS upgrades, maybe they did deserve to go bankrupt, or at least should have read a book on marketing and business theory). Maybe they also included the option to add things like HDDs or SSDs at competitive prices, which would be dangerously narrow margins.

      Regardless, those are all items not manufactured in the USA, so would have to be imported from somewhere; typically Asia as the costs to fill a Bill Of Materials (BoM) for electronics in Asia is significantly lower than in North America. It's even cheaper to buy electronic components in Australia than North America due to it's proximity to the manufacturing sites, not all of which are in China.

      Oz (and New Zealand) have surprisingly robust electronics manufacturing industries, despite their first-world economies and small population sizes. Compare that with Mexico, which has comparable labour costs to China ... where is the cheap electronics assembly industry there? Doesn't exist at anywhere near the scale of Asia so obviously there are factors other than labour costs at play in that industry.

      There are lots of challenges when a disruptive element enters business planning. Some of it is unpredictable and some of it carries unintended consequences. This is always the case, there is nothing particularly unique about new tariffs on Chinese manufactured goods in that respect. One day we can expect the tariffs will fall or be eliminated (either that, or there is a Hidden Agenda since tariff reduction is the carrot dangled to China should it change wha

  • Blame the business owner, not the tariffs. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12, 2018 @10:46AM (#57111604)

    The tariffs have played a major role raising prices by almost 80 percent (partly due to associated shortages)

    The ten percent aluminum tariff causes prices to spike eighty percent? Sounds like CaseLabs' suppliers ripped them off.

    The default of a large account added greatly to the problem... We reached out for a possible deal that would allow us to continue on and persevere through these difficult times, but in the end, it didn't happen.

    So, CaseLabs got ripped off by a client. This was a business failure, not a tariff problem. That's confirmed by the company's failure to secure financing to continue: even the bank knew that the owners sucked at running a business.

    They made overpriced cases (seriously, $600 for a case?) and ran their business badly. They failed.

    • Re:Blame the business owner, not the tariffs. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Sunday August 12, 2018 @11:42AM (#57111836) Journal

      It's likely suppliers are ripping everyone off. They'll bump up prices to just south of what the tariffs are pricing foreign imports at, simply because the government has picked them as the winners. You don't actually think that suppliers are nice guys who actually want to help out their fellow American businesses, do you?

    • Re:Blame the business owner, not the tariffs. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Brett Buck ( 811747 ) on Sunday August 12, 2018 @11:47AM (#57111856)

      They made overpriced cases (seriously, $600 for a case?) and ran their business badly. They failed.

          You left out the last step: Then they blamed it on Trump.

      • their business badly. They failed. You left out the last step: Then they blamed it on Trump.

        How unfair. The raised prices can't affect anyone because #MAGA. That's a fact. Now stop worring about that and look at the space force. Everybody says space is important and we have the best space---everyone says we have the bese--and you're not going to believe the space we're going to have except the fake news at CNN but I don't watch CNN

    • and normally you'd do a very careful analysis of the effects of a tariff before putting it in play. You'd expect

      1. The POTUS to be aware that aluminum prices are already high due to shortages.

      2. You'd expect him to understand that if there is a shortage of a good driving up prices that putting tariffs on it is pointless since high prices for a good mean you've already got a healthy enough market you don't need to protect it.

      3. You'd also expect that companies that are hurting due to high aluminum

  • Did I miss something, or are we back to the BBS era?

  • and recycled plastic,
    hardwood for the nice look and feel for the outside of the case and recycled plastic for the interior because it is not electrically conductive and strong & lightweight

  • On the subject of steel (Score:5, Informative)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Sunday August 12, 2018 @12:44PM (#57112146)

    One thing everyone here is missing is that U.S. Steel and Nucor Steel have been fighting every single exemption request companies have put forth to the U.S. Commerce Department. These companies want exemptions from the tariffs so they can continue to get steel at reasonable prices and/or quality and type they need.

    Instead, the two largest producers of steel in the country have raised their prices and told the Commerce Department the exemptions are bogus because they can make the product, even though in at least one case, a company stopped buying steel from U.S. Steel because of quality control issues [cbsnews.com].

    Of course politics plays a big role in all this:

    Charlotte-based Nucor, which financed a documentary film made by a top trade adviser to Mr. Trump, and Pittsburgh-based United States Steel, which has previously employed several top administration officials, have objected to 1,600 exemption requests [nytimes.com] filed with the Commerce Department over the past several months.

    To date, their efforts have never failed, resulting in denials for companies that are based in the United States but rely on imported pipes, screws, wire and other foreign steel products for their supply chains.

    In one case, a company stated “the sole U.S. producer of high speed steel material appropriate for cutting tools is not currently ramping up any production to expand this aspect of their business and has not shown any interest in quoting new business [reuters.com].”

    As the tariffs take hold, expect prices of finished goods to rise substantially and more businesses to either go under or relocate out of the country. The largest nail manufacturer in the country has already laid off 12% of its workforce, cut hours for the remainder and is still on the brink of extinction [cnn.com], so it has to make such a decision.

  • As predicted (Score:3, Funny)

    by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Sunday August 12, 2018 @01:26PM (#57112338) Journal

    Am I the only one who's exhausted by all this winning?

  • The rolled-steel thin edge of the wedge (Score:3)

    by rho ( 6063 ) on Monday August 13, 2018 @02:33AM (#57114802) Journal

    I grew up in a time when knowing something about computer cases meant something. Machine tooling was expensive, so knowing the difference between one case that had been designed by a machining efficiency expert and another that had been designed by a wizened system builder was worth a 100-150% markup. Cheap cases were notable for having a layout where the motherboard was screwed down so far from the 5 1/4" bays that your leads from your cheap power supply wouldn't reach your floppy drive.

    Computer cases have since become some kind of wealth signal for the PC builder prosperity gospelists. If you accept the desktop PC into your heart, you too can have an RGB-LED double aluminum liquid-cooled heaven right now on your fold-out table.

    Incontrovertible fact #1: all PRs hide the chewy center. The default of a large account added greatly to the problem is the chewy center. Every business is accountable to its shareholders. If CaseLabs went out of business because they lost a primary account, they will definitely blame anything but that fact. That's why they are pointing to tariffs, which they have no control over, as a primary cause, rather than the possibility that they have been price raping a major client, who may have hired somebody who said "why the f-ck are you buying $400 cases?".

    Incontrovertible fact #2: US companies that arbitrage Chinese trade markets are rent-seekers. They could employ 1,000 minimum wage+ employees, but they are not what you'd call "domestic industry". China knows quite well what industry looks like. That's why everything is built in China.

    Incontrovertible fact #3: In the modern world, a Chinese child laborer who hand-solders an Arduino board has more skills than a union worker who ensures the "Made in the USA" sticker was applied correctly. If you're a producer, and you have no control over your production chain, you're a marketer.

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