The Ekins-McGee Machinery Factory is a small machine shop with 40 workers located in the small town of Barr, Texas, USA. The main business of the factory is to produce small quantities of spare parts for some large enterprises across the United States, and the annual turnover is about three to four million dollars, which is enough to make the life of partners Ekins and McGee live freely.

The business of the Yimai factory is obtained through the Internet, and the regular customers will send the drawings of the spare parts they need by e-mail, and the factory will produce according to the drawings, and then the produced spare parts will be shipped to these customers by air. The spare parts that customers need are often some non-standard parts, which require less quantity and higher time requirements, so they will ask Yimai factory to produce. If it is a large number of standard accessories, these customers often choose to go to China to find suppliers, because the production cost of Chinese enterprises is far lower than that of American enterprises, saving one dollar on each accessory, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of accessories to save the cost, is very considerable.

However, in the past few days, the situation at the Imai plant has changed dramatically, with orders coming in like snowflakes from all over the United States, and many of them are orders in large quantities. When they received their first order, Eakins and McGee were surprised and full of joy, because such a large order was enough for the factory to produce for several weeks, and the people who opened the factory did not like orders. But as the follow-up orders came one after another, the surprise of the two turned into panic.

"What's going on, it can't be an April Fool's prank, is it?" asked Ekins to his old partner, McGee.

"No, Mr. Fitzel of Haifei is also an old customer of ours, and he offered us to order 45 standard parts in one go, which is definitely not a prank. McGee said.

"However, I heard that they had imported these standard parts from China before, and the Chinese standard parts were produced in large quantities and the price was much cheaper than ours, so why did Haifei order from us?"

"Maybe it has something to do with the president's tax hike policy. Haven't you followed the news? The president ordered a 50 percent tariff on metal products imported from China, and standard parts happen to be metal products. ”

"I've certainly followed the news, and I think it's a big positive for us. However, I have calculated that even if the tariff is increased by 50%, it is still cheaper to purchase standard parts from China than to buy from us, you know, China's labor costs are much lower than ours, and the asking price for our workers here is too high. ”

"I don't know. McGee scratched her scalp, which didn't have much hair left, and said, "Anyway, it's a good thing for us that they're transferring orders from the Chinese to us." ”

Of course, Ekins and McGee did not know that a series of companies such as Haifei turned to the United States to purchase spare parts in the United States under pressure from Meipu. Mapp has warned them that if they continue to adopt large numbers of parts imported from China, the government will further increase the tax rate on those parts, and will also impose sanctions on them through other means. Although the price of imported parts from local American companies such as the Yimai factory is still higher than that of Chinese parts after the tax increase, it has avoided the taboo of Meipu.

These days, Fitzel is struggling to find a supplier of accessories in the United States, just like his peers in other companies. Of course, the United States is not a large enterprise that does not manufacture all kinds of standard parts, but the division of labor system that has been formed for a long time can not be changed overnight. The United States imports tens of billions of dollars worth of spare parts from China every year, which is not something that a few large companies can digest, and Fitzel and they have to find those small and medium-sized enterprises hidden in the corners and send them orders to help complete the manufacture of some of the parts.

"Is it a good thing?" said Ekins with a wry smile, "McGee, if it's just Haifei who orders from us, of course that's a good thing. But in the next few days, we have received more than 40 orders, and it will take at least five years for us to produce these orders. And, according to my estimates, this is just the beginning, and in the next step we will receive more orders that we will not be able to fulfill in fifty years. ”

"Perhaps, it's time for us to scale up production. McGee said.

Ikins nodded: "Let's wait and see, if there are more orders in the next few days, we will consider expanding the scale of production." ”

The situation in the coming days, in perfect line with Ekins's speculation, saw more orders flying in from all over the place, and many of them were marked with prompts like "urgent, online, etc." The manufacturing process of the spare parts on these orders is not complicated, and with the technical strength of the Yimai factory, it is completely capable of winning it, and what Yiggins and McGee need to do is only to expand the scale of production. Both of them are doers, and when they saw this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a fortune, they immediately rolled up their sleeves and began to arrange.

If you want to do a good job, you must first sharpen your tools, and this principle applies even in the United States. The first thing the Imai plant did to expand its production scale was to purchase equipment. Ekins called a machine tool supplier in Texas and offered to purchase five horizontal machining centers from EMAG.

"No problem at all!" The other party's answer was very refreshing, "170,000 US dollars per horizontal machining center, if you buy 5 units at one time, we can provide you with a discount, each unit is reduced to 160,000 yuan, and 5 units are a total of 800,000 yuan." ”

"160,000 yuan!" Yikins was annoyed, "160,000 yuan per unit, do you still say it is a discount? Just a year ago, I bought the same machining center from your company, and the price at that time was only 120,000 yuan. ”

"That's true, but, Mr. Ikins, have you forgotten about taxes? This horizontal machining center from EMAG is made in their manufacturing base in China, so it belongs to China. According to the government's new policy of increasing taxes on Chinese products, each machining center will have to increase import duties by $40,000. The other party explained.

"Okay......" Eakins replied smutterfully.

"So, Mr. Ekins, do you still need these five machines?"

"I think we need it, but allow me to talk to my partner. ”

Putting down the phone, Ekins rubbed his forehead and said to McGee: "McGee, it seems that the tax increase on Chinese products is not all a good thing, and the price of the machine tool we want to buy has risen by three percent." ”

"And that's just the machine. McGee said, "When you called just now, I counted again, in addition to machine tools, we also need to purchase a batch of process equipment, such as fixtures, pallets, and small carts pushing parts, and most of these things are made in China, and I estimate that their prices have risen by 30% to 50%. ”

"Shit, in this way, all the profits we make from these orders will be taken by Mep!" Ekins couldn't help but expose the foul language. People who don't practice don't know that there are all kinds of things needed in a factory, and the lack of one will bring all kinds of troubles. Let's take a simple example, you want to seal the product with adhesive strips and send it to customers, at least a cutter for tearing rubber strips, right? Taobao is a small gadget that costs less than 1 dollar, but it is also made in China!

"There's another problem, and I haven't figured out a solution yet. "To fulfill the orders we have at hand, we need to expand our production at least fivefold, which means we need to hire 200 new workers." However, I thought about it for a while, and I am afraid that the whole town of Bar will not be able to get together 200 workers. ”

"I had to recruit from somewhere else. Eakins said.

McGee shook her head and said, "I don't think it's easy to recruit from other places either. ”

"There are still a lot of unemployed people in some of the surrounding towns, so it shouldn't be difficult to get 200 people, right?" Mr. Eakins said.

"It's not hard to find 200 unemployed, but not all of them are able to work," McGee said. What we need are skilled workers, and how many unemployed skilled workers can you find in the whole town of Barr?"

"This ......" Ikins was a little dumbfounded, he thought back to his neighbors, and was surprised to find that McGee's words were actually right. Among the unemployed people he knew, Jones was a second-rate man, idle all day long, and recruiting him into the factory was probably to recruit an uncle to wait; Luisa was smart and virtuous, but what the factory needed was a male worker with the strength to serve the handles, and Luisa was okay as a bar waitress serving dishes, how could he do the work of the factory; and old Tony, he had worked in the factory for 800 seriously, but that seemed to be 20 years ago, and now his skills can still be selected?

Skilled workers need to be trained and practiced, and the United States has been deindustrialized for a long time, with only 13 million people engaged in manufacturing out of more than 300 million people. A large number of young people have never been in a factory, and it is a very challenging task to get these people to take off their earrings and stand on the production line.

"I'm curious, how do the Chinese do it?" Eakins asked McGee.

"I'm thinking about that too. "We just get such a small order, and we can't digest it." These orders were sent to Chinese in the past, are all Chinese supermen?"

This really can't be blamed for the lack of knowledge of these two brothers, quite a lot of Americans actually lack understanding of the world outside the town they live in, not to mention that China is far away on the other side of the ocean. It's not that they haven't seen China from TV and movies, but it doesn't tell them why the Chinese can make so many products, on the contrary, these TV and movies show that China is an extremely backward place, where the people are unkempt and starless, and occasionally there is a literate one, who has returned from studying in the United States, and is depressed.

"McGee, I think we need to take a trip to China and see what's going on over there. Eakins said.

"I also feel the need for this. McGee nodded solemnly in response.