The following shows that even in the United States, there were only somewhere between 3000 and 11300 US_citizens who qualified with a degree in Electrical/Electronics in 2015….
https://www.asee.org/papers-and-publications/publications/college-profiles/15EngineeringbytheNumbersPart1.pdf…that’s nowhere near enough to sustain USA industry at current levels.
This is likely to be because……
1….The USA does not adequately encourage USA youngsters to get into electronics.
2…The USA has, to a large extent, “opted out” of “easier electronics”….ie stuff like massive SMPS design and build companies. This means that there are seen to be less jobs in Electronics in the US, and also that the remaining jobs in electronics are too highly specialised to encourage a large number of youngsters to enter into electronics, as they fear they will not attain the high skill level in order to ultimately get a job.
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This could be remedied by starting up a large government funded company to design/build SMPS’s (and other companies to design/build other such “easier” stuff).
This then would encourage the USA youngsters to get into Electronics, as they would then feel that there are a sufficient number of potential jobs available, and also jobs available that they stand a chance of getting good enough to do.
Its important to get high numbers of students into electronics…because out of any undergrad cohort, there will only be a very small number of the “brilliant” engineers….so therefore you need a big number coming in, in order to reap a sufficient number of the “brilliant” ones.
However, the following people would, for reasons of self-interest, never agree with what I have just written…
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1….Current engineers who are making a good living, since they would fear the job market getting saturated with job competitors. (however, their fears are actually irrational…..the situation would actually improve for them).
2…Large electronics corporations…since the last thing they want is loads of electronics engineers saturating the market, and being available to work for their smaller competitors and make them turn into bigger rival companies.
2A….Politicians who are under the influence of the corporations of Part 2.
3…….College lecturers……the last thing college lecturers want is the market getting saturated with loads of qualified engineers…because they will feel that this makes their job under threat…(however again, this is an irrational fear)
4…”Middle men” who are making a fortune out of taking a cut out of large consignments of power supplies imported from the Far East.
5…Retired engineers who have sons/daughters who work as electronics engineers…because again they would fear the saturation of engineers in the market bringing wages down (but as I said before, this is actually irrational…the opposite would happen)
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A government run company could, if it became very successful, go private, but the government would have to stipulate that if sold into private hands, it would never be allowed to be sold out of US ownership.
“Mass electronics” industries like SMPS companys, do not make much profit in the West…….not enough profit to entice a big Western corporation to do it. However, such an industry could be made to “break even” when run in the west….obviously it would have to be a government supported entity, because no private company wants to just “break even”….The fact that there is a definite market for power supplies means that the taxpayers would always get their money back. Also, their would be advantageous spin-offs, such as the training/experiencing of lots of engineers who could later go and work for more exotic companies in the private sector. Also, there is the fact that the prescence of such huge electronics companies in the USA would encourage USA youngsters that there are plenty jobs in electronics that they can go for…..so then they would choose to study electronics in large numbers.
All the above applies to other Western countries too.
Incidentally, there is no reason, why, in the beginning, this government run company could not buy in a certain amount of power supplies itself from the Far East..and distribute these within the USA…..it could use the profits from this to help fund itself…..this is a lot better than dubious, private, unknown “middle men” taking a huge “middle man cut”.
-None of us knows what this “middle man cut” is. Suffice to say, what the American citizen ends up paying for a Far Eastern power supply is a lot more than what the Middle man payed.