What it really comes down to is societal priorities. The Chinese have been willing to do things over the past few decades that the US isn't, and it's given them

What it really comes down to is societal priorities. The Chinese have been willing to do things over the past few decades that the US isn't, and it's given them an advantage in low-cost production. One of those things is trash their environment. In the US, we have the federal clean air act, an EPA to enforce it, and various similar laws and enforcement bodies at the state and local level (e.g. CEQA). A second major example of this is labor laws. Workers in the US have strong protections including the right to organize, vote, minimum wage protections, not to endure wrongful termination or sexual harassment, as well as various overtime provisions and strong protections of salary in bankruptcy. They have none of this in China. In China, due to lax enforcement of safety, major industrial accidents happen as a matter of course. I recall reading two separate times in the Economist over the last several years when workers were trapped inside of a burning building, leading to hundreds of deaths. And I keep hearing stories about workers getting woken up in the middle of the night, handed tea and biscuits, and asked to start working. Anecdotally (I'm not as sure about this) I think many people in China work much longer hours than we do in the US. Most middle-class jobs in the US give at least a day or two off per week; I'm not sure how common this is in China. We also have strong protections of rights in the US including freedom of speech, rights to a fair, speedy and open trial, break time to vote, and various protections relating to bona fide religious practice, including exemption from some collective bargaining agreements. All of these things cost money -- a lot of it. So we're going to have a slightly higher cost of production, or perhaps a bit higher taxes. The real telling thing though is the flow, not of goods or money, but of _people_. Net in-migration to the US from Asia feels much stronger than vice versa. And so I ask: perhaps our manufacturing is in decline, but, why do so many people move here from the rest of the world? Is it possible that the Chinese middle class is getting tired of lead paint in their food, random lengthy incarcerations of political prisoners, a one-party state that openly engages in religious persecution, lack of a free press, or lack of a functioning civil court system? Now, one can certainly make the argument that some of these protections have gone too far in the US. Perhaps unions have too much power. Maybe companies like Uber/Lyft will force the discussion on making the employment regime less onerous in places like Illinois (my home state), where firing someone is almost always a lengthy court case due to a shockingly pro-labor employment law regime. Perhaps the pendulum could stand to swing back a big in the direction of economic competitiveness. Or maybe the US and China will converge. I consider myself a pretty strong libertarian, but it really makes me think.