You can't pay an American worker 20 times as much to make the same product in the same number of hours. The only way to be competitive at 20 times the pay is fo

You can't pay an American worker 20 times as much to make the same product in the same number of hours. The only way to be competitive at 20 times the pay is for each worker to produce 20 times the output, i.e. automation. This is only true if labor makes up the largest component of the cost. If the worker is only 10% of the cost of the output (versus say raw materials like steel) then being more 2X (or even 20X) more productive requires a much smaller productivity increase. It's also worth noting that manufacturing can carry significant negative externalities in the form of pollution.