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People are finally realizing sending all your manufacturing to countries that hate your guts is a horrible idea? There may be hope for us yet!
by EricE 3y ago
People are finally realizing sending all your manufacturing to countries that hate your guts is a horrible idea? There may be hope for us yet!
- nonethewiser 3y ago“Those jobs are never coming back.”
- toomuchtodo 3y agoLike zero interest rate policy and fast takeoff of the target rate, that appeared to be the case until suddenly it no longer was. Hindsight is 20/20.
- CamperBob2 3y ago(Shrug) They aren't. Factories, like farms, employ about 10% of the people they used to, a number that is still shrinking fast.
- peteradio 3y agoYea but who cares? We want the outputs from them and if we aren't dependent on massive amounts of people working dangerous dirty jobs to get it then that should be a positive, not a negative. I hope we can find a way to spread around the wealth rather than essentially cull massive amounts of our population over the next century but that remains to be seen.
- nonethewiser 3y agoAutomation has increased but they still require workers.
- gscott 3y agoAnd we have thousands of people arriving daily who want to work at those factories. Double win.
- marginallen 3y ago[dead]
- ssss11 3y agoOnly took 40 years….
- lokar 3y agoThe plan was that by doing our factory jobs they would become like us.
- maroonblazer 3y agoThat may have been a secondary or tertiary goal, at best. The primary goal was we'd get cheaper products, which we did.
- nonethewiser 3y agoJust to elaborate, it wasn’t a central policy at all. It was companies competing for cheaper costs.
- jjoonathan 3y agoPlenty of countries have used tariffs to successfully develop and protect key industries. Including... the USA! https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/hamilton%E2%80%99s-report-subject-manufactures-1791#:~:text=Through%20high%20tariffs%20designed%20to,hold%20on%20the%20United%20States https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-pr.... The choice to get rid of these policies was made by people who fully understood that doing so would pump assets and dump exports, and that the ability to benefit from the asset pump would be concentrated while the fallout from the dumping of exports would be widespread.
- themaninthedark 3y agoThey fully understood what they were doing, just like Jack Welsh did. I am glad we have reversed direction and hope that it is not too late.
- marginallen 3y ago[dead]
- huytersd 3y ago
- Gibbon1 3y agoWhen you think about it, manufacturing has high productivity growth. While services and other stuff suffers from cost disease. So it was brain dead stupid to encourage manufacturers to move production overseas.
- gruez 3y agoThis doesn't make any sense. Cost disease occurs because workers can get higher pay in other industries. If manufacturing really is high productivity (as you imply), keeping it onshore would only make cost disease worse not better. Moreover, the fact that cost disease is happening despite the fact we offshored manufacturing suggests that productivity is increasing in other sectors. My guess is in tech, high end manufacturing, and finance.
- Gibbon1 3y agoGlobalization commingles the economies of different countries. You can no longer talk about the US's labor force and the Chinese labor force as different things. Also rentier capitalism raised labor costs via rents. Bonus: Services are not fundamentally productive like manufacturing.
- throw__away7391 3y agoTo be fair, the thinking at the time was that trade relationships would foster better relations overall. I honestly don't think the results could have been foreseen early on. Also perhaps it didn't have to be this way. An awful lot of people have been willing to overlook issues over the decades because it put money in their pockets in the short term. Perhaps if the US had taken a tougher stance on these issues earlier rather than turning a blind eye while they pilled up and reached a breaking point things could have turned out differently.
- Consultant32452 3y ago>To be fair, the thinking at the time was that trade relationships would foster better relations overall. The people in power never believed that. That's just how it was marketed to the people whose lives they were destroying.
- jjoonathan 3y agoRicardo's Comparative Advantage argument was specifically derived under the condition of closed capital accounts because Ricardo himself didn't only understand but actively warned about what would happen with open capital accounts. Every time he got trotted out to rationalize the policies that deindustrialized the United States he must have been spinning in his grave. For more, read "Trade Wars are Class Wars" by Klein and Pettis. The thesis is in the title and the case is convincing.
- Consultant32452 3y agoA similar thing happens with immigration. The public discourse is about "jobs Americans won't accept", labor shortages, bringing in the best and brightest, etc. The closed door discussions are all about wage suppression of the middle class.
- bluGill 3y agoIt worked very well with south Korea, Japan ,Germany, Taiwan, allowed which were either enemies or not a democracy 100 years ago. Vietnam seems to be working that direction as well. It seemed to be working in China too until Xi took over.
- innagadadavida 3y agoUS wanted to desperately win the Cold War and winning China over was seen as a key goal by Henry Kissinger. That objective was achieved and diminished the USSR to a puppet. US lost other things as a consequence. This is a complicated geopolitical 4D chess game played by powerful white men. The rest of us are pawns and slaves to them.
- guil177 3y agoSince when are chinese white? Edit: I mean every country is playing this game, thinking everybody but whites doesn't protect their interest is delusional. Japan had an empire in the past, China is aggressive towards its neighbors now, africa too, and wants Taiwan.
- huytersd 3y agoIn his comment he’s referring to the Chinese as pawns.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gopher_space 3y agoThe guys I knew in Africa all thought of the Chinese as white people.
- vkou 3y agoI assure you, the average American hates China's guts far more than the average Chinese person 'hates America'. I'd be surprised they think much about it at all. They are focused on their own development, not dealing with a declining hegemony's tantrums over a transition to a multi-polar world.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jjoonathan 3y ago10 years ago? Yes. Today? No. CCP got caught raiding peoples' savings and needs a scapegoat. Guess who that is.
- vkou 3y agoI'd believe you if your were talking about Russia, but not so much China. Unlike what we see in the tabloids, it's not lurching from one self-inflicted disaster to another, is not seeing an active decline, and does not need to blame a shadowy cabal of external enemies for its domestic fortunes and ambitions. (Which are, all things considered, faring pretty well.) What this does feel like, is a projection of western insecurities at the principal cause of them. We fear and hate them, and the only rational justification for our behaviour is convincing ourselves that they hate and fear us even more.
- jjoonathan 3y agoWolf warrior diplomacy was a projection of western insecurity? Ok dude.
- MPlus88 3y ago[dead]
- vkou 3y agoIf you're going to judge Chinese opinions, and try to understand it's culture based on what their foreign ministry is doing, should the world stereotype and generalize about Americans based on the behaviour of the Department of State? That would not be a particularly flattering portrayal.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- skhr0680 3y ago“Bribing the Chinese to stay on the NATO side in WWIII” is another victim of the end of the Cold War
- Elucalidavah 3y agoI'm pretty sure in this case it's movement of factories from Europe, due to energy costs there.
- forinti 3y agoDo they though? Looking from the outside (I am neither in the US nor in China) it seems to me that the animosity is coming from the US and that it originates in the realisation that it cannot compete anymore.
- kwere 3y agoChina has always had hegemonic ambitions with "(Communist) chinese characteristics" using the "Hide your strength, bide your time" approach. Xi Jimping, showed its aggressive attitudes without having enough strenght behind, one of his many geopolitical blunders, forcing Western leaders to take much needed countermeasuers despite business leaders desires (business interests in chinese markets)
- dkobia 3y agoIt is becoming clear these days that bilateral trade interdependence reduces the probability of inter-state military conflict. They may hate your guts but trading with each other humanizes us. Also it is much more efficient.