4 ms·

US has shipped all manufacturing jobs to Asia, including China and got the Rust Belt in exchange (and huge corporate profits). and China is now a manufacturing

US has shipped all manufacturing jobs to Asia, including China and got the Rust Belt in exchange (and huge corporate profits). and China is now a manufacturing powerhouse. Partly that push was created by the labor unions, who pushed the cost of doing manufacturing business far above what was profitable and feasible. When the environment becomes hostile to conducting business, then jobs will leave and local industries atrophy.

dh2022 17d ago
How was the environment that enabled businesses to lower their cost by admitting China in WTO hostile to conducting business? BTW - with or without unions manufacturing was profitable in the US before NAFTA and China entering WTO. So your narrative that manufacturing was dying because of labor unions does not hold much water.
- bijowo1676 17d ago
  the offshoring of manufacturing started in the 50s and 60s and accelerated in the 80s. the reason is that US wanted to do specialized high value manufacturing, and was offshoring everything low value and low margin, because of increasing cost of environment and labor regulations and unions. My fear is that if US becomes hostile to foreign tech workers, they will simply create alternatives to US Big Tech in other countries and US economy will suffer. Current US domination of global tech is partly because of foreign tech talent.
  - dh2022 17d ago
    "the offshoring of manufacturing started in the 50s and 60s and accelerated in the 80s. " - not true. Manufacturing offshoring started in late 90s in small part due to NAFTA and then accelerated when China entered WTO in early 2000s (thank you President Clinton for this one). The manufacturing employment trend shows this quite clearly I think: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/manemp https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/manemp
    - disgruntledphd2 16d ago
      > Manufacturing offshoring started in late 90s Speaking as an Irish person who grew up in the 80's, this isn't true as there were loads of US companies manufacturing in Ireland back then. There were even clothes manufacturers until the mid 90s. So I'd probably agree more with the OP here, perhaps the Asian outsourcing happened in the 90s (but even then, loads of my toys as a kid were made in Taiwan), but this has been happening for a while. It's potentially related to the relaxation of capital controls that happened in the 70s.

dh2022 17d ago

How was the environment that enabled businesses to lower their cost by admitting China in WTO hostile to conducting business? BTW - with or without unions manufacturing was profitable in the US before NAFTA and China entering WTO. So your narrative that manufacturing was dying because of labor unions does not hold much water.

bijowo1676 17d ago
the offshoring of manufacturing started in the 50s and 60s and accelerated in the 80s. the reason is that US wanted to do specialized high value manufacturing, and was offshoring everything low value and low margin, because of increasing cost of environment and labor regulations and unions. My fear is that if US becomes hostile to foreign tech workers, they will simply create alternatives to US Big Tech in other countries and US economy will suffer. Current US domination of global tech is partly because of foreign tech talent.
- dh2022 17d ago
  "the offshoring of manufacturing started in the 50s and 60s and accelerated in the 80s. " - not true. Manufacturing offshoring started in late 90s in small part due to NAFTA and then accelerated when China entered WTO in early 2000s (thank you President Clinton for this one). The manufacturing employment trend shows this quite clearly I think: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/manemp https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/manemp
  - disgruntledphd2 16d ago
    > Manufacturing offshoring started in late 90s Speaking as an Irish person who grew up in the 80's, this isn't true as there were loads of US companies manufacturing in Ireland back then. There were even clothes manufacturers until the mid 90s. So I'd probably agree more with the OP here, perhaps the Asian outsourcing happened in the 90s (but even then, loads of my toys as a kid were made in Taiwan), but this has been happening for a while. It's potentially related to the relaxation of capital controls that happened in the 70s.