Can the manufacturing sector of the US economy return?

Do you think it's possible for manufacturing businesses to return to this country? Or are they lost forever to countries like China and India? I heard Thom Hartmann say something to the effect that we would need to institute policies like tax penalties to businesses that export jobs overseas and tariffs to help us compete with other countries. If we had the political will, could this sector return to the US?

us to be more protectionist, to penalize rather than reward offshoring and it would also require a change in our attitudes toward both work and education. We'd have to find value in dirty jobs again - and respect and reward those who do them. We'd have to restructure the educational system to be more relevant to employment rather than affording a broad liberal arts education (nothing wrong with that but for most alums it sure as hell doesn't pay the bills).

I agree with you on all points except your disparagement of a liberal arts education, my dear Coyote. To my mind, a person without knowledge of the classical liberal arts may be very highly trained indeed, but whether he or she is educated is another question.

a formal liberal arts education. I earned one of those liberal arts degrees. That said, I know folks who have that credential who are ignorant and far from educated and I know high school dropouts who are very well read and far more educated.

A degree is nothing more than a credential and it is no guarantor that the one who possesses it is educated or skilled in any sense.

An education is something one seeks and acquires out of personal desire. It cannot be obtained by sitting in a classroom or using Cliff Notes to ace the exam. It is not defined by subject matter mastery. It is not static. Rather, being an educated person is an ongoing process which requires curiosity, investigative, research and critical thinking skills. These are the kinds of skills which an individual cultivates and develops. Educational institutions are unnecessary and can only serve to enable and facilitate a preexistiing desire.

My opinion is that the primary purpose of education is to equip the student to succeed in all aspects of life. That means that one of its primary concerns ought to be preparing and equipping the student to earn a livlihood.

About three semesters ago, my students in a college research class were given the assignment of investigating our relationship to China insofar as manufacturing, importation, and product safety standards were concerned. This was about the time of the Mattel toy problem at Christmas.

We had quite a number of very talented and dedicated academic librarians helping us with our searches. The librarians thought this was a very worthwhile research project and gave their all to it.

What I learned was very depressing. First, and probably most important, NOWHERE were we able to find anyone in academia or the business schools questioning what the U.S. was doing. There were hardly any articles in scholarly journals that questioned the practice of switching manufacturing to China.

It appears that not only have our politicians let us down, the academic structure of our country has, too. It is designed to study this type of thing and, under normal conditions (meaning NOT bush), advise on the well-being and health of the economic structure of the country (in addition to many other types of issues).

I still have much of the research saved, so if anyone wants to know particulars, I could be persuaded to go back through the files.

Ramping up the country's manufacturing backbone would be very difficult, if I remember correctly.

Much of this, however, might have been due to "will." At that time, there was no will whatsoever to restore our mfr'g base.



Cher

The problem will be as much the low cost of energy as it is anything else. Some world wide demands for higher safety and quality standards might help, including certain protections for workers. But in the end the fact that we can ship products all over the world for pennies is going to keep manufacturing seeking the lowest dollar, and that really won't be in a country with the highest standards of living. If/when energy becomes valuable, then manufacturing will become more regionally focused because one won't be able to justify the cost of the energy to ship it so far. Manufacturing will be focused near cheap energy and raw materials. And it will rarely be shipped world wide. And the heavier the product, the less desirable it will be to ship it around. However, we could be decades away from energy that is that expensive. To some extent the very research we'll do on cleaner energy will also manifest itself in keeping costs down. At that point it will be a century long process of those other countries slowly creating middle class workers who want the same stand of living we have and their labor cost will rise to meet ours.

and aknowledge that there are times when that may be good for a country and other times when it is not. At all times there are winners and losers, but the losers are almost always workers and small business owners and the biggest winners are rarely consumers.

I was just doing some historical research, reading through debates about whether to impose tarriffs on certain farm produce in 1920, which were then subject to "free trade." One of the things that emerged from these debates was that competition between farmers in New Brusnwick and Maine had driven down the price of some produce to below the production costs for farmers in Maine. (Partly this was because these were commercial farms in Maine competing with family farms in New Brunwick, and the latter operated with unpaid family labor). Some farmers were forced out of businesses and others saw a decline in income, yet retail prices did not decline on these products, so the biggest winners were "the middle-men." Today, the biggest middle-man is Wall-Mart, which has done more than any other company to destroy American productive capacity.

Republicanists, globalists, neocolonialists hate the idea of a dignified working class. Free trade (sic) would mean the third-worldization of America. That's what they want.

What did Hartmann say exactly? I don't get Air America where I live, and only sometimes listen via the computer.

Yeah, manufacturing can come back. The reason is that the savings that outsourcing provides via labor is only a small part of production costs. Labor in a manufacturing plan may only make up 10% or so of the total cost. Not only that but other costs like management and shipping go up when you outsource.

http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/news/2226104/outsourcing-fails-deliver-cost

http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/11/smallbusiness/china_no_longer_cheap.fsb/index.htm?postversion=2008081910

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0911/p01s02-woam.html

http://www.slate.com/id/2188409/

Not only that, but costs are going up dramatically overseas. In China (before the economic slowdown) the economy grew at about 10-11% a year, and wages went up about 15% a year (roughly). So wages doubled every 5-6 years or so, and quadrupled after 12 years.

Not only that but with peak oil the price of shipping goods across the ocean is going to go back up after this economic slowdown. Plus with the costs of raw materials going up, labor becomes an even smaller % of the price of manufacturing.

Plus the US currency is going down while Chinese currency is going up.

Combine it all (higher shipping costs, higher wages in China, more environmental and labor standards in China, higher raw material costs, currency exchange rates) and the US is competitive with China.

Plus due to domestic and international protest, countries like China are allowing more unionization, stronger environmental and QC rules. These will also increase costs.


We could rebuild the manufacturing movement here in the US. Our quality is better, and shipping costs are lower. Our infrastructure is also better.

It could easily be done, outsourcing as it is only saves about 10% in costs and there is a risk quality can go down.

It was on the lines of enacting tariffs so that we are on equal footing with countries that don't have the same labor laws that we do. It does go against the free trade mantra, but I'm not sure that's working too well for America.

The giant wooshing sound was all the jobs leaving the country.

I personally agree that we should institute tariffs on countries who don't have labor unions and/or unfair labor practices. And we should not be giving tax breaks to countries that send jobs overseas. What about tax breaks to companies that bring jobs back to the US?