DONALD TRUMP AND THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY DTACP

[Giovanni]

This Economic Model Organized Asia for Decades. Now It’s Broken.
Automation threatens to block the ascent of Asia’s poor. Civil unrest could follow.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-06-21/this-economic-model-organized-asia-for-decades-now-it-s-broken

The transformation looks like it will happen fast. The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that mass replacement of less-skilled workers by robots could be only two years away. Overall, more than 80 percent of garment industry workers in Southeast Asia face a high risk of losing their jobs to automation, according to Chang Jaehee, an ILO researcher who studies advanced manufacturing. Chang recalls presenting her findings to a government official in a country in the region that she declines to name. The official’s response? If she’s right, the result could be civil unrest.

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As automation accelerates, it’s not just Asia that could see its industrial trajectory affected. If the cost of labor is no longer a major factor, there’s no reason manufacturers can’t relocate production to where the bulk of their customers are: North America and Europe, where wages for decades have been too high to support textile production. Remove most of the workers from the equation, along with the costs and delays of round-the-world shipping, and making clothes or shoes in Dallas or Düsseldorf instead of Dhaka starts to look like a compelling idea.