Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

B402, You got Reagan and Clinton right. You did not include the fact that Reagan made NAFTA the focus of his campaign. You did not include importance of the fact that your "the people" voted Reagan in. You did not include HW Bush's involvement with the first, i guess, signed draft. And i have never seen you focus on capitalism as one chief culprit in the loss of American manufacturing jobs.

You accuse us of narrow political focus in our chats. How about you. Surely this content contribution, which you neither brought up (Soxfan did that) nor posted (as i did), is of much wider systemic focus than anything you have ever contributed here on the loss of manufacturing jobs in America.

Just stating what i see as fact, is all. No character assassination ever meant in the slightest. If you don't agree i, we, need more than your opinion. This to get more of it out in the open again:

Thanks, SoxFan, Who Calls the Shots in the Global Economy?

[...]

At first blush, this seems a stark assertion. It comes as a shock because this isn't the way most of us think the global economy works. We don't imagine that retail chains are deciding whether goods should be produced in the U.S., China, Mexico or Bangladesh.

This is because global economics is a bit like geology: Massive subterranean shifts take place below the surface, and we discover them only when our world is shaken. So we notice U.S. jobs migrating overseas as we see factory lights go out from Ohio to the Carolinas to California. We're generally aware of job losses since the early 1980s to waves of imports from Japan and the Asian tigers that hit one industry after another -- steel, autos, electronics, textile, apparel and toys.

So when it comes to cause and effect, we attribute our woes primarily to the export boom in China -- and before that, in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. But scholars now explain that since Japanese cars and electronics swept into America in the late 1970s and '80s, most of our job and industry losses didn't happen primarily because of Asia's aggressive export policies.

Instead, the experts tell us, these are self-inflicted wounds. American companies played a central role in the rise of China and the Asian Tigers. The seismic shifts in the global economy, they say, have been largely driven by American companies -- not just by multi-national manufacturers like GE or Hewlett Packard moving production overseas, but by giant American retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, Kmart, Toys "R" Us and Home Depot, and brands like Nike or Liz Claiborne galvanizing Asians to export to the U.S.

The Americans, they say, have gone well beyond merely hunting for bargains already being produced in Asia. In fact, both academics and business executives report, American retailers have actively driven outsourcing -- teaching East Asians how to design and manufacture products for American consumers, creating their own house brands in league with Chinese and Asian producers, and then bluntly warning beleaguered U.S. manufacturers that they'd better move their American plants to China and Asia if they want to survive.

Years of extensive interviews with Asian and American manufacturers, as well as study of trade flows, have persuaded Professor Gary Hamilton of the University of Washington, that the big box retailers, epitomized by Wal-Mart, have been "driving a massive restructuring of production worldwide; moving jobs from the U.S. and Europe to Asia. They do it by setting price points and forcing suppliers to meet their targets. Only lowest-cost labor can meet their targets, and that means producing in Asia."

Case in point: Bill Nichol, CEO of Kentucky Derby Hosiery, a sock manufacturer that has supplied Wal-Mart for 40 years. He credits Wal-Mart with forcing his company to be more disciplined and efficient, but he adds: "Their message to us, surprisingly, is, 'There's a broad market out there. If you want to focus on the lowest-cost part of the market, it's obvious that you can't do that in the United States'." So half of Nichol's 1,500 U.S. employees will soon be out of work and he'll have to open plants in China and other low-cost countries to hang onto his Wal-Mart account.

We heard that story again and again from American manufacturers in sectors as diverse as electronics, apparel, bicycles, furniture, and textiles. They expressed private dismay at the relentless pressure from the likes of Wal-Mart and Target to cut costs to the bone in America and then, when that did not satisfy the mass retailers, more pressure to move production to China or elsewhere offshore. But most did not dare to go on camera and tell their story publicly for fear of jeopardizing their remaining sales to Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart -- Changing the Economic Balance of Power

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