Dateline February 16, 2012 Los Angeles Times: “Upbeat Obama Visits L.A.”
While acknowledging that “change is hard,” President Obama touted the nation’s economic progress on his watch during a reception in Los Angeles Wednesday night. Earlier Wednesday, the President visited the Master Lock factory in Milwaukee, portraying the manufacturer as an optimistic tale about American manufacturing on the rebound––citing that Master Lock has moved 100 jobs from China back to its Milwaukee plant. Obama said, “Today you’re selling products directly to customers in China stamped with those words, ‘Made In America.'”
The President appealed to manufacturers to reverse outsourcing and find ways to create jobs back home. Obama’s Republican critics argue that “U.S. industry doesn’t lack patriotism, business executives will add jobs when it’s in their economic interest to do so. The best thing the President can do to prevent outsourcing is pull back on the destructive policies that are making it harder for American businesses to hire workers here at home.”
Sadly, none of the rhetoric addresses the core reason for the exodus of American manufacturers from the U.S. At present, American corporations are increasingly abandoning the United States and its communities to invest in productive capital formation outside the United States, particularly in China, Mexico, India, and other parts of Asia. As a result, America is experiencing the de-industrialization of America. Such overseas operations have the advantage of “sweat-shop” slave labor rates relative to American standards, low or no taxation, supportive infrastructure provisions, currency manipulation, and few if any environmental regulations––which translate to lower-cost production. Thus, producing the same product or service in the United States would be far more expensive. For most people, economic globalization means a growing gap between rich and poor, technological alienation of the labor worker from the means of production, and the phenomenon of global corporations and strategic alliances forcing labor workers in high-cost wage markets, such as the United States, to compete with labor-saving capital tools and lower-paid foreign workers. Unemployment is high and there is an accelerating displacement of labor workers by technology and cheaper foreign labor, resulting in greater economic uncertainty and unstable retirement incomes for the average American citizen––causing the average citizen to become increasingly dependent on government wealth redistribution programs.
We need a policy change, which assures truly “Fair Trade” and that exponentially reduces the exodus of our manufacturing prowess and invigorates America’s entrepreneurial exceptionalism and competitive spirit to create products and services in the spirit of “the best that they can be.” We need policies that will de-incentivize American multichannel corporations and others from undercutting “American Made,” while simultaneously competitively lowering the cost of production through expanded capital worker ownership. At present, the various incentives in place do not broaden capital ownership but instead further concentrate ownership.
