Then I’d point out that given the current vectors of employment and home prices that the question is dangerously close to not being rhetorical at all, but a reality.

Finally I’d ask you if that changed your views on exporting jobs at all.

I’m sorry, maybe I’m stupid, but what is the larger conclusion you want me to draw from this rhetorical question other than “nobody”?

Regardless I don’t think anyone in here has taken a strict mercantilist approach, although I can’t really speak for charliep. I have no problems with made in China per se, but there are issues that arise when you are selling an image of all American quality, yet constantly chasing the cheapest prices around the globe. Ultimately I think the consumers will settle that one, a brand can only go so far on image alone, at some point quality and integrity become an issue that need to be addressed in order for the image to be maintained.

The more pressing issue is what happens in a deep recession/depression, something many economists put us entering into right now. Lets hope they are wrong first off. But if they are not? After all the last big depression killed the first age of globalization with a swiftness.

When money is expanding, jobs are popping up left and right and people’s investments are growing. In that situation taking jobs overseas is a minor issue, only the zealots and the unfortunate workers caught in the eddies in between old and new jobs truly care. But in a wholesale economic contraction? Very different story. Yeah everyone loves cheaper goods, but who buys them when their job is gone and their house is underwater?

Ultimately a nations balance sheet needs to add up. The US just borrowed massively for 8 straight years and now we are both paying the price and borrowing even more! So far it’s worked cause we borrow in a currency we also print and our government somehow can sell bonds at 0% interest. The end game has barely even started too…

Its odd you call my post palinesque when i am sure she would agree with your posts completely.

I personally like my stuff made by communists, so I’m sticking with China.

ACL

As someone who has spent time in both countries and has worked w/ manufacturers in both. There are fundamental differences between the two. China values efficiency over accuracy while Japan worships the details.

And I never said they couldn’t be some leader in quality control, I simply said they “will never be just like Japan.”

Japan is a small country and no longer has the population to fill enough factories to worry about the small things while China has generations of jobless disenfranchised citizens to replenish the workforce for the next century. Which means they will not have to abandon low quality goods for sometime. But that does not mean they can only do such goods.

Abe,
My argument isn’t that China doesn’t want to step up the quality of its production chain, but that it shouldn’t and probably won’t restrict itself into the production role that Japan has nowadays, which is the manifestation of the view that Japan only makes expensive, complex products.
I am still unconvinced that outsourcing is somehow unfair, unsympathetic, or detrimental to the firms that engage in the practice. The stance only becomes problematic in the sense that it is a catch-up period to the realities of the market. I’m not very sympathetic to the argument that anybody should be able to maintain a job purely for the reason that it’s more patriotic (in the theoretical and practical sense) than giving the job to someone abroad.

Not sure where you got the word “homogenous” from, but there are a lot of reasons for China to want to step up the quality of it’s goods. Not saying there isn’t another path, but the classic industrial development model has what you could call a “Henry Ford” stage where in order to keep growing companies need to pay their workers enough to make them into consumers as we as the producers. And it’s damn hard to do that while maintaining razor margins and lowest common denominator quality controls.

As christopher has noted China is already well into this stage, but being such an enormous country means its a lot harder to see how it plays out, as opposed to say South Korea or even Taiwan.

Also calling Charlie P’s stance “palinesque” is a rather disingenuous put down. There is a rich centuries long history to mercantilism, although not a huge history of success.

I’m actually rather sympathetic to Charlie’s point, after all I do produce made in the USA (and for that matter made in NYC where I was born and raised) garments. I’m not a hard liner by any means, but when you have a company that is selling itself based on the image of a community, it seems fair to ask that they give a certain amount back to that community.

When times are good and the economy expanding send the lesser jobs overseas might seem appropriate, but when times are getting lean, unemployment rocking skyward and retailers diving the off cliffs, that stance suddenly becomes problematic.

China production will never be just like Japan for many reasons but mainly due to vast differences in culture and its shear geographic footprint and population.

That being said, there once was a time when Japan made only low quality low tech goods as well. That is of course is where any industrialized society gets its start. And through time and experience the manufacturing gradually gets better and more complex. Japan no longer makes such goods because their economy has outgrown its dependency on that market.

So as the cycle goes, the manufacture of those types of goods began to move west into China. This of course was decades ago now and China has outgrown many of these goods as well and has moved into more complex and better quality production. China will too someday outgrow of much of this market as well and in large part has in a lot of ways already. Production has now moved even further west.

Production costs in China are rising everyday as workers demand more money, better working conditions, benefits, and a improved work-life balance. (sound familiar?) These are all the exact same reasons manufacturing left the good ‘ol US of A as well.

India is the new China and when we’re old and wrinkled Africa will be the new India.

Because China will be above such product just as Japan is today.