On the Sunday talk shows, Trump made variations of the same argument he made in 2012 — that as president he would be able to bring back lost manufacturing jobs from China and Mexico. If there’s been a policy “theme” to Trump’s campaign — and my colleague David Fahrenthold cogently explains why I put quotes around that word — it’s that past U.S. presidents have been bad trade negotiators and that because of these bad trade deals the rest of the world is somehow fleeing the U.S. manufacturing sector. This is a message he’s delivered again and again and again.
If you want more evidence, consider Monday’s excellent New York Times story by Hiroko Tabuchi about Chinese textile firms now relocating factories back to the United States. It turns out that rising labor costs in China compared with the United States has improved U.S. competitiveness. According to Tabuchi, “for every $1 required to manufacture in the United States, Boston Consulting estimates that it costs 96 cents to manufacture in China.”
So that means a massive exodus of Chinese jobs coming to the United States, right? Wrong:
The work is highly automated, with the factory’s 32 production lines churning out about 85 tons of yarn a day. Even when Keer opens a second factory next year, it will hire just 500 workers, a fraction of the thousands of workers who toiled at cotton mills across the South for much of the 19th and 20th centuries — a big reason Keer is able to keep costs down.
