Manufacturing jobs always flow to where the costs are cheapest. The question is, how far are you willing to go to support the manufacturing. Businesses may pollute, bribe officials to get better deals, fight unions to keep free of them, may or may not be concerned with the future health and well being of their employees or their customers. They avoid paying taxes, avoid responsibility when their products or activities cause harm. They often lobby the government for protection to allow them to pollute. Or enable them to continue to sell their products in non-biodegradeable or non-recyclable packaging.
Then again states, counties and municiplaities need a tax base, which means lots of people working and lot or businesses operating to pay those taxes. The problem is how far should you go to accommodate business, and to what extent should they be regulated. It's cheaper to produce in China, because manufacturers there are allowed to pollute. Maybe the US should refuse to trade with countries that allow the polluting of the environment or support a currency regime that allows an unfair wage advantage.
In other words, world trade allows good to be produced at the lowest cost, but not necessarily at a total cost that human beings should want to support, or in effect subsidize by doing business with. Or, even less invasive but possibly more effective, domestic competitors should be free to point out how the Chinese company does business, and leave it to the consumer to decide who to buy from.
A lot of good came out of the protections for consumers in the US, and even wage protection for Unions. Until Unions came along most workers were treated like crap, just like they are in China today. A lot of the expenses of doing business in the US are good for the people, and they are things you wouldn't want to give up in order to become more competitive.
The stupid thing is that we're trading with a closed regime that doesn't support human rights or deal with the outside world in an above-board manner. Why are we subsidizing their growth, at the expense of American jobs? This is something that our leaders in Government and in business support, but little of it seems to have benefitted us. The cheap prices were nice for a while, until our job went away.
America isn't going to come back until we re-evaluate how we deal with foreign trade, the current situation is not working, and not being allowed to rebalance. At some point, US wages will be competitive again, but by that point we'll be as poor as the average worker in China. And they still won't let us sell our goods there.
