It's not as cheap as you think. There are costs that would not show up from domestic manufacturing, such as shipping & Quality Control monitoring. Aside from that, you have to realize that even with the protocols set by the multinationals, the quality is actually less, so part of the "savings" is an illusion. The whole mechanism is basically held down by slave like wages of the Chinese, which will not last and is not lasting. China cannot keep its currency down. With the USD dropping, some manufacturing will start returning, but the days of well paid blue collar union workers are long gone. You can replicate the Chinese offshore plant with a sweatshop in NYC Chinatown, as it has been done and still is up to a degree. Just a matter of making it legal.
It's easy to find trained labor overseas.. but much harder to find skilled labor, and people who actually want to learn or even care about how your business actually works. Even when you work with people overseas, you'll find they have no concept of a deadline or desirable sequence for work to flow. Once they have a project started, they'll do it their way, and no amount of training or adjustment will suffice. This makes certain types of work impossible to transfer overseas without damaging your core business. Smart businesses have the methodical, repetitive, task oriented stuff done by foreign workers. The day to day management, and other soft skills have to be done locally. This includes innovation!
part of the thing driving some manufacturing out of China and some other low-cost countries, is the rampant piracy of their designs and competing against the very "factories" who learn from making for others and then make knockoffs themselves. But not sure which low cost country where piracy would be eliminated or minimized, but I would NOT have anything done in China. If I manufactured offshore, I would own the whole process, not let some smiling overnight factory entrepreneur get his/her claws on my design, business processes and manufacturing know-how.
manufacutring economy been in decline for decades. 70% of jobs is in service sector..manufacturing is low profit business..retailing and market is what nike does. which why all their factories are in china. look at us automakers nobody wants to own GM, low profit. the US auto sector is the biggest manufacturing jobs. the only jobs created would be min wage jobs...with these tarriffs and duties...heck farmers in california can't find workers to work the farms. americans in other industries or sectors would lose jobs if china puts duties and tarriffs on amercian goods etc it's terrrible trade war.
i hope everyone knows that the US still has the largest manufacturing economy in the world. where do you think buses, tractor trailers, airplanes, helicopter engines, satellites, etc, are made? when was the last time you flew on a chinese-made airplane or walked through a chinese-made bomb detector at the airport?
Currency discussion aside, this is just flat out false. Most americans believe china workers are paid "slave like" wages when they hear the factory wages in china to be around $300 a month, add on some good ol us media bias reporting, it sounds convincing. What they dont realize is in those areas, $1 will get you a nice meal, rent is <$100 a month, haircut cost less than $1 and so on. So $300 a month over there is actually good salary. Versus what those workers previously got as farmers, and working local jobs. Of course the living standard in china is still below that of the US, but calling the wages paid as slave-like is just nonsense when you factor in the local cost of living.... Another misconception is how all the factory in china are sweatshop with no windows etc, with workers forced to do their job. When in fact most of those factory campus are not that much different than in the us, better than colleges campus. I am sure there are exceptions you can find some pictures to show otherwise, but in general all large factory campus is nowhere close to what you described. In fact many manufacturing cities are so short of workers due to a rapidly aging work force thanks to the 1 child policy, the management is bending backwards with benefits, pools on campus etc.. to attract workers. ( http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/world/asia/13factory.html ) Take foxconn for example, the most famous "sweatshop" after the suicides broke out, most people believe as per the us media report the deaths were result of terrible living conditions and slave like wages. When in fact, none of those were true. The suicides were result of a social change as china moves forward, where everyone in china now has only 1 singular focus - make more money. Without proper enforced regulation on max hours allowed per day, many are significantly overworked (by their own choice) trying to earn more money, which caused all sorts of mental issues when done long term. This is the foxconn campus, it's no luxury but i hardly think it's some kind of dim windowless sweatshop the media made most americans believe, it is no chinatown sweatshop (which is terrible). http://www.foxconn.com/Condition.html I suggest you get a better understanding of china before making those statements, the us media is not always right...
I don't watch the news. And my information is not from US media. Maybe you should do some digging. Chinese Factory workers pay for their room & board, meals and any other goods. All of these are required to be bought from the company they work for and docked from their paycheck. Obviously the company provides those at cost (heavy sarcasm intended) The workers try to put whatever they can away and send home to their families at the villages, who no longer can be self sustainable. So it's not like they have high standards for pay wages and the factory owners are well aware. It is essentially a sweatshop and slave-like wages. Pretty much the same model that was widespread during the Industrial Revolution. I suggest doing some reading on that. Obviously the conditions in general have improved. But it still does not change the fact that the Chinese work for cheap and require less hassle from the perspective of health standards, work standards & general liability.
It's not slave wages when the salary paid is on par with the local living cost and its workers have complete freedom to come and go work elsewhere. That's like someone living in nyc making 150k saying a guy in kansas making 35k is slave wages. I never said it's high standard of living, but it's not slave wages and certainly not sweatshop. And what's wrong with sending most of the money home to parents/families? that's the chinese tradition vs using it as a down payment on a new car / plasma tv in the us. The working conditions and safety during the industrial revolution is nowhere close to china's factories today. I think you should take up your own advise and do some reading on us history. I provided links to facts that refutes pretty much everything you said, and know first hand what's going on over there. Compared to your mystery "source". It really does get tiring trying to explain to some of you with your know-it-all attitude about china when never even set foot in the country.