That what I was going to say. China didn't come begging for the western world to manufacture there. They supplied, we demanded and everyone was happy.
10s of millions of good paying middle-class jobs? You mean union labor manufacturing jobs. The problem with that is US union labor makes 150k a year (including benefits). The Chinese equivalent is 10 to 1 and they work 10 hour days, 6 days a week while we can't get union labor to work 8 hours a shift and companies have to contend with all these non working union staff paid for by the company. It's as simple as that. Actually, not even... take middle management cost at the same union manufacturers. They also are aligned on union pay and the C levels all demand high pay... it's a never winning comparison.
I was in China 20 years ago on a furniture manufacturing project, back when there was still furniture manufacturing in the US southeastern states. These US guys would visit Chinese factories and go home crying. Starting from scratch, the Chinese were building 100k sq factories with the latest German machineries and churning out thousands of units at 10th of US cost. It's a never winning comparison.
But I learned something very valuable.... because of their high volume production requirements, at the time, Chinese could not manufacture my high end products. They did not have the materials, nor the skills necessary. And then I realized the only way to beat the Chinese was to manufacture small to mid volume, high end products. But 20 years ago we didn't know how to do it AND we thought we were the world's best.
So coming back to our labor costs and why we lost the fight, it's not because of China, it's because we were not nimble enough and able to adjust to the new reality. We literally stopped making cars so we could stick to our only know how, the pickup truck.
Don't blame the Chinese.
