General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Free traders do NOT want to discuss WHY manufacturing is coming back to the USA [View all]jp11
(2,104 posts)Could it be that workers haven't had a real wage increase in decades? Could it be they see rising costs on all fronts and have to make their money go farther as the value of the dollar weakens?
"The only reason" BS, there were many reasons why it happened and people buying cheap crap when they are losing jobs, not getting raises and seeing the dollar buy less and less isn't the magic bullet. Laws/regulations that favored companies outsourcing jobs, moving them overseas etc all played a part in this
Free trade pretty much sealed the deal about not caring where things were made telling people that some jobs would go and you'd pay less for things while opening markets for our products so we'd have more work. But it of course was a lie all we got for the jobs that left were cheap goods who would want our products when they can make a knockoff for a fraction of the cost and our goods were taxed to prevent them from having a chance at being competitive yet we let theirs in for nothing.
I'd add that it has been 20+ years since I used to see ads about 'look for the union label', 'buy american', 'made in america' etc then they faded away a few years before NAFTA, it wasn't until very recently I've seen anything close to that message.
People's ignorance certainly played a part but it was far from the only reason.