[maui_hawaii]

Let me let you in on some politico economist speak:

Lets say you had a factory making wigits in Oregon. Right next door, you have your corporate office which employs the accounting crew and the sales dept. (about 100 people total)

If that company then decides to close the wigit factory and move in to China...

The statistics people will claim that "trade has created" every job left in Corp HQ.

Sometimes the more honest ones use the term "rely on" rather than "create", but most use the term "create".

[ninenot]

Uh, actually about 80 jobs. Twenty of the Corp. types will get cut: manufacturing engineers, lower-level accountant-types, and the HR staff except for 1.

Of course, there's another effect: whoever sold MRO or OEM to the closed factory will ALSO lay off a couple of folks, somewhere downtrack--which means that they, too, will cut back on accounting and legal services, etc...

[1rudeboy]

Likewise, if that factory in Oregon has a cafeteria, and management decides to out-source the cafeteria work to a contractor, then it counts as "manufacturing jobs lost."