I appreciate your comments, but I must respond with this.
We are experiencing an $800 billion dollar per year trade deficit. You and others have attempted to state that this doesn't indicate a loss of manufacturing jobs. Okay, if that's what you want to believe, I can't change your mind.
It's inconcievable to me that folks can think that with all the manufacturing we've moved off shore, it hasn't impacted our manufacturing base. Alas, that's what the arguement has devolved to.
It's also rather interesting to consider that the $800 billion trade deficit would actually be larger if it weren't for the fact that our exports of parts to be assembled in China actually offset an even larger trade imbalance.
We aren't just losing the effects of $800 billion dollars on our economy each year, we are also losing the multiplier effect which would be five to ten times that figure.
Thousands of communities are being deprived of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of increased monetary activity.
Oh well, at least the Chinese and other nation's citizen's lives are being improved.
What has happened on the national level is that individual states don't have the same competitive advantage over other states that they once had. Back in the post-WW2 period manufacturing jobs moved from older U.S. cities (primarily in the Northeast) to other parts of the U.S. (mainly the Midwest and South) to take advantage of lower labor costs, lower utility costs, etc. Now that we have insisted on "nationalizing" more and more laws and regulations that affect these factors (i.e., employers have to pay SS and Medicare payroll taxes regardless of where they do business, they have to comply with OSHA regulations no matter where they do business, they have to buy electricity from utilities governed by FERC, etc.), these places don't have the same cost advantage over the major U.S. consumer markets that they once had.
This is very good.