Totally true, and it's totally disingenuous of some to constantly act like the only problem is excessive regulation and the corporate tax rate.
Cheap labor, often is little as 5% of the US rate, is and always has been the biggest lure for the export of US plants and jobs to cheap labor nations, and for the outsourcing of skilled work.
And the impetus for most of the move of US jobs to cheap labor nations has been the opening of the US market to goods produced in cheap labor nations, starting with Japan in the 1950s when it was a cheap labor nation. US firms gradually begin to seek cheaper labor to remain competitive in the US consumer market. And this trend started almost twenty years before Nixon succeeded in starting the EPA.
The first big move of US jobs to Mexico was not as a result of NAFTA, but of the maquiladora program started in the 1960s to locate US plants in northern Mexico. That was a program to give US companies access to more cheap labor, with some hope of stemming illegal immigration.
People have various motives for denying that cheap labor has been the biggest factor in the loss of US manufacturing (it's just sounds unseemly), but it is and has been since the 1950s. Other factors are significant, but cheap labor is #1 by far.
Cheap labor, often is little as 5% of the US rate, is and always has been the biggest lure for the export of US plants and jobs to cheap labor nations, and for the outsourcing of skilled work.
You were speaking of "broad and self-serving generalizations?" Instead of mailing me crap (I don't read my mail), why don't you just post in on the thread where the discussion occurs? Too complicated for you?