>>China doesnât really âdevalueâ its currency. Itâs hard to devalue a currency that is already worthless.
There’s more to it than just that, but it is essentially what they do. As someone else stated upthread, they are giving stuff away and paying the freight.
They do it to give their work force something to do. They are engaged in something that is considered “evil” in today’s America: they are looking out for THEIR OWN best interests, and that even includes the interests of the workers.
They could just give away Free Stuff and let most of their people sit around with nothing to do but gripe and take the handouts and then all these people on the dole could do #PeasantLivesMatter marches.
But China has chosen to put them to work.
We give away all of our low-skill work, then make college expensive and enslave the poor to student loans that cannot be written off for any reason other than death.
Using the business theories of the early 20th century (before automation and cheap computers), our plans for shipping all low-skill, Stage 3 work overseas is sound. But the hidden costs to society have killed us as a nation. The various theories of business, globalization, and organizational behavior have evolved over the last 3 centuries, but we are afraid to admit that the 1970-era models of business might be due for another update.
The dilemma we face is that we can either employ a lot of people in manufacturing, or we can have the highest standard of living in the world. We really can't do both at the same time.
It's also worth nothing that the migration of manufacturing from the U.S. to other parts of the world isn't necessarily the result of some kind of betrayal or pernicious politics at work. The simple truth is that there are more than 7 billion people in this world, and the U.S. with its 300+ million people just isn't the same attractive market we used to be.