If you read Williams article, he states that87 percent of the manufacturing job losses are caused by productivity improvements. An economic simpleton he is NOT.
If the issue was productivity improvements it it would be done as easily in American plants, which then wouldn’t be empty shells. But that isn’t the case. Entire industries are relocating outside the country leaving nothing behind. The issue, as Paul Craig Roberts has been saying, is global labor arbitrage.
And he also included oil as a manufactured product. This alone terribly skews his numbers. Yes, fracking has massively increased productivity.
No, it did not cause our factories to close, but there it is in the equation.
The article is misleading.
Williams is a globalist Free Trade propagandist.