I hear this a lot but the other side of the equation is never mentioned. Consider this scenario:
A company employs 100 people who make an average of $40,000 a year to sell a widget that retails for $100. The company sells 100,000 of these widgets a year. That's an annual payroll of $4,000,000 a year but the consumers have to pay a total of $10,000,000 for these 100,000 widgets.
Now the company moves the factory overseas to take advantage of lower labor costs and that widget now retails for just $40. So while $4,000,000 a year in local income is lost, consumers now have an extra $6,000,000 in their pockets to spend on other things because they are paying 60% less for these widgets. That extra $6,000,000 a year could be used in local restaurants, home improvements (putting contractors to work) or to buy boats (putting more boatmakers to work).
This is a simplistic scenario to be sure but bottom line is that cheaper consumer goods is not always a bad thing. And the money saved by cheaper consumer goods is often spent someplace else (or invested). Imagine how much more expensive everything would be if all consumer goods were manufactured here in the U.S.A. by factory workers at union scale.
I would prefer that manufacturing stay in America too. But between government taxation and regulation, not to mention the artificially set wages forced by unions, you can't really blame them all that much.
A company employs 100 people who make an average of $40,000 a year to sell a widget that retails for $100. The company sells 100,000 of these widgets a year. That's an annual payroll of $4,000,000 a year but the consumers have to pay a total of $10,000,000 for these 100,000 widgets.
Now the company moves the factory overseas to take advantage of lower labor costs and that widget now retails for just $40. So while $4,000,000 a year in local income is lost, consumers now have an extra $6,000,000 in their pockets to spend on other things because they are paying 60% less for these widgets. That extra $6,000,000 a year could be used in local restaurants, home improvements (putting contractors to work) or to buy boats (putting more boatmakers to work).
The company is not going to retail the widget for $40 after the move. They will retail the widget for $105, "in order to pay for costs associate with relocation of operations." The difference in labor costs between the M$ 4 of U.S. based operations and the (unspecified but lower) foreign based operations will go directly into the corporate executives' pockets.
True, the executives will then spend that money on marble toilets and private jets. Meanwhile, though, the 100 people are not spending any money because they don't have any to spend.
My God, I'm sounding like a Democrat here. Still, I don't see how the above scenario could be defended as a good thing to happen.