Economists dump on Trump boast to bring jobs back from China

[Panich52]

The Hill

The Associated Press: Economists dump on Trump boast to bring jobs back from China
By Paul Wiseman

Donald Trump vows to bring back the millions of American jobs lost to China and other foreign competitors if voters put him in the White House.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_GOP_2016_TRUMP_JOBS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-08-05-03-30-05

[Historic NY]

1. Ah so he intends to have his ties and shirt made here then...

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trump-admits-gear-made-china-labels/story?id=13472355

[patricia92243]

2. In other words, when he could help create jobs - he didn't. n/t

[zipplewrath]

3. It's about energy costs

From the article:

Currently, several of those factors favor the United States over China. The fracking boom has cut energy costs for U.S.-based factories. Chinese wages have soared, while American wages have been flat. In parts of America, land is cheaper than in China.

So some American companies already are bringing jobs back, and some Chinese companies are investing in plants in America. Last year, for example, Chinese glassmaker Fuyao Glass Industry Group Co. announced plans to take over an abandoned GM plant in Moraine, Ohio, near Dayton, and create 800 jobs.

The big fiction is that jobs and factories move to where there is cheap labor. That's only one of several costs and the cost of energy, especially in today's highly automated factories, is becoming the dominant factor. It has been the drop in the cost of electrical energy that has attracted manufacturing back to the US. It was the cheaper, TVA based, electricity costs that had a lot of manufacturing moving south from the "rust belt" to North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, etc. in the past. Getting away from unions was just a bonus. It's why VW and BMW build factories down there, and then still ask for unions.

If we want to bring more manufacturing jobs back to the US the #1 thing we could do is to invest in transportation infrastructure (trains, roads, ports, etc.) and in CHEAP energy which in the future is going to be coming from solar and wind. The price of solar is getting so low even then power companies are beginning to notice. It will take some of the technologies that are currently within the "smart grid" concept (short term storage capacity and load leveling technologies). Any renewable that we can harvest (without severe environmental consequences) should be explored. Oh, and we should do it as much as possible on a municipal/government/nonprofit sense. It should be a resource, not a commodity.