Why Free Trade is not fair to American's...or "those jobs are just not coming back"

[Joanne98]

I've followed the "free trade' movement most of my adult life. While, in the 1980's, there was some resistance to the idea of buying imported goods (BUY AMERICAN!) a combination of shoddy quality and Government policy to "open up' free trade with Mexico (NAFTA 1994), China (China Trade Relations Act 1999) and other "free trade' policies has had the effect of gutting American Manufacturing to the point where it is literally impossible for many U.S. based companies to find a U.S. manufacturing plant to produce their goods. They must outsource manufacturing to factories off-shore. This is especially true in the consumer sector from clothing to appliances to electronics.

And while the U.S. has the largest consumer market in the world, we no longer have the ability to make most of the products we consume.

The hidden cost of off-shore production is not only the cost of manufacturing jobs, but is also a lack of opportunity for entrepreneurs to start businesses in the U.S. that have any chance of survival. Manufacturing has a cascading effect of producing companies and jobs to support the manufacturing effort.

As an example, let's take the Apple iPhone 4.
isuppli of El Segundo, California is a market research outfit that specializes in 'teardowns' of products to produce a Bill of Materials (BOM) list and estimates as to component costs (Link). In its recent teardown of the Apple iphone 4 it developed the following BOM representing $187.51 in material cost (labor, overhead, shipping, etc. is not included), the New York Times breaks down the country of origin as follows:

http://www.opednews.com/Diary/Why-Free-Trade-is-not-fair-by-CitizenNYC-100902-93.html

[xchrom]

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[madrchsod]

2. generation industries are a thing of the distant past.

obama`s grand idea of restoring the middle class is nothing more that words. until real trade,tax,and wage reform comes to the usa we will be nothing more than a second world country.

my children think i`m a bit daft when i lament about having a good paying union job when i was their age..