This article from CBSnews.com explains how China's booming economy is translating into jobs for Americans, both here in the US and abroad:
U.S. Benefiting From China's Boom
(CBS) Ben Wood is an American architect who's changing a city skyline. Not so unusual, except, the skyline he's changing is Shanghai, China.
He came here to design one project. But as CBS News Correspondent Barry Petersen reports, more work keeps pouring in. Now he's part of a growing number of Americans getting jobs because of China's booming economy.
"For a guy like me that's just extraordinary," says Wood. "This is like - I don't want to say it - but it's an architect's dream."
And he's not alone. More and more American are making it in the Chinese economy.
Sheldon Habiger and Scott Minoe found their future here. They opened a restaurant serving American health food like smoothies and salads and the Chinese are eating it up.
"We went here and it's like a blank canvas," says Minoe. "It's like a painter going to a blank canvas."
"But it's not only individual Americans doing well. American companies are selling goods to ever richer Chinese.
China is not just the new land of opportunity for Americans coming here, its powerhouse economy is starting to create a lot of jobs back in the United States.
All these new skyscrapers and new cars being made here means China has a heavy demand for steel.
That means heavy demand for iron ore. Half a world away, that demand put almost 400 laid-off miners in northern Minnesota back to work.
And heavy demand for Chinese-made appliances prompted China's Haier Corporation to build a $40 million factory in Camden, South Carolina. That saves millions in shipping costs, and the company hopes buyers will believe quality is higher with a made in the USA label.
And in a small town, 200 jobs make all the difference for Main Street.
"The employees out there are supporting our grocery stores, our clothing stores and all our other merchants," says Buddy Clark, the executive director of the Kershaw County Chamber of Commerce.
Americans are concerned about exporting jobs to China. But closing the door to trade is going to mean a growing number of Americans who now depend on China for a paycheck, could lose their jobs.
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Article comments
1 - mike
But higher taxes and protectionism are going to be legacy of the second Bush Administration. See:
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/03/07/185345.php
And also:
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/01/17/194900.php
2 - David Flanagan
I disagree. Its very true that President Bush imposed a steel tariff here in the states in an attempt to protect our foundering steel industry, but it backfired miserably and actually made things worse, not better. The steel tariff also angered our trading partners quite a bit, and, the last I heard, it was quietly removed.
Now its Kerry who is angering our trading partners because of his promises to, if elected, offer special incentives to keep jobs here in the US in violation of some of our trade agreements. But, even if Bush does continue to overtly or covertly attempt to protect the loss of jobs in the US, he won't be remembered for this.
Also, if for some reason, Bush reverses his course and raises taxes to some degree, he won't be remembered for this either, especially in light of the fact that Democrats are pushing so hard to get people to accept the inevitability of a tax increase.
However, with that said, why can't the US government cut its spending? We have pork barrel spending in this country that runs into the tens of billions, and wasteful spending on social programs that, run effectively, would save hundreds of billions over the next decade. Must we assume that the federal government can never become more efficient and cut back on its costs? If so, then we acknowledge that our government will one day become a monster large enough to consume the society it was created to protect.
Thanks.
David
3 - mike
The wasteful spending is overwhelmingly in the defense budget; so-called discretionary spending accounts for only about 20% of federal dollars. Converting to a privatized Social Security system would require huge up front outlays by the government to make the accounting work. Medicare spending is about to go through the roof, courtesy of the new drug bill.
In addition, there is another multi-billion dollar aid request for Iraq coming on November 3, the day Bush's second term starts.
The GOP has no further credibility as a fiscally responsible party. It advocates bloated big government conservatism--cronyism run amok. War is the health of the state, especially the coercive, policing state, and the state is now a monster.
4 - David Flanagan
The GOP has no further credibility as a fiscally responsible party. It advocates bloated big government conservatism--cronyism run amok.
You sound like a Republican. :-) I too believe that Republicans have been spending like crazy. The Medicare plan is going to be way more expensive than predicted, and Medicare should have been reformed in the first place, not given extra funds.
If the GOP may well have sown the seeds of their ultimate removal from power in the House and the Senate. If they don't change their ways, then I'll do what I can to make sure they that they DO get voted out of office.
As for war being the health of the state, you couldn't be more wrong. War is the necessary function of the state, and, in case you haven't been paying attention to events in Spain, Iraq, and elsewhere (not to mention what happened on 9/11), right now our military likely means the survival of our way of life.
Thanks.
David
5 - Hal Pawluk
However, with that said, why can't the US government cut its spending? We have pork barrel spending in this country that runs into the tens of billions, and wasteful spending on social programs that, run effectively, would save hundreds of billions over the next decade.
Today's answer is: Republicans.
This congress, particularly the House, is pork city. The highway bill, medicare, the energy bill - all jam-packed with pork. The Senate has occasionally provided a bit of control, but not enough.
You can write your Senators and House Representative and ask them to stop it. I understand that if they get as few as 200-300 letters/calls/emails, they tend to pay attention.
6 - Hal Pawluk
The examples of cars being made in China for sale to the Chinese market and appliances in the US for sale to the US market are great examples of how trade can work well. (It's not perfect - the profits from China will largely be reinvested in China and India as those markets grow much more rapidly than the US.)
However, the problem case is that jobs get exported to sell things back in the US, and that changes the picture entirely.
Even the steel example is not complete. We gained 200 mining jobs to replace 2.3 million manufacturing jobs, 60% of which will not be back - not a great exchange.
7 - Ms. Tek
*rolls eyes*
Hal... you are barking up a tree.
Don't you get it?
If you lose 300 mid paying jobs to gain 3 high paying jobs, then everything is working well! Remember we want more of the super high paying jobs and less of the mid paying jobs. And if you lose your mid-paying job, then you need to suck it up and just wash cars and clean houses if you can find a place where they have a shortage if illegal mexican workers!
Get with the new math!
If you don't, you're gonna miss out on the new titles Congress his keeping in its bunkers.
Wouldn't you rather be known as "By His Grace in God and His Faith in the State, Lord Hal."?
8 - Craig Lyndall
One thing that I read recently explored what it would take for an American programmer to move to India to take a job there. If you could make 11,000 bones per year in India you would be a fairly rich person. Certainly more wealthy than making programmer's wages here in America. This would be the great equalizer in my opinion, but what the writer found was that immigration laws in India forbid that kind of movement. This is the point at which I think this offshoring trade is unfair to the U.S. If we have open border policies, then it is unfair for countries we trade with to not have similar policies. If we accept Indian workers here, why can't they accept American workers there?
I don't know why you would want to move to India necessarily, but shouldn't you be allowed to in a free market system?
9 - Hal Pawluk
Craig, a big part of the problem is that we're in a global economy but not a free market.
It's likely there has never been a real "free market" in the history of the world, and Adam Smith's "invisible hand" often does not exist. I'm pleased to see that some economists and globalists are starting to raise this issue, but so far it's too little and will definitely be too late to help us. Even when the "hand" does work, it requires some government regulation because the main objective of business is to make a profit, period, and unchecked businesses operate like sharks in a feeding frenzy (especially with the short term pressures of the stock market).
From the US perspective, one major issue that few seem willing to recognize is that the global economy (as contrasted to 'free trade') has thrown American labor into a world labor pool.
This means, for instance, that instead of thinking about our single digit unemployment rate, we should be looking at a "pool" unemployment/under-employment rate that's an order of magnitude higher than the local rate in the US.
We also need to consider that, having a relatively low population, we educate very few people for higher-level jobs. For instance, we graduate around 60,000 engineers in a year. India and China combined graduate 750,000 each year, and many of theirs don't find jobs in their fields. The costs of high-end "creative and innovative" work are going to stay low.
Their high-end industries are better than ours, too. I would expect that because of their much larger labor pool. A company here has its pick from 60,000 engineers; there, they get to pick the cream of the cream of the crop from 750,000. We can see this in software production in India. There's a scale that's accepted internationally for rating software. It goes from 1 to 5. Indian software companies gets a 4; ours get a 2.
Venture capitalists do recognize this, and are insisting that off-shoring is part of any plan they consider funding.
This isn't going to be fixed any time soon because "free traders" are muddying the waters. They don't seem to understand that sending jobs off-shore to produce goods for the US market is not trade - it's labor arbitrage.
It's not a trade issue but, understandably, American corporations want to keep this myth going because it allows them to increase their profits. They ignore the downside that while company management increases their bonuses and makes stock market investors happy, they are exporting our quality of life - American living standards will continue drop as this continues.
10 - Tapart News Advocate
Free Trade is based on moving factories, production and outsourcing jobs to the cheapest labor markets of the world. This is something new in the history of the world and should have another name since historically trade was based on trading products. There was the slave trade with human beings traded for products and perhaps today we can call Free Trade -the wage slave trade. Workers are the commodity. They are put on a world trading block to compete with the lowest common denominator down to wage slave and even child labor.
When production is moved from place to place, burn out communities are left behind as we can witness this in the USA. There are miles of boarded up storefronts and empty factories in our cities and dead towns across the USA with the USA going through the most massive dislocation of jobs in our history perhaps even greater than even the Great Depression when gasoline was only 10 cents a gallon, a first class stamp was only 3 cents and a brand new automobile sold for just over $600. In today's $1.76 for a gallon of gasoline economy, a 37 cents first class stamp and with even a ten year old automobile costing over $2,000, the unemployed and underemployed have no real way of surviving. Globalism and Free Trade have betrayed workers everywhere with value added economies destroyed too in a no way out of poverty for millions.
For more see Tapart News and Art that Talks at http://yestapart.bizland.com/tapartnews http://tapsnewstory.filetap.com and http://arklineart.fotopages.com Read American in Terror, House of Cards Economy and the Silent Depression. View the Cross 9/11 Tangle of Terror artwork by Ray Tapajna asking who will now untangle the terror Globalism and Free Trade have bred.