Time to demand Fair Trade!

[Glen]

Actually there are many jobs in the industry mentioned that are low skill. The high skill jobs in semiconductor fabrication or shipbuilding or petrochemical and pharmaceuticals are composed of the engineers, scientists and project managers. Those are jobs which continue to be done in the home country. While it does happen, it's pretty rare that engineers and doctors and lawyers and project managers are based in China when the client is over here.

Engineering follows manufacturing. A lot of engineering for computer hardware left the west and went to Taiwan. Now it is going to China. You also might want to google the reaction of Ontario radiologist had towards the off-shoring of there jobs. There are tremendous amounts of services that can be easily off-shored. The difference is that, unlike manufacturing, they are protected from competition.

Many of those industries simply aren't as high tech as they used to be. The metal bashing portion of shipbuilding is a rather low tech gig for example. And the high tech portions of these industries will always be reserved for the home country. As an example, our own government is currently developing a national shipbuilding industrial policy to coordinate with the our shipbuilding industry to build navy warships and coast guard patrol vessels.

Metal bashing? You need to look at how ships are built today, not 100 years ago.

Also do we really want all these industries here? Consider the example of how Taiwan became the semi-conductor fabrication capital of the world. They simply allowed their country to become a giant electronics manufacturing byproducts toxic dump site. That's hardly the vision anybody has for Canada.

You are correct in pointing out the advantages that different rules, regulations and standards can provide. Yet it reeks of hypocrisy to say that polluting (for example) is not allowed here, but OK to do elsewhere. If we believe in the rules, regulations and standards we should have border adjustments to level the playing field for imported goods so they do not gain a synthetic advantage.

Finally, you have to keep in mind that much of China's development is to meet its own internal consumption. The Chinese have been importing ships, aircraft, semi-conductors, petrochemicals, etc. for decades. Much of their technological and industrial development is merely aimed at self-reliance. Not all of it is export related. After all, just think, which Western airline is going to deploy Chinese built aircraft any time soon? Would any rail operator buy a Chinese built high speed train? Yet Bombardier and Boeing rule the roost in China.

China is now the second largest economy in the world. Yet its domestic market is the size of France. While China does import goods needing final assembly, to be re exported, the bulk of its imports are commodities. It also has in place an industrial policy to replace the import of unfinished goods and replace them with domestically produced ones. Alstom faced this. Funny you mention commercial aircraft. The PRC also has a program to produce airplanes and engines for itself.

 

[Glen]

But corporate profits, GDP, etc. weren't. The common man is suffering because those at the top of the pyramid have been getting fat. It's not because the Chinese are trying to steal his lunch.

That is why I mentioned real wage growth, not GDP. It is also another reason that growth rates in GDP were not sustainable.