# Let's bring those jobs back... How? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 19, 2016, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448 "2016-11-19T18:20:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 14
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2016, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/261 "2016-12-22T21:00:54Z")
> [@Pearl\_Clutching\_Provocateur](#): > > I believe that most people would presume that the wage gap between China and the USA is so great that it is an insurmountable obstacle. The article I linked to and quoted provides numbers that I was unaware of and as well as a sense of what goes in China in terms of policy and regulation. The OP of this thread and others seem to believe that bringing manufacturing jobs back to the USA is unrealistic while this article suggests it is possible. If you’d read the OP, you’d see that I consider automation to be a bigger threat to low skilled manufacturing jobs than offshoring is, so, your claim that I “believe that bringing manufacturing jobs back to the USA is unrealistic”, is at best less than half right. We may get manufacturing capacity back, but it is not going to bring with it jobs for low skilled factory workers. But, if you are looking at that article, and thinking that it gives macroeconomic data and solutions, then you don’t quite understand the difference between microeconomics and macro. I also am not sure about some of the numbers that he claimed. I would like to see some second opinion on that. For instance, land in the US is almost free? What does that mean? I am sure I could find a parcel of land in the middle of no where for chump change, but if I look at any commercial properties anywhere near a population center, it is not very close to free. We also have some interesting supply issues. Rare earths are hardly mined in the US, and we get pretty much all of them From China. In the last some odd years, China has been decreasing the quota of RE’s to be exported, making it harder for US companies to produce high tech manufacturing in large quantities. This doesn’t matter for making auto glass, but most electronics and other manufacturing these days need a steady supply. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2016, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/262 "2016-12-22T21:17:34Z")
China dropped their RE export quota two years ago. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2016, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/263 "2016-12-22T21:44:41Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > China dropped their RE export quota two years ago. Yes and no. I did inexpertly use the word quota as something that is a continuing practice. You are correct in that they no longer have a “quota” for export. They still do, however, completely control the US RE market. (and pretty much the global one as well.) > [@](#): > > [China continues to stockpile the minerals, and the country is expected to continue to be the world’s largest holder of rare earths well into the future. While China was forced to scrap its rare earth export quotas last year, the country kept internal production quotas, revamped its domestic production tax and axed rare earth export tariffs, which helped to bring rare earth prices down. > > Looking ahead, China is expected to put an annual limit on its rare earth production beginning in 2020. As the world’s largest supplier of rare earth, this will no doubt significantly impact the industry.]([Top 10 Countries for Rare Earth Metal Production | INN](http://investingnews.com/daily/resource-investing/critical-metals-investing/rare-earth-investing/top-rare-earth-producing-countries-2013-usgs-2/)) Technically, you are correct, they are no longer allowed, according to the WTO, to put quotas in place for export. This does not mean that the production of RE’s in China are up for grabs for the US. And it’s not like it is doing us any [favors](http://www.mining.com/us-remains-almost-entirely-dependent-china-rare-earths/). So, on topic, maybe we get all those coal miners to go mine for RE’s? ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2016, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/264 "2016-12-22T22:02:31Z")
Maybe 500 of them. That’s all Mountain Pass had. ---
**Author:** ![Pearl\_Clutching\_Provocateur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c68b51/32.png) [@Pearl\_Clutching\_Provocateur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pearl_Clutching_Provocateur)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/265 "2017-01-03T21:18:37Z")
Thank you President Trump! Ford cancels Mexico plant. Will create 700 U.S. jobs in ‘vote of confidence’ in Trump > **[Ford cancels Mexico plant. Will create 700 U.S. jobs in 'vote of confidence'...](https://money.cnn.com/2017/01/03/news/economy/ford-700-jobs-trump/index.html)** > > Ford scraps plans to build a new plant in Mexico. It will invest $700 million in Michigan instead, creating 700 U.S. jobs. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/266 "2017-01-03T21:50:32Z")
> [@Pearl\_Clutching\_Provocateur](#): > > Thank you President Trump! > > Ford cancels Mexico plant. Will create 700 U.S. jobs in ‘vote of confidence’ in Trump > > [Ford cancels Mexico plant. Will create 700 U.S. jobs in 'vote of confidence' in Trump](http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/03/news/economy/ford-700-jobs-trump/index.html) Um, your cite says that instead of building a new plant in Mexico, Ford is going to transfer some production of the Ford Focus to their existing plant in Hermosillo, which last time I checked was still in Mexico. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/267 "2017-01-03T21:55:11Z")
Not to mention the fact we need about 100,000 new jobs per month just to keep up with worker population growth. 700 jobs in a one time event, even if they really were in the US, would be not even a drop in the bucket; more like a drop in the swimming pool. But it sure makes the rubes cheer when the hear about it. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/268 "2017-01-03T22:09:24Z")
> [@Pearl\_Clutching\_Provocateur](#): > > Thank you President Trump! > > Ford cancels Mexico plant. Will create 700 U.S. jobs in ‘vote of confidence’ in Trump > > [Ford cancels Mexico plant. Will create 700 U.S. jobs in 'vote of confidence' in Trump](http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/03/news/economy/ford-700-jobs-trump/index.html) > [@](#): > > Ford (F) CEO Mark Fields said the investment is a “vote of confidence” in the pro-business environment being created by Donald Trump. However, he stressed Ford did not do any sort of special deal with the president-elect. > > **“We didn’t cut a deal with Trump. We did it for our business,”** Fields told CNN’s Poppy Harlow in an exclusive interview Tuesday. The question is why doesn’t Trump take the lead and bring the production of his products to the States. Or will he exempt himself from the punitive tariffs? ---
**Author:** ![Pearl\_Clutching\_Provocateur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c68b51/32.png) [@Pearl\_Clutching\_Provocateur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pearl_Clutching_Provocateur)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/269 "2017-01-03T22:09:39Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Not to mention the fact we need about 100,000 new jobs per month just to keep up with worker population growth. 700 jobs in a one time event, even if they really were in the US, would be not even a drop in the bucket; more like a drop in the swimming pool. > > But it sure makes the rubes cheer when the hear about it. That wall he’s going to build will employ a lot of people too. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/270 "2017-01-03T22:15:10Z")
> [@Pearl\_Clutching\_Provocateur](#): > > That wall he’s going to build will employ a lot of people too. He’ll employ Mexicans. As long as they don’t cross the border. And he won’t pay them anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/271 "2017-01-03T22:25:31Z")
Not to mention that building that wall (assuming it happens), like most things nowadays, will be a highly mechanized affair. So relatively few people will be employed, and most of those will be people already skilled in operating heavy construction equipment. ---
**Author:** ![Univarsedivide](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/7ab992/32.png) [@Univarsedivide](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Univarsedivide)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/272 "2017-01-03T22:30:29Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > If you’d read the OP, you’d see that I consider automation to be a bigger threat to low skilled manufacturing jobs than offshoring is, so, your claim that I “believe that bringing manufacturing jobs back to the USA is unrealistic”, is at best less than half right. We may get manufacturing capacity back, but it is not going to bring with it jobs for low skilled factory workers. > > But, if you are looking at that article, and thinking that it gives macroeconomic data and solutions, then you don’t quite understand the difference between microeconomics and macro. > > I also am not sure about some of the numbers that he claimed. I would like to see some second opinion on that. For instance, land in the US is almost free? What does that mean? I am sure I could find a parcel of land in the middle of no where for chump change, but if I look at any commercial properties anywhere near a population center, it is not very close to free. > > We also have some interesting supply issues. Rare earths are hardly mined in the US, and we get pretty much all of them From China. In the last some odd years, China has been decreasing the quota of RE’s to be exported, making it harder for US companies to produce high tech manufacturing in large quantities. This doesn’t matter for making auto glass, but most electronics and other manufacturing these days need a steady supply. Did you know that the Chinese have just been blocked from setting up there own mining companies in Australia? The reason they can stock pile is because they buy most of Australia’s minerals, we have a massive COUNTRY with great mineral wealth and a low population (23 mill). The reason only the Chinese buy our minerals is because we charge top dollar for them. I would have thought that with our alliance we should be providing USA with all it needs. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/273 "2017-01-03T22:31:48Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > Not to mention that building that wall (assuming it happens), like most things nowadays, will be a highly mechanized affair. So relatively few people will be employed, and most of those will be people already skilled in operating heavy construction equipment. Moreover, like most infrastructure construction projects, it’s presumably intended to be completed within a relatively short time. So whatever temporary employment wall-building may provide will do jack shit to address the fundamental problem of the constant decrease of good blue-collar **permanent** jobs. ---
**Author:** ![up\_the\_junction](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/f1d935/32.png) [@up\_the\_junction](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/up_the_junction)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/274 "2017-01-03T22:49:19Z")
The wall was always mostly symbolic - you might get a few hundred metres, or not, you knew that right? ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/275 "2017-01-03T23:48:30Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Not to mention the fact we need about 100,000 new jobs per month just to keep up with worker population growth. 700 jobs in a one time event, even if they really were in the US, would be not even a drop in the bucket; more like a drop in the swimming pool. > > But it sure makes the rubes cheer when the hear about it. In case anyone wants to see the relevant data series, it’s the age 15-64 population: [Infra-Annual Labor Statistics: Working-Age Population Total: From 15 to 64 Years for United States (LFWA64TTUSM647S) | FRED | St. Louis Fed](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S) ~100k/month is about right. Of course we’re already making new jobs at about that rate. Whether they’re Good Jobs™, I can’t tell you. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2017, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/276 "2017-01-04T00:49:52Z")
> [@slash2k](#): > > Um, your cite says that instead of building a new plant in Mexico, Ford is going to transfer some production of the Ford Focus to their existing plant in Hermosillo, which last time I checked was still in Mexico. [Ford](http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/03/news/economy/ford-700-jobs-trump/index.html) is canceling plans to build a new plant in Mexico. It will invest $700 million in Michigan instead, creating 700 new U.S. jobs. Ford (F) CEO Mark Fields said the investment is a “vote of confidence” in the pro-business environment being created by Donald Trump. However, he stressed Ford did not do any sort of special deal with the president-elect. The $700 million investment will go to the Flat Rock, Michigan plant to produce more electric and self-driving cars. Ford believes electrified vehicles will outsell gas-powered vehicles within the next 15 years. “We didn’t cut a deal with Trump. We did it for our business,” Fields told CNN’s Poppy Harlow in an exclusive interview Tuesday. > [@Kimstu](#): > > Moreover, like most infrastructure construction projects, it’s presumably intended to be completed within a relatively short time. So whatever temporary employment wall-building may provide will do jack shit to address the fundamental problem of the constant decrease of good blue-collar **permanent** jobs. Odd that you have problems connecting the dots behind a decrease of blue collar jobs and a flood of cheap illegal labor. Trump is not even president yet and he’s actively making jobs a priority. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2017, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/277 "2017-01-04T00:55:52Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > [Ford](http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/03/news/economy/ford-700-jobs-trump/index.html) is canceling plans to build a new plant in Mexico. It will invest $700 million in Michigan instead, creating 700 new U.S. jobs. > > Ford (F) CEO Mark Fields said the investment is a “vote of confidence” in the pro-business environment being created by Donald Trump. However, he stressed Ford did not do any sort of special deal with the president-elect. > > The $700 million investment will go to the Flat Rock, Michigan plant to produce more electric and self-driving cars. Ford believes electrified vehicles will outsell gas-powered vehicles within the next 15 years. > > “We didn’t cut a deal with Trump. We did it for our business,” Fields told CNN’s Poppy Harlow in an exclusive interview Tuesday. > Odd that you have problems connecting the dots behind a decrease of blue collar jobs and a flood of cheap illegal labor. > > **Trump is not even president yet and he’s actively making jobs a priority.** You mean like the Carrier jobs that still went to Mexico? How about the punishing tariffs he threatened companies with? Instead, Carrier gets 7 million in tax breaks which will go to automate the factory and eliminate the jobs that were “saved”. And not all of the “saved” jobs were going to Mexico to begin with. Will he move the production of his own products to the U.S. or will he exempt himself from the punitive tariffs? ---
**Author:** ![Declan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecae2f/32.png) [@Declan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Declan)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2017, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/278 "2017-01-04T01:20:39Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > Ford (F) CEO Mark Fields said the investment is a “vote of confidence” in the pro-business environment being created by Donald Trump. However, he stressed Ford did not do any sort of special deal with the president-elect. Lol, I have no problem with the way it went down, but it has more to do with Ford banking on Nafta not being there when they want to ship cars north and get North American retail for them. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2017, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/279 "2017-01-04T01:34:55Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > Odd that you have problems connecting the dots behind a decrease of blue collar jobs and a flood of cheap illegal labor. What I said is that wall-building isn’t going to do anything to address the dearth of **_good blue-collar permanent_ jobs**. Which is the kind of jobs that unskilled and semi-skilled US workers are, not unreasonably, complaining about not being able to get. “A flood of cheap illegal labor” is not what’s been making good blue-collar permanent jobs in the US so scarce. On the bright side, as noted already in [March 2016](http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/why-donald-trump-is-wrong-about-manufacturing-jobs-and-china), some good blue-collar permanent jobs have been reviving in recent years: > [@](#): > > Since March, 2010, when manufacturing employment in the U.S. hit a trough of 11.45 million jobs, nearly a million new factory positions have been created, most of them in the Southern states, particularly North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Better still, the jobs are typically good ones: across that same five-year period, average hourly manufacturing wages have increased over ten per cent, to more than twenty dollars. On the whole, U.S. manufacturing, as measured by the Purchasing Managers’ Index, has steadily expanded. […] > > In recent years, companies have increasingly been bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. from China and other countries. The practice received its most public boost in 2012, when General Electric announced plans to invest a billion dollars in an appliance plant in Louisville, Kentucky, reshoring four thousand jobs that had been in China and Mexico, and adding, over time, nearly twenty thousand factory positions at the plant’s regional suppliers. […] > > Economists and manufacturing experts have assembled convincing statistics which demonstrate that these moves were part of a broader trend. According to data provided to me by the Reshoring Initiative, a nonprofit trade organization, in the past five years, about a hundred thousand manufacturing jobs have returned to the U.S. from overseas, sixty per cent of them from China. If you fold in new U.S. plant openings by companies headquartered elsewhere (that is, foreign direct investment in manufacturing), the number jumps to two hundred and fifty thousand. An additional fifty thousand jobs were saved when companies that had planned to go offshore changed their minds. > > What’s more, thirty-one per cent of respondents to the Boston Consulting Group’s 2015 survey of U.S. manufacturing executives said that, in the next five years, their companies are likely to add factory capacity in the U.S. for goods sold domestically […] Thanks, Obama! 🙂 On the less-bright side, though, the Obama-era dawn of US manufacturing revival, such as it is, is very unlikely to grow to something that can fully counteract the net blue-collar jobs loss of previous decades. Automation and globalization are not going to disappear or be reversed, and a lot of the jobs they took away are never coming back. None of which really has much to do with the presence or absence of undocumented immigrant workers barely subsisting in produce farms or sweatshops with extremely substandard wages and working conditions that US workers have never wanted for themselves anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2017, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/280 "2017-01-04T02:02:12Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Thanks, Obama! 🙂 Not one job created by Obama. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448.md?page=13) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448.md?page=15)