You purchased a tractor that was made by a company in Japan that has many of the parts built in China, and assembled in the US. We are living in a world economy today, and everything is manufactured where the labor costs are the lowest. The only things made in the US today, for the most part, are heavy machinery, and even some of that is going away. American labor costs are what make our products not competitive in a world market. In the 1950's, we exported products around the world. After WW2, we rebuilt the economies of both Japan and Germany and those 2 countries have thrived at our expense. When Nixon opened trading with China, he thought that they would be buying all American products for decades. He never gave a thought that they would become a manufacturing giant. China has whole cities that manufacture only one type of an item. Their labor costs are lower than ours, because the State controls all aspects of the peoples lives. When our politicians raise corporate taxes, they make us less competitive in the world market. You need to study history and economics of the past 100 years to understand how we have gotten to this point. Inexpensive products is what the American people wanted, and Walmart honed in on that desire, and built an empire using inexpensive labor and products to accomplish this. Try going for a month without purchasing anything made in China, and only made in America.
There is so much wrong in that analysis...however the conclusion is correct for different reasons.
I bought a 20-year-old USED tractor which had a FEL made in America. That USED purchase did not affect the foreign trade balance.
The UNITED STATES has
very competitive labor-costs and that is a major reason foreign companies are relocating here. (Or have you not noticed how many foreign-car brands are built in America?)
American labor is better trained, better educated, and works for fewer benefits than many foreign sources of labor. (Ask a European worker how much vacation and other benefits they get compared to the average U.S. worker.)
American “labor costs” are NOT “what make our products not competitive”. After WW2 our factories were still operational because our cities and factories were not bombed into rubble. Our products were higher quality and highly desired worldwide.... until the freshly-built, newer technology foreign factories were built...and came into competition with the American “rust belt” of outdated factories.
After WW2 we rebuilt the economies of Japan/Germany/Italy/ etc as a hedge against communism to prevent communist take-over of those counries. If we had not done that then those destroyed economies would not have recovered and would have fallen to the communists.
Nixons’ thought-processes are well documented by Kissinger and it was well-known that mainland China would become a mfr’g powerhouse.
In fact, that was the point! It was believed (wrongly) that the result would prove disastrous for the communist regime. Further, the Nixon administration recognized mainland China over Taiwan promoting the mainland at the U.N. In the hopes to discourage a Taiwan invasion and to distance China from Russia. Nixon knew that U.S. mfr’g would employ cheap Chinese labor, unfortunately without much thought about the long-term effects upon U.S. mfr’g.
“You need to study history.... to understand how we have gotten to this point...”. I recommend you follow your own suggestion.... but don’t study “history” promoted by political hacks.... study history documented by historians.
