China’s Currency Manipulation Fuels Continued Trade Imbalance

Quote: "A surge in imports of Chinese computer and electronic products accounted for more than 40% of the $186 billion increase in the U.S. trade deficit with China between 2001 and 2008, with these industries experiencing the largest trade-related job losses of any sector – 627,700 jobs, or 26% of all jobs lost or displaced between 2001 and 2008".

Are these products really from Chinese cies, or are they from U.S. cies that formerly produced these products in the U.S., but then offshored the work for it to be done in China and then have the products, therefore made at much lower cost to these cies, imported into the U.S. consumer market?

Paul Craig Roberts wrote a number of articles of which copies were posted at Counterpunch.org and other websites several years ago mentioning this sort of round-about way that U.S. manufacturers had commenced to employ with the offshoring of what formerly were U.S. jobs. Surely other people wrote about this, too, but I only recall having read about this in a few or more of his articles. And I think one of the things he was writing about in one or more of these articles is the topic of "phantom GDP", but maybe it wasn't in those articles. He wrote about the offshoring of manufacturing and the importation of goods or products in some articles though.

And I've more recently read that sometimes, if not often, when the products are imported into the U.S., then the labeling doesn't say that the manufacturers are American, even if they are of the U.S. That part of the story would then be kept hidden, with labeling stating that the products are, f.e., made in China.

Or maybe I'm mixing this latter part up a little with another recent report that I recently read and which said that products made by extremely underpaid Haitians, f.e., employed or working for U.S. manufacturers are brought or imported into the U.S. while the labeling says "Made in the USA", or made by some U.S. manufacturer; saying nothing about the products actually being made by Haitians or (extremely underpaid) workers in other countries. Or maybe I wasn't mixing anything up and both of these schemes are practiced.

There are most surely are people who know the details I'm unsure of. However, we know that the offshoring of U.S. manufacturing includes importing products made by these manufacturers into the U.S. The workers are in other countries and those surely are where U.S. manufacturers can either extremely exploit the workers, or where the wages to be able to live reasonably are low compared with the U.S.; or maybe where both profit opportunities, say, are available to U.S. manufacturers.

Globalisation involves efforts for global monopolisation, domination, as much as can be achieved, and U.S. manufacturers of electronics, f.e., know very well that Asia has around two-thirds or more of the total human population. They know the potential consumer markets of China and India alone are very large compared to the U.S. market. They're in business to profit and want more consumers. By making their products in countries where workers are paid much less than in the U.S., this only makes the potential of gaining in the Asian consumer markets greater; whereas if the products were still made in the U.S. at the wages average workers are paid in the U.S. electronics industry, then the potential would not be anywhere as strong for U.S. manufacturers in the Asian markets. In the latter case, the Asian market potential for U.S. manufacturers would be very, very little, especially when considering the sizes of the populations there. Etcetera.

But they'll also want to keep the U.S. consumer market, so their products will be shipped for importation into the U.S., as well as other western countries.

I'm not entirely sure how the labeling of the products is always done. In the case of Haiti, U.S. manufacturers exploiting workers there will apparently import their products while saying "Made in USA", f.e. But I don't know or am not sure about when the countries where the products are made are China, India, ....

Manufacturers of the U.S. and surely many other "western" countries are very profit-hungry, so they'll certainly try every way they can think of to increase their profits; especially with a gov't as readily complicit as our gov't is.

Another way of "screwing" U.S. workers, in hi-tech. sectors anyway, was (and continues) through the outsourcing of jobs to imported workers who weren't necessary because there were enough professionals and students graduating in related fields of study in the U.S. This began with the H-1B program established by President GHW Bush, and the problem was doubly and triply worsened by the Clinton administration, which doubled and then, based on the original number of visas officially allowed per year, tripled the total number of visas, which, for some "odd" reason, wasn't respected. The actual total number of visas allocated per year, during the second half of the 1990's anyway, was averaging around 15,000 to 20,000 in excess of what was officially allowed. The federal gov't gave the lame excuse that their H-1B visa database system wasn't centralised, which, if true, should have been easy enough to correct. Many enough professionals in the U.S. surely could've corrected (quickly enough, too) this lacune, if it really existed.

All sorts of scheming goes on with the "business world" elites.

Mike Corbeil