In 1976 I worked for a major US. manufacturing company. That company partnered with a Japanese company to make the same product in Japan. The cost of the product in America was $18,000. The cost in Japan was $7,600. The same product made in China was $3,500. The product, not surprisingly, is no longer made in America. In 1976 the same product was made in Germany and in England. Today the Japanese product has replaced the German and the English product.
Manufacturing was 22% of America’s employment in 1976. Today it is 8%. The high cost was a combination of labor, material and overhead. It wasn’t just one thing that increased in cost. Everything increased which made it too expensive to manufacture in America.
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