World's Producer No More: China To Outpace US Manufacturing
The US remained the world’s biggest manufacturing nation by output last year, but is poised to relinquish this slot in 2011 to China – thus ending a 110-year run as the number one country in factory production.
[...] Hal Sirkin, head of the global operations practice at Chicago-based Boston Consulting Group, said the US should not despair too much at the likelihood that it would lose the global crown in manufacturing to China.
“If you have a country with four times the population of the US and a tenth of the wages, it is fairly obvious they will pull ahead at some time in productive capabilities,“ he said.
Sure, Hal. That sounds about right. We shouldn't expect, or even want, to preserve the level of economic dominance we achieved at the end of World War Two, when the rest of the 'civilized' world was a ruin. But still. Our manufacturing went number one around the turn of the 20th century. This is something we've been very good at. Manufacturing has played to our comparative advantages. That China has perhaps an even greater natural advantage nowadays is no reason to give up the competition. As we're learning, an economy driven far more by consumption than by production is hardly a post-industrial paradise.
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May '10
Re: World's Producer No More: China To Outpace US Manufacturing
It's not like there's some special advantage to being number one in the first place. Being number two isn't some dramatic collapse; it's a ranking, not a sentence.
Besides, if were to get really serious about "leveling the playing field," as many politicians put it, we would repeal the minimum wage, eliminate all tariffs and price controls, and ban the EPA. I'm not holding my breath.
Re: World's Producer No More: China To Outpace US Manufacturing
More on the China beat: are sweatshops headed for the scrap heap of history? Key graf:
Re: World's Producer No More: China To Outpace US Manufacturing
Despite this, I think there's a big future in low-cost, sweatshop labor in China. The scale there is too immense. For every striking worker -- and for every worker who heads to the big city -- there are 500,000,000 left to take his place. There's a long way to go before the Chinese UAW manages to hobble the company that makes the Chery.