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They could move to Bangladesh or Africa and pay $3k / year. They aren't. China has many advantages beyond cheap wages.





Absolutely. You do need a minimum baseline for infrastructure, government stability and workforce.

Most of Africa is just starting to slowly get there, Bangladesh is already very relevant for textile production.

I would expect the same basic trend to repeat that we saw with electronics manufacturing in 90s Japan: First cheap products move (very wage sensitive), then the local sector expands, wages rise with the whole local industry moving up the value chain, then at some point local wages become high enough for the whole process to repeat with the next low-wage country...

I think trying to block this trend off with tariffs is a futile waste of taxpayer money which american consumers are gonna pay for.

Spending tax money to keep some degree of self-sufficiency in critical industries (like with agriculture) can be a solid idea if done sparingly and cleverly, but that is not how the current US admin has approached this...




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