Yet another reason that Hillary lost

[CajunBlazer]

13. Tarriff have very little to do with job lossses

Most of the manufacturing jobs have been lost to automation and that trend will accelerate. Those jobs are definitely not coming back though the plants may be still in the county. Less people are needed to supervise the machines and those jobs that are left require a higher level of training.

If you have ever bought one of two very similar products because it had a cheaper price (and I know that you have) you are one of the reasons why manufacturing jobs have gone to other countries. Yes, companies are selfish in that they want to make the most profits for their share holders (most of which are Americans like you and me and everyone else who has a 401K). But they are also in competitive business and they won't stay in business if their products are not significantly better or at least as inexpensive as their competitors. And the days when product made here are better than those made in other countries are gone.

I will give you a good example, I have near identical pocket knives - one is made by Case - that manufactures only in the US, and the other is made Rough Rider - a knife maker that moved its manufacturing operations to China many years ago. The two knives are made of identical steel and identical handle materials with identical durability and utility and they look exactly the same except for the logo shields on one side of their handles and the "made in ..." statement engraved in tiny letters on the base of the blades. I have shown those two knives to experts and without showing them logos and they cannot tell the two knives apart. The Rough Rider sells for about $15 to $20 bucks while the Case sells for about $45. The only reason Case is still in business is because the reputation the company earned long ago and because their knives are valued by collectors.

The transfer of jobs like call centers will stop only when the customers of the companies involve raise holy hell about not being able to understand the heavy accents of those employed in those overseas centers. I work for top 10 Dow company which has outsourced many technical jobs like programing to countries like India and Slovakia and I can tell you with great certainty that those jobs are not coming back unless and until there are strong indications that the people hired in those countries cannot do the jobs as well as people here and the verdict on that is still out on that one.

So you can climb on your high horse and scream to the world that "this has got to stop", but until you realize that it is people like you and me and our fellow Americans who are at the root of the problem, noting is going to change. In fact the job losses in this country in traditional fields is going to continue until it is as expensive to export jobs as it is to keep them here. We, collectively, are the problem when we buy stocks that perform well and when we seek to buy products at the best price.

Tariffs agreements are not the problem - if you think they are you have been listening to the wrong people - Trump and/or Sanders. For instance, the TPP specifically excludes China, and if it fails China is pushing its own pack which specifically excludes the United States. There are going to be trade agreements among the Pacific Rim countries involved -the only question is whether we take the lead in crafting those agreements so that our interests are protected or we let China take the lead. Foreign products are going to continue to enter the country because American consumers demand cheap prices. The important question is whether we will be able to continue to sell our products abroad.

You need to understand that we export a lot of products overseas and we need to protect our ability to continue to do so. For instance the US exported $133 Billion in farm products while we imported just $117 Billion in that category. We also export hundreds of billions of dollars of aircraft, automobiles, and technical equipment every year. Yea, we import a lot of cheap stuff from China, but we sell a lot of very expensive stuff to the rest of the world. American exports amounted to US$1.51 trillion during 2015. That amounts to $4,682 for every man, woman and child in the US. or $18,728 for every family of 4. That a lot of American jobs that President Obama was trying to protect then his administration negotiated TPP over the last six years.

There are going to be winners and losers in the American work force due globalization. Globalization cannot be stopped so it is what it is. There were a lot more angry losers in West Virginia because for economic and environmental reasons the use of coal as a fuel is becoming a thing of the past, but those losers didn't affect the results of the election. It just so happens that some angry losers just happened to make the difference in three critical states while a large majority of Americans supported Hillary Clinton.