China is to blame for millions of lost U.S. manufacturing jobs, new study finds

Many economists have long blamed automation as main culprit
By JEFFRYBARTASH

Robots are not to blame for the loss of millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs.
Millions of Americans who lost manufacturing jobs during the 2000s have long ”known” China was to blame, not robots. 

And many helped elect Donald Trump as president because of his insistence that China was at fault.
Evidently many academics who’ve studied the issue are finally drawing the same conclusion.
For years economists have viewed the increased role of automation in the computer age as the chief culprit for some 6 million lost jobs from 1999 to 2010 — one-third of all U.S. manufacturing employment. 

Firms adopted new technologies to boost production, the thinking goes, and put workers out of the job in the process. 

Plants could make more stuff with fewer people.

In the past several years fresh thinking by economists such as David Autor of MIT has challenged that view. 

The latest research to poke holes in the theory of automation-is-to-blame is from Susan Houseman of the Upjohn Institute.
Academic research tends to be dry and complicated, but Houseman’s findings boil down to this: The government for decades has vastly overestimated the growth of productivity in the American manufacturing sector. 

It’s been growing no faster, really, than the rest of the economy.
What that means is, the adoption of technology is not the chief reason why millions of working-class Americans lost their jobs in a vast region stretching from the mouth of the Mississippi river to the shores of the Great Lakes. 

Nor was it inevitable.
Autor and now Houseman contend the introduction of China into the global trading system is root cause of the job losses.
Put another way, Bill Clinton and political leaders who succeeded him accepted the risk that the U.S. would suffer short-term economic harm from opening the U.S. to Chinese exports in hopes of long-run gains of a more stable China.
No longer needing to worry about U.S. tariffs, the Chinese took full advantage. 

Low Chinese wages and a cheap Chinese currency — at a time when the dollar was strong — gave China several huge advantages. 

Companies shuttered operations in the U.S., moved to China and eventually set up research hubs overseas in another blow to the America’s economic leadership.
The cost to the U.S. is still being tallied up.
For one thing, it left countless families devastated and deprived many areas in the middle of the country of a good fountain of economic opportunity. 

Manufacturing jobs have long been a great source of economic mobility for less educated Americans. Those who lost their jobs had to fall back on menial, less well-paying work.
Most recently, some of the states that lost the most from the hollowing out of the manufacturing sector paved the way for the 2016 election of Trump and the huge political upheaval in Washington that is still ongoing. 

Trump better understood what blue-collar workers were thinking and who they blamed.

The growing recognition of the tradeoffs of free trade might compel American lawmaker to craft policies more suited to helping American workers, Autor and others argue.

President Trump sets himself on collision course with China ahead of Xi meeting

The US president attacked trade relationship with Beijing and announced that his meeting with the Chinese dictator would be very difficult
By Benjamin Haas in Hong Kong

Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump are due to meet in Florida on April 6. 
Donald Trump has set himself on a collision course with the Chinese dictator, saying the first meeting between the two leaders would be “very difficult”.
Xi will travel to the US next week and will have his first face to face meeting with Trump at Mar-a-lago, the US president’s country club in Florida, from April 6 to 7.
But just hours after the trip was officially announced, Trump used Twitter to slam China for its trade imbalance with the US.
“The meeting next week with China will be a very difficult one in that we can no longer have massive trade deficits and job losses. American companies must be prepared to look at other alternatives,” Trump wrote in a pair of tweets.
Trump’s firm assertion is likely to cast a shadow over Xi’s visit, with US officials also criticising China over North Korea.
Chinese authorities have so far adopted a wait and see approach.

While Trump has deployed tough rhetoric, criticising China over its currency policy, trade imbalance with the US and military expansion, he has taken few concrete actions since assuming office.
Indeed China’s immediate response to Trump’s latest tweet was diplomatic, with vice foreign minister Zheng Zeguang telling reporters on Friday morning that “both sides look forward to a successful meeting so that a correct direction can be set for the growth of bilateral relations.”
Observers believe the economy and North Korea will be at the top of the agenda when the two leaders meet next week.
On the same day as Trump’s tweets, the US ambassador to the United Nations said China should do more to force North Korea to curb its nuclear program, amid reports of an imminent nuclear test.
“I know China says they’re worried about North Korea. I know China wants to see North Korea stop with the testing. Prove it. Prove it,” Nikki Haley said. 

“Look, can we change the way North Korea thinks? No. They’re not going to cave. China can, and that’s the part we want to look at.”
Trump previously slammed China for its perceived lack of diplomacy in dealing with North Korea.
“China has been taking out massive amounts of money & wealth from the U.S. in totally one-sided trade, but won’t help with North Korea,” then president-elect Trump wrote in January.
In a further sign that Trump could complicate his meeting with Xi, the US commerce department announced it was launching a review over whether China should be considered a market economy.
The review could be completed before the meeting, and China has been lobbying for years saying it should be classified as a market economy under World Trade Organisation rules. 

The status would limit steps the US could take on imposing anti-dumping taxes on Chinese-made products.