Stella's Place

Obviously not my original thoughts, but valuable information, nonetheless, so sharing!

Most of you have lived in our country long enough to have witnessed what Alexander Muse describes here.

I remember that in the 1970’s, we still had a vibrant machine tool industry in the United States, owned by American citizens. That industry no longer exists.

Some of the other manufacturing industries that have practically disappeared in the United States: apparel, appliances, electronics, shoes, textiles, furniture, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals.

I had a good friend who owned a business that represented commercial carpet manufacturers (located in and near Dalton, GA) in the Detroit market. A large percentage of his business revenue was the carpet business. In the 1980’s and 1990’s the carpet industry downsized carpet production in the U.S., he lost representation, and his business went bankrupt. There are 25% of the mills remaining compared to the 1970’s, and their employees are largely of Hispanic descent. The region’s employers laud the immigrant workers as the saviors of the industry.

My friend, in his later years, never recovered. He was forced to file personal bankruptcy. sell his home, his boat and his car, and he and his wife moved into a small apartment. He died in 2003, in debt. I’m sure that downsizing of the carpet industry wasn’t the only cause of his financial decline, but it certainly was significant.

Published by @amuse on “X”, Alexander Muse

If you enjoy my work, please subscribe https://x.com/amuse/creator-subscriptions/subscribe

For decades, a confident consensus governed American trade policy. Open markets, economists insisted, would raise total output, lower prices, and leave the nation richer. Some workers might lose, but adjustment would follow. New jobs would appear. People would move. Skills would reallocate. The gains would outweigh the losses, and the losses would be temporary. This belief was not marginal. It sat at the center of elite economic thinking and guided bipartisan policy from the 1990s through China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001.

The belief turned out to be deeply mistaken. Not because trade theory is false in the abstract, but because its application ignored how people actually live, work, and age. The economists who pushed free trade with China did not merely underestimate the costs. They misunderstood their nature. The result was one of the most severe and geographically concentrated labor market shocks in modern US history, a shock whose scars remain visible decades later.

Continue reading →