Well....it does make a difference if the factory moves 500 miles v. 5,000 miles. An employee might move 500 miles to keep a job, but hardly anyone would move to China to keep one at Chinese labor rates. It also makes a difference whether the job stays in the US or is moved overseas from a balance of trade perspective, and it makes a difference whether we retain productive capacity in the US versus sending it to China. In the long term, what will happen to production costs when Chinese workers want to make more? Will prices go up and then US buyers have no competitive choices to buy elsewhere because all the production equipment is then located in China? The other thing that is going on here is that these companies are really trying to
cut labor costs in order to increase their profitability. So the guys at the top make more and the US production workers get
cut out entirely. If US production workers don't make good incomes, where are these companies going to sell their products?