"But ... [d]oes trade explain the decline of steel employment from roughly 190,000 to 84,000?
"[I]mports have had some impact on employment in manufacturing. But the primary cause of job loss has been automation [exacerbated by] unionisation forcing jobs to other parts of the country, rather than trade."
~ composite quote by Scott Sumner and Jon Murphy from Scott's post 'Trade as a scapegoat'
1 comment:
Forty years ago I was taken into the control room of Nippon Steel's latest steel works in Yokohama. We gazed down to where the four blast furnaces were belching away. The plant manager said to us, "how many people can your see down there controlling the furnaces?" We counted four per furnace. "And how many here in the control room?" We counted four. So a total of twenty people. He agreed with our count and then said, "In America, they have twenty people per furnace, that's why we're out competing them." When we asked what was the future direction for Nippon Steel, he said, "We have invested into new steel works being made in Korea because they will be even newer and more efficient than our's in Japan."
That is what has happened to steel jobs in the US.
Post a Comment