Adherents of free trade often espouse the idea of “comparative advantage.”  This means that countries should specialize in manufacturing those products for which they are best suited, or for which they have the most natural resources.  An agricultural country might focus on growing cotton, while a more industrial country might utilize that cotton in their textile factories.  Comparative advantage suggests that it would be less beneficial if both countries tried to grow cotton and produce finished clothing.

This notion of “specialization” worked far better in the 19th Century, when it was first posited.  But in the 21st Century, countries find very little to differentiate their respective productive capacities.  The United States can make silicon chips and TV sets, but so can Mexico, Vietnam, and Taiwan.  In a “globalized age” most countries now possess essentially the same industrial capacity.  And so, in order to get a leg up on the competition, countries sometimes adopt unsavory tactics—like exploiting their own people as a source of low-cost labor.

  With that in mind, ManufactureThis wants to share an interesting video on YouTube—footage of Chinese workers laboring inside a hydraulic stamping press.  These kinds of labor conditions are absolutely prohibited in the U.S. 

Thankfully, American workers are not put in these situations.
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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 10th, 2008 at 11:42 pm and is filed under Holding China Accountable, Enforcing Trade Laws. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.