US runs a high-tech trade gap

[PfcHammer]

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0602/p01s02-usec.html

US runs a high-tech trade gap
Exports fail to keep pace with imports, stirring concern about a key fount of jobs.
By David R. Francis | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

For the first time on record, the United States has a deficit in high-tech trade, prompting concern about American competitiveness in key job-producing industries from biotechnology to aerospace.

That deficit appears to be widening, fueled in part by the trend of offshore outsourcing in areas such as software design. As computer parts have become commodities, production has long since moved to places such as Taiwan and, now, to China.

Trade gaps have opened in scientific instruments and in specialized industrial machinery. In commercial airplanes, among the most sophisticated of machines, America remains an export powerhouse, but Europe's Airbus consortium as of this year is selling more planes than Boeing.

By itself, a trade deficit is not necessarily a major problem for US industry, but experts worry that it symbolizes a deeper risk that America may fall behind in some of the very areas it is counting on for high-wage jobs.




Pathetic. Where are all of the benefits of outsourcing we were supposed to enjoy ?
Fortunately, we have a thriving trash pop culture for export to take up the slack.

[mhr]

1. Well Duh! What Did Anyone Expect With High-Tech Outsourcing!

eom

[Massacure]

2. Something really needs to be done about this outsourcing

I don't care what field it is in, it needs to be fixed.

Personally I think NAFTA and CAFTA are a shot in the foot to this country. Are there really any benefits to these agreements?

[chenGOD]

3. If you're a multi-national corp...

then yes, sure there are benefits...

The rest of us? I guess we can all suck eggs...

[metisnation]

4. answer

give tax breaks to corps that use us labor etc and none to those who distribute manufacture develop products assemble packackage market & payroll outside the continental US!!!!

:kick:

[Kagemusha]

5. Take the PC industry. You can get so much for low cost now.

That's a prime example of what benefits there are. It's benefits to the consumer rather than to the high tech people.

Yes, eventually an imbalance here leads to problems, but the US is still an economic giant, so it's not going to just keel over all of a sudden. Not to detract from the people whose lives it affects. But it's not as if it's all one-way.

[chenGOD]

6. Yeah that's great...

I love the fact that computers are super cheap (although be warned, you do get what you pay for, ie cheap quality motherboards,hard drives and so on). But of course I actually have a job and can afford to buy a new computer.

But if you've just lost your job to some call-center in India, the low price on computers isn't gonna be a big help to you now is it?

The US economy is in a precarious situation right now, running huge deficits, job situation not improving, and from what I understand, the Chinese and Japanese are keeping the dollar artifically high with their huge purchases of US bonds...

Now I'm no economist, but something smells fishy in the old repulic.

[Kagemusha]

7. Yeah but, the needs of the many vs. the needs of the few...

It's like the whole steel thing. There's a lot more union people whose employers use steel rather than make it, but it's the makers that get the protection, in turn hurting a lot more people who just aren't as politically powerful at the moment.

And leftists spent two or three generations hoping that Asia would join the industrial age.

[chenGOD]

8. Now if only those Asian countries...

Would start giving their laborers fair wages and benefits, then jobs wouldn't be fleeing to the lowest bidder.

Living in South Korea, it's funny, as the conservatives and "industry leaders" here always cite labour unrest as the main problem when trying to encourage foreign investment. "Those damned laborers, always trying to get more money. How dare they think they should be able to support their families on one wage." All they talk about is "growing the economy" before redistribution of wealth can occur. We've all seen how well trickle down, supply-side economics has worked for the average American; it hasn't. Personally, I think the labourers should demand more (labour representation in management, better benefit packages, more UI etc), and the Korean government should limit investment by foreigners (witness the foreign capital fleeing Asia in 97-98 and tell me how beneficial "direct foreign investment" is then). But I'm a socialist, so there..;)

I'm guessing that leftists wanted Asia to join the industrial age, but with the rights of the worker in mind, rather than the benfits that it would give to corporations.

[rfkrocks]

10. Yeah those leftists like Richard Nixon

I think it was the right that wanted China to grow economically to act as a buffer to the Soviet Union-The right also wanted to open up the cheap labor markets instead of paying a living wage here because the wealth of the few matter than the wealth of the many

[meow2u3]

11. Yet we've also created malicious hackers

...as a result of shipping high-tech jobs overseas. What the hell do you expect when you pay an East Indian programmer 50 cents an hour for a job which paid an American 50 grand a year?! Loyalty to the company and the country that moved in? I don't think so!!

So, what we have is American CEO's cutting corners by outsourcing manufacturing and high-tech jobs to countries which could turn on the United States at any time. We're creating more malicious hackers from India, China, and Russia, to name a few, and they seem to act out of revenge for American executives grossly underpaying them.

[kodi]

9. gee, think its 'cause we invest so much in weapons and their research?

the only problem with that is we can't sell off all the really neat stuff, like nukes or stealth planes... but then again, whenever we sell fighter jets you see the air force brass up on the Hill and declaring that we have to build better weapons than we just sold to our allies.


what an incredible bread machine is the military industrial complex.