I just wrapped up another fantastic trip to China, my third. Visiting our overseas factories as we gear up to launch an antenna division later this year. Interesting to witness lots of automation replacing Chinese jobs as their standard of living increases. It seems they can’t even compete with an approximately $2/hr minimum wage in China. Those jobs won’t be coming to the U.S. if they can’t compete at $2/hr, so where will they shift over the next several decades? As much as I would like to see manufacturing jobs shift to the United States, my bet is India. Companies like mine though never had domestic manufacturing, but being able to manufacture overseas has allowed me to create jobs back home that did not previously exist in sales, admin, warehousing, shipping, not to mention all the jobs created by our clients who can afford to expand by paying less for their products, and the end user whose cell phone bills are less expensive now because companies like mine can provide affordable wireless infrastructure materials. It sure would be nice to make things back home, but when we started the company we crunched the numbers and our cost to make them in the U.S., not including any markup whatsoever, was higher than what our competitors manufacturing overseas were selling the identical product for here in the States. It is high taxes, out of control over-regulation, and an absurd sense of entitlement by so many that has created the situation we find ourselves in. The only way to help our economy is to start rolling those things back. Higher tariffs on imports will only increase the cost of goods and devalue the dollar, and will add to the problem not help solve it. Less government = better business and more jobs, it’s as simple as that.
Opinion
Opinion: A pragmatic look at overseas manufacturing
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About Jesse Petrilla
