"60% of the products imported from China are made by American Corporations

[robinlynne]

and their subsidiaries."

An economist just gave out that statistic in a documentary I'm watching from a DUers link. 60% of all the stuff we import from China is made by AMERICAN CORPORATIONS. Just think about what that means for a minute.

[Hannah Bell]

1. I've read that a good deal of it is produced by non-chinese corps, but not specifically by us corps.

i'd like more documentation. could you post the link?

[Armstead]

4. It's a large shell game of contractors and sub contractors

[robinlynne]

6. link:

That quote is about 50 or 60 minutes in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzULm4d8h8w

[Hannah Bell]

14. the speaker is economist richard wolff. i can't find any source for the quote on the internet.

closest i can find is this, referring to foreign corps generally, which is in line with my own previous research:

According to Morgan Stanley's chief economist Stephen Roach, 65% of the tripling of Chinese exports—from $121 billion in 1994 to $365 billion in mid-2003—is “traceable to outsourcing by Chinese subsidiaries of multinational corporations and joint ventures.”2 The export surge blamed on China is primarily an export surge of global corporations using low-wage Chinese workers...

China's downward pressure on the world's wages is enormous. Harvard economist Richard Freeman estimates that the entry of India, Russia, and China into the world economy in the past few decades has doubled the workforce employed in the global economy. China alone accounts for 50% of this increase. And because these countries did not add significant capital to the global economy, more workers are competing to be employed by essentially the same amount of capital.

http://rppe.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/paer-issue-no-41.pdf


it's obvious if you look at this history that the chinese boom is mostly a project of foreign investment/capital shift. but it's not just american corps involved.

[robinlynne]

16. Makes sense. If its 65% global and 60% American, that makes sense.

[Hannah Bell]

17. hard to believe, as japan is a big chinese off-shorer, as well as foreign-based chinese.

i find it hard to believe us share could be more than 40%.

not meaning to argue with *you* i'd just like to see some data.

[chollybocker]

2. Trump's clothing line is produced in China.

Then sold to American suckers.

Profit$$$!

[Armstead]

3. Some of us have been thinking and talking about it for years....But to no avail

Exactly what progressives were warning against is coming to pass.

But the Democratic Elite (with worthy exceptions) went along with the "free trade" agenda -- basically Ayn Rand caplitalism on steroids -- and called the critics of these policies and corporate behavior "naive leftists" and other dismissive terms.

And it continues today, and the Democrats still sit on their hands and tell progressives to "go away and don't bother the adults."

[Zorra]

5. Tick...tick...tick...

[OHdem10]

7. It means lots and lots of jobs are in China which were in the USA

[robinlynne]

8. exactly. And that our very own uber rich are responsible for it all.

[leftstreet]

9. US multinational corps are creating Chinese jobs for Chinese people

U.S. companies dump billions into China

January 20, 2011

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- While U.S. businesses are still reluctant to invest in new plants and jobs in the United States, many are pouring money into China. But not for the reasons you'd think.

Rather than "outsourcing" their operations to China's low-cost environment to produce cheap goods for U.S. consumers, multinational corporations are pouring billions into China to meet demand from the rapidly growing Chinese middle class.

....

In 2010 General Motors (GM) sold more cars in China than in the United States for the first time, but did not export any cars from China back to its home market. GM, which closed 13 U.S. plants since its bankruptcy filing in 2009, has opened 15 plants in China in the last 10 years.

Yum Brands (YUM, Fortune 500), owner of fast-food chains like KFC and Pizza Hut, reported $1.2 billion in Chinese sales in its most recent quarter, surpassing its declining U.S. sales for the first time. It added 245 restaurants in China in the first nine months of last year while selling off U.S. locations.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/20/news/international/us_business_chinese_investment_boom/index.htm

It's not really accurate to say these are "American" jobs. Rich people are just investing in other markets.

[Armstead]

13. That's a rose-colofred glasses view of it

It is not a bad thing in theory if investment in manufacturing is made overseas for consumer goods in those markets.

However that has not been the driving forces of this shift. It has been the deliberate outsourcing of jobs and facilities from the US to the cheapest and least regulated places overseas.

Just wait. If living standards and wages go up in China, those corporations will jump to other locations where labor is cheaper.

[leftstreet]

15. How does the manufacturing of cars, in China, for Chinese people = "American jobs?"

There are two separate issues here.

And of course you're right about labor being outsourced to the cheapest.

But the driving force behind investment decisions for the filthy rich global elite isn't 'how to fuck over Americans personally.' It's just the free marketz dictating it.

[aquart]

10. And that my friends is how executives make their bonus money.

They don't pay living wage salaries and they pocket the difference.

But, seriously, can we NOT call them "American corporations"? They think they're more than that and I think they're less.

[Daphne08]

11. Who built up those American corporations by buying their

products for decades?

It just makes me furious that we, that our grandparents, our parents, etc., bought their products over the decades and made them what they are today, and WHAT do they do? They kick us in the teeth for our loyalty to their brands!

It's shameful and it's un-American! :mad:

[B Calm]

12. It means that republicans like giving tax cuts to the wealthy bastards who

sent our manufacturing jobs overseas.