COMAC Jobs for Western Michigan
I’m serious, Western Michigan. Not only is more Chinese investment pouring into the U.S., but the positive aspects of China trade (that translate into jobs) are being highlighted much more often these days by politicians and American media. Not a bad thing at all, particularly when another popular meme is that U.S. corporations have turned against China.
Check out this local story by a Fox News affiliate in Grand Rapids:
The former Smiths Aerospace, now GE Aviation, got a visit from [Michigan] Governor Granholm today. Her tour of the Cascade Township facility comes week after the company announced 200 new engineers will be hired. Workers there will be teaming up with the Commercial Aircraft Corporation in China – COMAC – to make electronic controls for the C-919 airplane.
The plant in Cascade has already hired 25 workers; engineers from around West Michigan and across the country. These are high-tech, good-paying jobs that could help Michigan’s economy.
“We have seen, obviously as have other manufacturing states have seen, is a shift to manufacturing in lower-wage countries,” Governor Granholm said. “But what they’ve done here is sort of reversed that story, and say if we’re going to manufacture, we’re going to manufacture here, we’re going to give them great value, no doubt, with great talent and great expertise.”
It’s a nice feel-good story, I suppose, although I wonder where this is all going. Low-end manufacturing has fled the U.S. and will never come back in large numbers, but the jury is still out on the higher-end stuff.
If the U.S. can ever fix its health care problems, that would help local manufacturing a lot. Another possibility is that higher transportation costs (i.e. high oil prices) might push some firms closer to the U.S. market.
Aside from these scenarios, unfortunately another way to attract companies to manufacture in the U.S. is lower manufacturing costs, and ultimately that will mean either lower taxes or a general decrease in wages/standard of living. Either one of these is long term bad news for average Americans.
Another way to keep high-skilled jobs is to have the best trained workers in the world. Sorry to say, but the American school system is crashing and burning these days, so I’m not so positive on that front for the future.
Talk about pessimism. I can turn a feel-good local employment story into a depressing glimpse at the future. It’s a talent.
Kind of a quick leap there from “lower taxes” to “bad news for average Americans.”
I skipped a couple of steps.
States/cities compete with each other to attract foreign investment by giving companies sweetheart tax deals and other incentives. Although they do bring some jobs, the states lose a lot of revenue.
Several Southern states adopted this approach in the 90s in an attempt to get some manufacturing jobs (I think most of them were non-union jobs, BTW). I don’t think this translated into an increase in state revenue or the standard of living.
Competition among the states to give firms the best “deal” is a fool’s errand. You end up destroying your tax base. China gave foreign investors great tax deals too, but in return they got new technology, knowledge spillover, and a way to prod inefficient State-owned companies. The Southern U.S. got very little in comparison.