Oh, heck, just let those jobs go to China -- nothing you can do about it, suggests the mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, who is on a visit there this week. In today's Financial Times the mayor, whose final term expires in 2009, says:
"A growing China creates jobs for our export producers, keeps consumer prices low, expands our choice of goods and services, and increases our access to capital and talent... Our serious differences with China in these and other areas must be managed through engagement, not used as excuses to pursue politically expedient - and economically wrong-headed - short-term retaliatory measures.
"What of the argument that China is taking jobs from America? Those jobs - if they did not go to China - would go somewhere else. The US government cannot keep them here through costly consumer-funded tariffs and taxpayer-funded subsidies. We learnt that lesson the hard way in the 1970s, when congressional protection of the automotive industry only hurt Detroit and helped its foreign competitors."
"When politicians suggest that the benefits of globalisation go primarily to low-wage countries, they are playing to people's fears..."
Hey, maybe it would be more efficient to just "restructure" the republic as an Llp...The best of all possible global economies!
Dan Janison