Good overall definition IMO. In today’s political terms, however, I think it has been more focused on the view that the world wide business environment has and continues to evolve in the direction that manufacturing jobs migrate to underdeveloped low labor cost countries where they help those countries lift up their poorer people, develop their economies, etc. Developed countries gain the benefits of lower prices for products but give up some jobs to the underdeveloped countries. All this, of course, is good for everyone.
All this went into high gear after WW2 when Europe and Japan’s economies were literally destroyed. In the post war years the US necessarily opened its markets to imports and fully supported import barriers being put in place in Japan to protect them, Europe, and other underdeveloped countries. Barriers were absolutely needed back then as an aid to reconstructing the devastated countries. Over time it all worked wonderfully. By the middle 60’s Japan and Europe were up an running with brand new highly efficient manufacturing operations and the US economy had transitioned from a war machine to a consumer based economy with a huge demand. Cracks had started to show, however, as first Japan, then Taiwan and South Korea had much lower labor costs and their companies, like Panasonic (Matsushita), Sony, Honda, Toyota, etc were allowed to send products into the US at a huge cost advantages. They were also subsidized by their Fed Governments and protected from import competition in their markets. This put US companies who were primarily unionized paying excellent wages and great benefits (RCA, Zenith, Ford, Chevy, and hundreds more) to go off shore in order to compete with the foreign companies.
Then along came China, with its 1+ Billion people, authoritarian dictatorship, huge natural resources, and long history of politically dominating their neighbors. Japan had roughly 100 million people in the 60’s. Taiwan only about 10 million and Korea less than 50 million. With their incredible size and the fact that the Gov owns all of the critical business structure like Banks, Steel and Aluminum Companies, etc. China has used these structural advantages to create the second largest economy in the world in just 20 years and will ultimately be the largest economy in the world. That in itself isn’t a problem. What is a problem is they continue to use destructive trade policies in their quest for dominance and the US has been badly injured because of the trade policies that should have been changed long ago. That is, very simply, what Pres. Trump is addressing.
