Stupid morons literally believe that Kevin from Milwaukee will gladly punch the factory clock for shit pay even by American standards and STILL manage to outmanufacture Asia's slave laborers.
I mean... the only way for the US to outmanufacture slave laborers is to invest in automated labor, that could operate 24/7, without ever needing a break, sleep, food or getting sick. Chess tournaments serve as a surprisingly good example. For many decades USSR had the best chess players in the whole world, because it went out of its way to find people that were highly competent at chess and forcing them to do nothing all day, every day, but learn the game and memorize moves. Americans stood no chance, because nobody willingly would put themselves through such asinine and time consuming task, not even the most dedicated chess nerds. The only way US managed to reliably beat the soviet chess masters was to build computers that are capable of possessing more memory and thinking ahead further than any human being possibly could. Once you develop such technology, you can pretty much just mass produce chess masters at a scale no soviet training program ever could.
Advanced technology and automatization always ends up superior to physical human willpower and dedication. One of the biggest factors as for why the Atlantic slave trade ended was the invention of the cotton gin, that could have 2 workers matching production output of 50 slaves. And that's technology from the Victorian era. It frankly doesn't make much sense that we rely on sweatshops so much, besides that corporations view the short-term profit gain out of slave labor much more beneficial for their stock growth than the long-term investment into better manufacturing. Imagine if every single part of a modern car were to be assembled by hand, as it was done 100 years ago, and all attempts at automating the process were dismissed, because it was seen as too expensive. Imagine if the industrial revolution wouldn't have occurred in Britain, because the nobility would've insisted that they would save more money by keeping the serfs in the fields, instead of building a factory.
Contrast and compare here how the average automobile industry manufactures their product and how the fashion industry manufactures their products. It's MIND BOGGILING how both industries seem to be half a century apart from each other.
Worst of all, regressing the American industry to sweatshops makes even less sense once you consider the fact that the American population is overeducated. Having manufacturing jobs that require tech specialization to manage all the machinery would create a new rising demand for an educated workforce that would finally be able to put their skills to use. But I guess the stock market is simply not interested in making production actually better.
