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>The Japanese government working with Japanese business has taken many manufacturing jobs from the U.S. Now the Japanese are off loading the manufacturing process to developing nations where the cost of labor is cheaper. Many U.S. businesses don’t understand what is going on.
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>Tom

I think that the evidence is that US manufacturers NOW know this trick. The import disparity between China/US is HUGE, in favour of China. But most of the goods are US manufacturer branded. Nike was an early adopter and tons have followed in their wake. Not just China, of course.

Personally, I don't like the trend (business practise) at all, the way it's currently done. Very poor labour practises and even worse environmental care really makes it amount to slavery in disguise as far as I see it. I've seen exposes on China showing a very few bigwig party members "owning" or running the companies living in mansions and driving Rolls' while the tens of thousands work their butts off for a dollar or less per day and much of their wage is taken back as costs for food and shelter (a barracks with few facilities at all). Yes, they end up ahead of where they would have otherwise been, but only marginally.
As bad is that we don't even really benefit from there much lower costs. The Nike example uses the price differential (at the time a pair of shoes costed $11.00 US delivered to US in a box yet sold for around $100.+) for marketing and promotion. If they foresee a tighter quarter they simply cut some of their advertising. I'm never quite sure if shareholders generally admire this appraoch or not. I wouldn't.

Enough I think!