J.D. Vance’s Knockoff Theory of Manufacturing

Modern appliances enrich Americans’ lives, and the jobs that produce them aren’t being lost to China

By Allysia Finley. Excerpts:

"the number of manufacturing jobs has nearly doubled in Nevada in the past two decades and grown faster than in any state since the start of the pandemic.

Pace Mr. Vance, U.S. manufacturing jobs aren’t leaving for China. They are shifting from the Rust Belt, Northeast and West Coast to Sunbelt states such as Nevada, Arizona, Texas and Florida, which have young and growing workforces, cheaper energy, lower taxes, right-to-work laws and proximity to trade partners, especially Mexico.

It’s true that U.S. manufacturing employment has declined since the start of the century. Mr. Vance blames China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, which gave Beijing increased access to the U.S. market. But that’s only part of the story. Technology also increased labor productivity, enabling manufacturers to produce more with fewer employees.

The combination of cheap Chinese imports and more efficient U.S. manufacturing kept prices down and increased Americans’ purchasing power. In the two decades before the pandemic, prices for clothes, furniture, appliances, toys and televisions declined, often sharply.

Twenty years of falling prices lifted living standards for tens of millions of Americans. Some 90% of American adults own a smartphone, and nearly the same percentage have air-conditioning in their home. Most who don’t have AC live in the North, where they rarely need it. More than 80% of homes have washers and dryers, and about a third have two refrigerators."

"But what about manufacturing workers who lost their jobs because of them? Such is the march of progress, from the invention of the cotton mill to the modern assembly line. Americans have long adapted by moving or finding other work."

"American geographic mobility has been falling almost continuously since the 1970s, when Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society enabled the unemployed to live on the government dole. Rather than search for new work, large numbers of unemployed manufacturing workers dropped out of the workforce during the 1990s and 2000s, cushioned by a growing welfare state."

"Food-stamp rolls have grown by some 20 million since 2003. ObamaCare created another inducement not to work by enabling able-bodied adults to qualify for Medicaid, adding 15 million beneficiaries before pandemic-relief bills further expanded eligibility. The result of all this largess: Manufacturers say they can’t find enough skilled workers, which is constraining their growth.

The U.S. has roughly twice as many manufacturing job openings as in the early 2000s, but most aren’t in the states that many think of as industrial powerhouses. Since January 2020, manufacturing jobs have grown in Nevada (17.8%), Utah (12.3%), Idaho (12.1%), Florida (9.1%), Georgia (7.7%), Texas (7.5%), Arizona (7.3%) and South Carolina (5.4%), while declining in Pennsylvania (-0.8%), Ohio (-1.1%), California (-1.8%), Michigan (-2.1%), New York (-4%), Massachusetts (-4.4%), Washington (-4.4%) and Oregon (-4.7%)."