Why old-fashioned manufacturing jobs won’t return to the West

By S.W.

MANUFACTURING has a powerful hold over politicians and policymakers in the rich world. Donald Trump, among others, wants to bring the job of making things back to America from the low-cost countries to which it has emigrated. Manufacturing is worthy of political attention. Manufacturers are more likely to be exporters than other types of businesses and those tend to be more productive than non-exporting firms. But when politicians talk about manufacturing it tends to be in terms of the production line: assembling parts into cars, washing machines or aircraft, which adds less value than it once did. It is the processes that accompany assembly—design, supply-chain management, servicing—that today bring the value. Manufacturing, and jobs in manufacturing, have changed in ways that mean that the old jobs will never return to the rich world.