In the Pittsburgh region, it was not good before that either. Factories were closing. What seems to be the immediate crisis is that the last of the major factories that had professed their determination to remain "Made-in-America" have recently bolted for Mexico and China - R.D. Werner being a significant example (ladder manufacturer).
Interesting article at GoGov.com on this subject.
Pandering Buzzwords The latest buzzwords of the Democrat candidates is overseas outsourcing. The question is, how does a government prevent a company from outsourcing overseas?
The answer is, recreate a favorable business climate in the U.S. Contrary to popular myth, it is not cheap labor that finds companies locating overseas.
Many companies that set up factories overseas do not install much of the equipment that would routinely be used in a U.S. factory. The amortization schedule simply does not provide a payoff for the investment in the equipment. Instead, the machines are never used. In such instances, it is cheap labor replacing a machine - not U.S. workers.
What drives companies overseas are other costs of doing business in the U.S. such as onerous government reporting requirements, human resources policy management, and insurances to name a few. Any one of these line items of non-productive expenses can exceed the entire administrative cost of a medium sized factory located overseas.
If Kerry and Edwards [and the labor leaders] have something to say about outsourcing, let them tell us how they plan to stop the U.S. government from driving jobs overseas. As U.S. senators, they need only look in the mirror to see where the problem of lost jobs due to overseas outsourcing has been created.