The same was said for Japanese during the late eighties...
And it was probably true, right up to the point where the Japanese started pushing most of their manufacturing to cheaper countries just like we did.
I don't have a problem with shifting manufacturing to other countries as long as we know what *we* are all going to do for a living and are realistic about where the money will come from. I always had a nagging feeling that half of our economy depended on western companies being able to sustain a hefty margin between built-in-Asia cost and sold-in-Europe-and-NA sell price.
I do think we're in an overshoot on the downside (ie things will improve a bit soon) but we still need to learn to live without a trillion-dollar trade deficit and the same amount of money coming back to feed government borrowing -- and that is *not* going to be easy, particularly since we're so strongly polarized between "we need tariff walls to rebuild our own industry" and "protectionist measures are what made the Great Depression so bad". My feeling is that there should be some kind of middle ground but I don't know if it's going to be possible to work out a decent compromise that works reasonably well for all countries.
