If, on the other hand, it decides to maintain its production at home, the enterprise will be unable to compete with low- cost imports and will perish. It must surely be a mistake to adopt an economic policy which makes you rich if you eliminate your national workforce and transfer production abroad, and which bankrupts you if you continue to employ your own people. But the companies that move offshore are those which employ large labour forces. Surely the new jobs that will be created by the high- tech industries of the future will compensate. High-tech industries can, indeed, survive and prosper under these circumstances, for the very reason that they are highly automated and therefore employ few people.
Labour is no more than a minor item in the overall cost of the products they make.
As soon as they need to employ a reasonable number, they will be forced to move offshore. Moving from higher cost region, to Asia cuts in half the cost of assembling a disk drive. Mr. Zschau of IBM admitted that the moves will put IBM on only even footing with its competitors. The aircraft manufacturer Boeing has announced that it will transfer some of its production to China. Proponents of global free trade constantly say that exporting such high-tech products as very fast trains, airplanes and satellites will create jobs on a large scale.