Summary
1. With every year that goes by, the economy is increasingly becoming a worldwide, interconnected one. 2. The xenophobic tone of Zhone Technology’s pitch is related more to its own sense of desperation than in realistically addressing the supposed advantages of keeping jobs in the US. 3. There just are no longer hard and fast associations between the nationality of a corporation and where they are employing people or in which locations they are getting their components.
Analysis
There may be some advantages for politicians in promoting less free trade. However, the reality is that there is often no correlation between “buying American” and creating jobs in the States. And even if there were, Zhone would probably be taking a backseat to other vendors in many cases.
Across industries, it is becoming practically impossible to figure out “the highest expected American labor content in implementation...metric.” In addition, it is not necessarily the case that in stimulating Asia, the government is failing to “[s]timulate America.” The US does benefit from lower cost products. This kind of backward thinking can lead to trade barriers, which were instrumental in causing the Great Depression.
Moreover, many American firms “have off shored their manufacturing to Asia.” Also, there is a reason why the Zhone executive could not “explain his figures,” because in a global market, they are inexplicable.
