Now, think for a minute about the solar alternative. Today’s technology lets you to put solar panels on your roof and power your home. You can install storage batteries to keep the lights and air conditioning on at night. Your solar panels can recharge the electric vehicle you drive to work and back.
All that is possible right now. If you care to spend the money, you can probably go completely off the grid without changing your lifestyle very much. That is especially true in the sunny southwestern states, Florida, and Hawaii. Few people quit the grid entirely because to do so is still expensive. That won’t always be the case. Prices have been falling fast.
The equation is quite different in emerging-market nations near the equator. Decentralized, renewable energy sources are more cost-effective than fossil fuels right now in countries that don’t already have a well-developed energy infrastructure. Much of Africa will never have an electric grid like ours because it will never need one.
A world economy in which we don’t have to transport fossil fuels back and forth will look different. See all the red boxes and arrows on this Houston/Galveston map, via MarineTraffic.com? Those are oil, gas, and chemical tankers. The diamond-shaped ones are anchored, waiting their turn to load or unload. The map depicts globalization in action.
The impact of offshoring on the U.S. economy and the environment has been significant. The growing U.S. trade deficit with China alone cost 3.2 million jobs between 2001 and 2013. Job losses occurred in every state, primarily in manufacturing. Offshored jobs have diminished American employment opportunities, helped contribute to wage erosion, had a dramatic and negative effect on the domestic economy, and negatively impacted the environment through higher carbon emissions and other pollution from some developing countries and from long distance transport.
However, the bleeding of manufacturing jobs to offshore has stopped. Reshoring, including FDI, balanced offshoring in 2015 as it did in 2014. In comparison, in 2000-2007 the United States lost net about 200,000 manufacturing jobs per year to offshoring. That is huge progress to celebrate!
Read the report: http://www.reshorenow.org/content/pdf/2015_Data_Summary.pdf
With 3 to 4 million manufacturing jobs still offshore, we see huge potential for even more growth.
The impact of closing the trade deficit would be:
a. 3-4 million manufacturing jobs at current U.S. levels of productivity
b. 6-8 million total jobs
c. Improved income equality
d. Cut U.S. budget deficit by about 50%
e. Provide more funding for other programs
f. 25% - 30% increase in manufacturing
g. Reduced economic volatility
The winning strategy is balancing the trade deficit with a strong investment in automation and skills training and increased corporate use of Total Cost for sourcing and plant siting decisions. A competitive USD and corporate tax rates would accelerate the process.
The Reshoring Initiative Can Help
The not-for-profit Reshoring Initiative’s free TCO Estimator can help corporations calculate the real P&L impact of reshoring or offshoring.http://www.reshorenow.org/tco-estimator/
Do you want to help accelerate jobs coming back to the U.S? If so, please email us at [email protected] to find how we can help each other.