The motivation for backward-looking investment is clear. The U.S. economy is no stranger to industry shocks, nor their long-term economic and sociopolitical consequences. At multiple points in recent decades, sudden shifts in industry dynamics, supply chains, and trade relationships have levied immense economic burdens on the communities most reliant on those sectors, creating pockets of distress and disinvestment in places once considered America’s industrial hubs. Witness the most severe of these shocks: the “China shock” of 2000 to 2012, when a surge in low-cost imports following China’s 2001 admission to the World Trade Organization erased millions of U.S. manufacturing […]
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