In 1980, presidential candidate Ross Perot used the metaphor of a “giant sucking sound” to warn our citizens on the dangers of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. He correctly predicted that many of our factories would relocate to Mexico to take advantage of lower labor costs. His critics said, “Good riddance. We will replace those low paying jobs with good paying high-tech jobs!”
Well that giant sucking sound from Mexico paled by comparison to the ginormous sucking sound from China. Surely you’ve heard it! China not only sucked the bulk of our manufacturing jobs out of the U.S., it also sucked a good portion of those high-tech jobs away from our country along with the bulk of our technology.
I remember being in a state of shock in 1996, when I learned that the Chinese began launching our satellites. Both American industry and state-owned Chinese companies had been lobbying for years to get satellites off what is known as the ”munitions list,” the inventory of America’s most sensitive military and intelligence-gathering technology. Continue reading “China’s Giant Sucking Sound”