STRATEGIC

84 Strategic Choices for a Turbulent World: In Pursuit of Security and Opportunity
that provided a middle-class lifestyle for Americans with a high school
education. Certainly, low-cost imports from China and other countries
have contributed to the loss of factory jobs, but even economists who
see free trade agreements as a major factor in job loss estimate that
imports were the cause of only about a quarter of all U.S. manufacturing
job losses between 2000 and 2007, 33 or half, at most. 34
Rather, increasing automation and other forms of advanced technology
are deemed by many analysts to be far more significant than
trade factors in the “creative destruction” occurring in the U.S. labor
market and soon, even in lower-cost labor markets around the world. 35
As T. X. Hammes argues:
The emergence of automated or “dark” factories that need only a
few humans to supervise and maintain robotic production lines is
a global trend. A fully automated factory in Mexico needs only six
people per shift to produce thousands of cases of beer. The Changying
Precision Technology Company in China has established
an automated truck manufacturing plant that employees 90 percent
fewer people. According to the Boston Consulting Group,
about 10 percent of all manufacturing is currently automated, but
this figure will rise to 25 percent by 2025. 36
The “robots are killing millions of jobs” narrative in the U.S.
media has produced decidedly mixed commentary about whether jobs
33 See, for example, David H. Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon H. Hanson, “The China
Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States,” American
Economic Review, Vol. 103, No. 6, October 2013.
34 Peter Gosselin and Mike Dorning, “After Doubts, Economists Find China Kills U.S.
Factory Jobs,” Bloomberg, June 18, 2015.
35 For example, between 1999 and 2011, the newspaper, book, and directory publishing
industry shed about 292,000 jobs while telecommunications shed about 397,000. Competition
from China was not a factor in the loss of well-paying jobs in those industries, but
technology was. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Current Employment Statistics,” database,
series ID CES5051110001 and series ID CES5051700001, undated.
36 T. X. Hammes, “Will Technological Convergence Reverse Globalization?” Strategic
Forum, Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, SF No. 297,
July 2016, p. 3.