I know that over the last 30-40 years many factory jobs or union jobs in the US were lost to outsourcing, and I know that today many car companies and other manufacturers get cheaper labor by opening factories in other countries. My question is, why did this all happen in one giant wave around the same time? Did some kind of law/regulation change to make this more doable for companies? Or is it just because the world became more globalized in general?
In: Economics
It wasn’t one big wave. It started slowly as foreign markets became more attractive.
Before that there was simply no place you could do this with profits. Transport slowly got cheaper, cheap labour countries got more politically stable (so your factory isn’t stolen by a warlord), and the local market to buy your goods grew.
Also trade borders were removed, but that was also a continous process.
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