Levi Strauss: otra industria manufacturera que abandona España

La creciente globalización comercial, la mejora exponencial de las tecnologias de la información y la comunicación y la reducción de las barreras arancelarias han creado en las últimas decadas un escenario completamente nuevo. Y hay que reflexionar sobre ello.

El "The Economist" lleva haciendolo algún tiempo defendiendo el librecomercio y la famosa ley de las ventajas comparativas de Ricardo. Ver por ejemplo el artículo que dedica en el número del 19 de febrero:

The great hollowing-out myth (19 Feb. 2004)
Contrary to what John Edwards, John Kerry and George Bush seem to think, outsourcing actually sustains American jobs
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2446951

Destaco algunos parrafos:

•Outsourcing (or “offshoring”) has been going on for centuries, but still accounts for a tiny proportion of the jobs constantly being created and destroyed within America's economy. Even at the best of times, the American economy has a tremendous rate of “churn”—over 2m jobs a month. In all, the process creates many more jobs than it destroys: 24m more during the 1990s. The process allocates resources—money and people—to where they can be most productive, helped by competition, including from outsourcing, that lowers prices. In the long run, higher productivity is the only way to create higher standards of living across an economy.

•Even though service-sector outsourcing is still modest, the growing globalisation of information-technology (IT) services should indeed have a big effect on service-sector productivity. During the 1990s, American factories became much more efficient by using IT; now shops, banks, hospitals and so on may learn the same lesson. This will have a beneficial effect that stretches beyond the IT firms. Even though some IT tasks will be done abroad, many more jobs will be created in America, and higher-paying ones to boot.

....

And what of China? Still piffling. Certainly, China competes with some labour-intensive American industries that have long been in decline, such as textiles and stuffed toys. In the mid-west, metal-furniture makers and small tool-and-die foundries face growing competition. Yet most Chinese imports are of consumer goods, competing with imports from other poor countries, whereas America's manufactures are chiefly capital goods. Even at their peak in 2001, the number of all “trade-related” layoffs represented a mere 0.6% of American unemployment.

As for the Indian threat, “offshoring” is certainly having an effect on some white-collar jobs that have hitherto been safe from foreign competition. But how big is it, really? The best-known report, by Forrester Research, a consultancy, guesses that 3.3m American service-industry jobs will have gone overseas by 2015—barely noticeable when you think about the 7m-8m lost every quarter through job-churning. And the bulk of these exports will not be the high-flying jobs of IT consultants, but the mind-numbing functions of code-writing."

Por ser de acceso restringido os reproduzco aquí el polémico e interesante editorial. (Las negritas son mías):

The new jobs migration

Feb 19th 2004

Foreign competition now affects services as well as manufacturing. Good

FOR the past 250 years, politicians and hard-headed men of business have diligently ignored what economics has to say about the gains from trade—much as they may pretend, or in some cases even believe, that they are paying close attention. Except for those on the hard left, politicians of every ideological stripe these days swear their allegiance to the basic principle of free trade. Businessmen say the same. So when either group issues its calls for barriers against foreign competition, it is never because free trade is wrong in principle, it is because foreigners are cheating somehow, rendering the principles void. Or else it is because something about the way the world works has changed, so that the basic principles, ever valid in themselves, need to be adjusted. And those adjustments, of course, then oblige these staunch defenders of free-trade-in-principle to call for all manner of restrictions on trade.

In this way, protectionism is periodically refreshed and reinvented. Anti-trade sentiment, especially in the United States, is currently having one of its strongest revivals in years. Earlier bogus “new conditions” that were deemed to undermine the orthodox case for liberal trade included the growth of cross-border capital flows, the recognition that some industries exposed to foreign competition may have strategic or network significance for the wider economy, and concerns over exploitation of workers in developing countries. Today's bogus new condition, which is proving far more potent in political terms than any of these others, is the fact that international competition is now impinging on industries previously sheltered from it by the constraints of technology and geography.

The new protectionism

It is no longer just manufacturing that is feeling the pressure of foreign competition. It is no longer just dirty blue-collar jobs that are moving offshore. Jobs in services are now migrating as well, some of them requiring advanced skills, notably in computer programming. Services constitute much the larger part of every advanced economy. At the end of this process, what will be left? Gosh, Adam Smith never thought of this. Trade policy needs to be completely rethought.

Well, actually, no. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, pointed out recently that if services can be sourced more cheaply overseas than at home, it is to America's advantage to seize that opportunity. This simple restatement of the logic of liberal trade brought derision down on Mr Mankiw's head—and the supposedly pro-trade administration he works for conspicuously failed to defend the plain truth he had advanced. That was disturbing.

John Kerry, who leads the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, is at best a tepid and fluctuating proponent of trade, given to calling bosses who invest overseas “Benedict Arnolds”. His main competitor, the beguiling John Edwards, who did unexpectedly well in the Wisconsin primary this week, has fastened on trade as his winning issue: he is for clenching his jaw and keeping American jobs in America, etc. And the media are simply lapping it up. CNN's flagship business-news programme, Lou Dobbs Tonight, which you might expect to strive for economic literacy, has embarked on a rabidly anti-trade editorial agenda, with its host greeting every announcement of lost jobs as akin to a terrorist assault.

The fact that foreign competition now impinges on services as well as manufacturing raises no new issues of principle whatever. If a car can be made more cheaply in Mexico, it should be. If a telephone enquiry can be processed more cheaply in India, it should be. All such transactions raise real incomes on both sides, as res