Steven Pearlstein's Make Or Break Manufacturing Article

I always read Steven Pearlstein in the Washington Post.

Today, he wrote an interesting article titled:

     It's Make Or Break Time For Manufacturing


He states the standard story line of off-shoring:

"The story goes something like this: For decades, the governments of China and other Asian countries offered low wages and extravagant subsidies to lure U.S companies to build new plants in their countries. For years, Americans acquiesced to this off-shoring because it fattened corporate profits, lowered consumer prices and fit neatly with a a free-trade-free-market consensus among the economic elite. Any suggestion that we try to stem the outflow of investment or the inflow of products was dismissed as protectionism, and any suggestion that we try to match those subsidies was derided as a misguided effort to have government pick "winners and losers."

I don't agree with all of his points, but I do agree with:

"Where manufacturing goes, innovation inevitably follows," Liveris argues.

 Pearlstein is quoting author Andrew Liveris and his new book, "Make it in America,"