Cid_Yama wrote:On the contrary. This is a positive development for the US worker. Domestic production will increase.
It's only negative news for the labor exploiters and, of course, the shipping industry.
The US will once again have a vibrant domestic economy where things are produced here and will stay here, so they will be forced to pay a living wage again to have consumers.
This whole globalization thing was a big scam that has run it's course. Labor Colonialism.
The Baltic Dry is not an obscure index.
The problem is the conflict between capitalists' need for profits and wages. That is, manufacturers want to keep wages low so that profits will be high, but for goods to be sold wages have to be high. That's where banks come in: they provide credit to laborers who can now buy goods that would not be able to afford to buy.
In many ways, this probably describes what happened to the U.S. right after WW2, with not only banks but even government providing support so that even a factory worker could afford to buy a house, a car, and other conveniences while allowing the children not only to go to school but even to college. After that, not surprisingly, the kids with college degrees no longer wanted to work in factories. That and other factors inevitably led to outsourcing.
The only way out, then, is to see the destruction of the U.S. middle class and major drops in income, which in turn would lead to the collapse of the economy (if much of it hinges on consumer spending), the dollar, the military, infrastructure, etc.
The result will naturally be a return to a domestic economy, but probably not a "vibrant" one.