OSHA and EPA regulations combined amount to around 8% of manufacturing cost
in the US. The wage differential between high-quality workers in China and
high-quality workers in the US runs around 96%.

So you have an 8% solution here to a 96% problem.



Lawyers, bureaucrats, and socialists will be the death of this nation.

If anything kills manufacturing in the US, it will be doctrinaire,
conservative free-trade economics.

I disagree. If anything kills manufacturing in the US, it will be
union workers pricing themselves out of the market. Locally, we had a
very established business where the rank and file struck for higher
wages, despite knowing the employer was already fighting off a
diminshing market and offshore competition. You already know the
results- the business folded and the tooling went to- China.

Just last week, a large factory announced that it was closing- idling
1200 workers. The jobs are going not to China, but to Singapore.
It's hard to feel sorry for these workers- they were getting big bucks
and bennies for assembly line work and they wouldn't consider even a
small pay cut to stay employed.

GM is setting up car factories in China. GM says they are building for
the Chinese market only, but I wonder...

-Carl