why did we ever let american companies stop making their goods in america?
Discussion
Incentives
there’s nothing quite like outsourced cheap labour
Henry Kissinger and Nixon “opening” China.
have been trying to buy local products for years
Due to Triffin’s dilemma. It’s a curse of becoming world reserve currency. 
alex gladstein's podcast appearances can be very enlightening on this subject. it wasnt so much we let them stop as we made them stop for petrodollar power is my understanding.
When the dollar is the global reserve currency, then the dollar has to get circulated around the global economy so that it can be the global reserve currency and that means that the USA needed to buy its goods form other countries in order for that circulation of the dollar to happen. That in turn means that the USA has to have their manufacturing mostly off shored.
Freedom.
Because the companies offered a cheaper price for their goods. What I don't understand is how Americans went from, "Only buy quality that lasts, not the crap from K-mart." To going striaght to Walmart for everything.
I suspect it's because of https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
When money loses it's value one is forced to manufacturer things of lower quality.
Companies did it for a wider profit margin. Nothing about the market pressured them to manufacture outside the US. It's not like they were facing downturns. If anything, US regulations drove them that direction, and the lower wages of other nations became too attractive.
Either way, that doesn't explain the change in attitude from *purchasers* though, which is what I was asking about.
People used to know that spending $5 more for an item that will last your lifetime (or longer) is better than spending $5 less for an item you'll have to replace over and over. That intelligence has disappeared for, "Lower price is always better" type of thinking.
Greed.
Because people wanted cheaper stuff and didn’t mind how it was made.
I guess to stop that would have been antithetical to free trade.
Inflation killing purchasing power, college educated MBA idiots pushing profits without any long term stability, unions killing innovation and updating to compete with other countries, over regulation driving businesses to other labor markets, faster, better shipping technology, the internet causing people to not really care where something comes from, people not choosing to purchase things that will last more thebeavesknees@protonmail.com a lifetime. Etc.