The controversy emerged when an Apple contractor in China, a manufacturing facility known as Foxconn where many brand-name electronics are assembled largely by hand, made headlines when dozens of workers threatened to jump to their deaths over a labor dispute. Foxconn’s solution? Erect netting beneath roofs and windows.

It doesn’t end there. For 12-hour shifts, six-days-per week and a live-in lifestyle workers allegedly earn just $17, the New York Times reports. Forbes and PC Magazine added their own angle to the news. One such detail described a high-level manager who, at a Chinese zoo, asked a zookeeper to provide advice on how to deal with his workers, drawing a direct comparison between factory workers and undomesticated animals. It gets worse. A NYT piece, “In China, Human Costs are Built into iPad“, refers to two dozen accidental worker deaths that have occurred as a result of unsafe working conditions. Finally, in “This American Life” the narrator of “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory” recounts a first-hand meetup with underage Chinese workers, among scores of others who suffer permanent neurological tremors and ticks as a consequence of over-exposure to a chemical toxin.

For all the outrage, many argue such are the inescapable growing pains of a Third World labor force “coming up”. At one time, the United States, too, was known for worker exploitation, a chief reason child labor laws gained traction and unions became a bulwark against corrupt and abusive management practices. And yet, even at the height of the union movement in the US such organizations represented only a fraction of the workforce. Nonetheless, what began as labor negotiating with management to build a viable American middle class has transformed in recent decades to its polar opposite: a perception that unions destroy American prosperity.

Let’s turn these assumptions on their head for a moment. It may very well be in our best interest to support unionization movements in the Third World because only then will we stem the tide of human rights abuses and, at the same time, diminish the massive inequalities that allow US companies to do the math and abandon American soil — our workforce — in favor of nations that are institutionally in conflict to American democracy, liberty and justice. Rather than live down to a Third World “race to the bottom” standard, we who have already been down the road to civil rights in the First World ought to raise the international bar: mentor up-and-coming industrial nations in “best practices”.

Our choice is clear: In the absence of such a push Third World manufacturing will remain attractive in much the same way the American South benefited from plantation slave labor. In the US we fought a bloody Civil War to become a civil society. For all the doom-and-gloom of the incensed Southern plantation owner, certain the loss of low-cost labor represented a death-knell, the United States thrived in the post-Civil War era, particularly so after World War II.

Why tolerate and excuse “separate and unequal” practices overseas?

Blind-eyed consumerism turns us into self-serving hypocrites. And yet the shame we bring upon ourselves is far from the only reason to care about what goes on on the other side of the globe. We, too, suffer at our own hand in a less overt but equally-destructive manner: wage stagnation, loss of social mobility and growing deficits that, in the years to come, will increasingly link to tax revenue losses associated with declining (taxable) American affluence. What began some 25 years ago as an offshoring, outsourcing rush sparked the rise of the “too good to pass up” Chinese-made bargain at Walmart and has culminated in a high price indeed. Today, unlike then, economic necessity drives many Americans to purchase Third World goods because our buying power has slipped in direct proportion to the wholesale acceptance of patently unfair “free trade agreements”.

It’s time to admit that Ross Perot was right when he warned of the “giant sucking sound” of jobs leaving North American soil.

There’s nothing wrong with free trade in the true sense of free-market intent. There is, however, something very wrong with the negative notion that the widening gap between the “haves” and the “have nots” represents a valid manifestation of such a market. Globalization isn’t the problem per se: bad policy is. At the international trade table our “partners” aren’t playing the same free-market game — and therein lies the problem. The United States is increasingly bested by communists, socialists and managed market capitalists! Will we ever come out of economic decline if we don’t perceive the need for a course correction? Take a long, hard look at our 2012 presidential candidates: How many of them propose a viable industrial policy, speak of a solution to the trade deficits or call-out the perverse tax incentives that are shooting America’s economic interests in the foot?

Is it any wonder that our anti-liberty competitors — nations, like China, where government puts to death anyone who attempts to unionize — successfully defend their competitive advantage through currency manipulation, taxes on US-made goods and government-backed “private enterprise”? How nonsensical is it that we Americans glibly say it is “protectionist” to fight fire with fire!? Let’s call it what it is: a leveling of the playing field. It’s a necessary evil lest we become impoverished to a Third World degree!

This much is true: We can’t keep sitting complacently on the wrong end of the see-saw with the flat-earth expectation that we will maintain a fighting chance to compete through pure creativity or educational prowess. Now that our productive capacity exists primarily overseas, engineers, skilled machinists, prototype builders, and venture capitalists will increasingly take up residence there, too. That doesn’t leave much room for even the most highly-educated American student to succeed short of relocating to greener pastures. And therein lies the second problem: what we take for granted here — freedom of speech, religion and association — are criminal offenses in much of the world.

For all our romanticizing, the mobile, global “citizen of the world” is not one who can take the pursuit of life, liberty and justice for granted.

Change may be inevitable but it need not be an all-or-nothing proposition fraught with quasi-religious political dogmas. A large part of the solution lies in bringing Third World manufacturers into the 21st Century so that working conditions are not so dissimilar from our own. To do anything less than revisit and renegotiate the world’s FTAs is akin to running a hockey or football game with one set of rules for the home team and another set of rules for the visiting team. Nonsense! It’s time we got over our apparent death wish, stopped parroting the usual partisan talking points and rallied the courage to institute pragmatic trade reforms. In the long term, that reform needs to include sanctions, if not binding criminal penalties, for “world citizens” — multinational corporations — that exploit vulnerable populations. Another crucial aspect to such reform is the diversification and development of affordable energy resources that will trim the cost of doing business: here, there and everywhere.

If you are inclined to feel pessimistic, don’t. Consider the growing market for fair-trade coffee, non-GMO and organic foods. A growing number of consumers are willing to pay a premium for health and the satisfaction of being on the right side of the fence when it comes to labor practices. Scores of Americans, too, are more than willing to fork over a premium for a Chinese-made Coach handbag at no real cost savings for its origin simply because the brand carries a perception of value even though it is no longer domestically produced. I am arguing that the same market potential exists here. The assumption that Americans won’t pay for peace of mind or premium-branded US-made products remains largely untested in today’s climate of “conscious consumerism”. Anyone who prefers name-brand over store-brand pays a markup willingly, regardless of country of origin. It stands to reason there is a broader market for products created under fair trade conditions that remains largely untapped. It’s time to invest in symbiotic international relationships that actually work — not the dysfunctional thinking that crudely passes for globalized free trade.

In the spirit of thinking differently it is time to challenge the myth that US-made merchandise corresponds to massive price hikes. A modest 25-35 percent increase for the satisfaction of owning a few more US-made goods is likely to receive greater acceptance as the “jobless recovery” lingers, consumers become more quality conscious, and news of foreign-worker abuses in our hyper-connected small world begin to hit closer to home. There’s reason to believe that the competitive advantage of Third World manufacturing is itself unsustainable. Why might the affordability gap between foreign-made goods and US-made alternatives narrow despite cut-rate overseas labor costs? Because gasoline and transport prices are on the rise. As energy prices increase, it becomes less cost effective to manufacture products thousands of miles away from their intended market. A push to “go local” and “manufacture Green” will mean that more First World consumers will value products that help their own communities in the perception that this is also the environmentally-responsible way to rebuild the social contract.

To manufacture products closer to one’s target market is not infeasible: one need only look to foreign auto manufacturers that have set up US plants to see that such arrangements are workable. Volkswagen, Honda and Toyota, among others, provide the proof that taking one’s manufacturing plants to your market — in this case to manufacture foreign automobiles with US labor — does not harm the bottom line. In fact, the decentralization of production may very well be a security investment against assembly-line disruptions that might otherwise occur when productive capacity is concentrated in a single geographical region where war or natural disaster can prove disastrous. Make no mistake: This is not an argument to move all production to the US. Rather, I argue equally that products destined for the Asian or European markets should be assembled closer to their respective consumers. In so doing, consumer electronics and appliances that are destined for the US consumer can and should be made here for reasons of economy, environment and quality control. After all, the more people we put back to work on US soil the more likely it will benefit the profitability of manufacturers, who stand to make a whole lot more profit here in the US when more Americans are gainfully employed, upwardly mobile and fully equipped to participate in the global economy.

In conclusion, this argument comes down to a simple truth that appears to have been missed in CEO and MBA’s haste to go global: What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Corporations have a responsibility: to understand that an investment in their market is an investment in their bottom line. If this isn’t the quintessential definition of “rational self-interest” I don’t know what is.

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RESOURCES

Making It In America | The Atlantic

Globalization’s Achilles’ Heel | The Daily Beast

Apple Wrestles With Its ‘China Problem’ | Fox News

Globalization, Inequality and the State | Thomas Pogge

Is China a Threat to the US Economy? | Congressional Research Service PDF