I am sure Kissinger played a part in many things, but he seems small pickles compared to labor costs (and hence quality of life) in the US being multiple standard deviations above the mean compared to the rest of the world.
How long did people expect that arbitrage opportunity to not be taken advantage of?
Also, adding China to the WTO was probably a bad thing for the lower half of the income distribution in the developed world.
If China and other countries are bringing 1B+ people online to make products at a fifth of your wages, then it is only a matter of time before the buyers outside the country start buying from them.
What happened was that American (and European) corporations started producing their goods in other countries, because it was cheaper for them.
Like, I would have no issue with this in general if China developed their own companies, rather than already profitable US companies slashing their labour costs massively by using cheaper labour. It's super problematic, and while one can argue it's been good for the world, it's been pretty crap for all the manual/manufacturing workers in the US, Uk and other developed countries.
Full disclosure: I'm from Ireland, and this sort of outsourcing was what employed my Dad (and now me).
Trade surplus nations work more than they should. Trade deficit nations work less than they should. That has strong implication on where "all the jobs" end up.
My favorite example is Greece. "All the jobs" have moved to Germany.
The side-effect of it is that technology that the day back was not reachable for most is now available for everyone: phones, cheap clothes, cheaper food, hot water, electricity, railways...
BTW I have lived in VN almost 10 years. It is true that VN has factories and workers are much cheaper.
Jobs move there. People buy cheaper products (automatically people that did not have access to something have access to it by the cost reduction).
Workers there get 4 times more of what they would get on their own and an insurance they would not have and do not need to work god knows where, probably selling in the street drinks or similar stuff.
I think that with all its imperfections, capitalism is the better alternative.
Btw we have never had unregulated capitalism... if we had, we would have worse salaries probably but more people could earn a life by themselves. Our friends the politicians are always there to tell you that you have to pay and shut up. For the good of all... lol. I do not buy that.
Nope. What has been going on over the last decades is simply the consequence of unregulated capitalism - by design, capitalism seeks to eliminate or reduce cost to increase profit, and China (as well as India and Vietnam) were/are the most cost-efficient locations to produce goods and provide services.