Robert Reich Quotes

Asia is the market and the location where production is inexpensive. The technological expertise and specialist knowledge comes from the industrialized world.

The standardization and specialization of industrialization was being undermined by globalization. When people in Bangladesh could produce things much more cheaply than anybody could produce them in Detroit, we no longer were the world capital of industrialization.

The other part of outsourcing is this: it simply says where the work can be done outside better than it can be done inside, we should do it.

Outsourcing and globalization of manufacturing allows companies to reduce costs, benefits consumers with lower cost goods and services, causes economic expansion that reduces unemployment, and increases productivity and job creation.

Globalization has created this interlocking fragility. At no time in the history of the universe has the cancellation of a Christmas order in New York meant layoffs in China.

Many large brands are now just marketing machines for what's being made offshore.

iPhone4 is sold in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere, but it was assembled in China. As the world's center for the processing of IT products, China's environment is paying the price.

I've decided to take advantage of outsourcing. My next novel will be written by a couple of guys in Bangalore, India.

Democratic government is responsible government—which means accountable government--and the essential problem in contracting out is that responsibility and accountability are greatly diminished.

Many large corporations in the last 20 years have decided that their business plan is to shut down manufacturing in Dayton and Toledo and move it to Wuhan and Shenzhen. And then they will sell products back into the United States. It’s a betrayal of this country and a betrayal of the middle class.

Many American industries may be expected to acquire foreign properties to supplement their raw material supplies.

Because America doesn't have a strong textile industry anymore, we have to bring things like fabrics, zippers, and color tape into the U.S., and having so many elements involved in production adds to the amount of waste. You might have some things coming from Italy, a button coming from China, or lining coming from Korea; it's just endless.

In India, we have the global services HQ, R&D centres, global network operating centres, global manufacturing, and product management - India is not just a market but a country we use for extended NSN.

It used to be that American and European companies built their products in low-wage countries, separated by great distances from the innovators who developed the products and the markets where they were sold. But companies increasingly find that is an outmoded way of doing business.

Connecting the world is really important, and that is something that we want to do. That is why Facebook is here on this planet.

The multinational corporation and international production reflect a world in which capital and technology have become increasingly mobile, while labor has remained relatively immobile.

Look at Mexico. Many, many factories, many plants. Nabisco's now moving to Mexico, their big Chicago plant. You look at Ford is building one of their biggest factories in Mexico, one of their biggest assembly plants in Mexico. So Mexico is not only beating us at the border, they are also beating us at trade.

What we have seen for a very long time is large corporations shutting down plants in this country, plants that are often profitable, in order to get cheap labor all over the world. And that is one of the reasons why the middle class in this country is disappearing.We have lost our manufacturing base, and that's an issue that has got to be dealt with.

When we, for example, see shifts of huge production lines from certain areas to other countries, people tend to ask the question, "Where's my place in this modern world?" We have this here, this tendency in our country, we have it in other countries.

Improved productivity is another direct benefit of globalization.

We're going right down the toilet, and it's a made-in-China toilet. I teach MBAs. And I noticed, starting a few years after China joined the World Trade Organization, that a lot of my students were no longer employed. They were still coming to get their MBA, but they'd lost their jobs.

Globalization, which attempts to amalgamate every local, regional, and national economy into a single world system, requires homogenizing locally adapted forms of agriculture, replacing them with an industrial system-centrally managed, pesticide-intensive, one-crop production for export-designed to deliver a narrow range of transportable foods to the world market.

Developing relationships is a very important part of doing business, and I see more similarities than differences when I travel the world.

In America, we're not making anything anymore. China and other countries are making our products. We are rebuilding China.

But on the other hand, there are many corporations who have turned their backs on the American worker, who have said, if I can make another nickel in profit by going to China and shutting down in the United States of America, that's what I will do.