Back in the 70's I remember people bewailing the fact that there wasn't a single manufacturer of televisions left in the U.S. - they were all being manufactured in Japan. I'd wager that there isn't a single television manufacturer left in Japan today. They've all been offshored to cheaper labor markets like Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, etc.
What goes around, comes around.
An interesting post recently by Keshava Dasarathy (whose blog appears on the blog roll to the right as "What's Next?") makes an interesting observation that IT is becoming just another industrial stepping-stone for developing countries. He describes how those who have sucked IT jobs from other countries by offering lower labor rates, have watched as wages have climbed and are now faced with their own jobs being "offshored" elsewhere. He also makes the really interesting observation that once those jobs have been packaged up and moved once, and the processes have been put into place to work with a remote workforce, the second round of off-shoring is much easier and much less disruptive.
In the long view, the fight against globalization is a losing proposition. By the time most public policy measures taken against such short-term phenomena are fully in effect, the forces they are attempting to influence have nearly run their course, and we're facing the next big trend disrupting existing patterns of commerce and displacing the workforce.
