Local Manufacture and 'Denial of Supply'.

During World War 2, the German U-Boat Packs almost succeeded in defeating Britain by simply cutting off supply. One thing that saved Britain was her (and Canadas) ability to quickly convert a thousand assembly lines to produce enormous amounts of vital equipment. (Uniforms, guns, tanks, even socks)
The point is, in 1939, Britain, Canada and America HAD thousands of varied assembly lines! Today, most of the developed Nations DON'T have anywhere near the numbers or variety of assembly lines to withstand a prolonged 'denial of supply'
Today, almost all nations are totally dependent on imports for the supply of the necessities of life!

A prolonged 'denial of supply' can be triggered by a variety of factors..
•  An Asian disease pandemic.
•  A political standoff - Something as simple as an argument with China over human rights.
Eg.. Chinas ‘one child’ policy has resulted in the killing of over 90 million baby girls. One day, our National Leaders will officially call some of these abuses a 'crime against humanity’ - and then a supply embargo will be upon us!
•  The next International War.. Since the Stone Age, major wars have come along every 50 years or so. It is naive to believe that "World War 92" (in 1939) was the last one!
They also called "World War 91" (in 1914) “The last War”..
Today, modern military technology would guarantee that no 'convoys' would ever get through to sustain us.

The 33% Local Production policy is this..
All Nations should be able to survive a two year denial of imports.
Therefore, all nations (including China) should aim to produce locally at least a third of all the basics of life.
That includes Clothing, Socks, Shoes, Textiles, Paper, Chipboard, Tools, Fuel, Fertilizer, Food processing, Vehicles, Farm Machinery, Steel works,  Etc.
For all nations, anything that you cannot live without, should be partly manufactured locally (or stockpiled locally).

Free Trade and unrestricted access to global markets has its benefits. -  but the benefit we were more concerned with was access to 20cents per hour labor costs! That was so much better than the $20 per hour that our own children were asking for!
Effectively, we have retrenched millions of our own children!
Millions are unemployed because there is very little these folk can produce that the general population has much need for! Asia has most of our needs covered - or soon will have.

Over the last 30 years, we have lost millions of jobs in the Textile, Garment, Foundry and Auto industries. The mantra that they could all be retrained in more relevant industries was a fiction. Most of these folk never held a fulfilling full-time job again. (They had no heart for IT or Hospitality). That represents over twenty million man-years of lost productivity and a million folk with little purpose or hope.

A huge proportion of our people are not 'cut-out' for the Technology industries.. They are suited to the fundamental tasks of life. They are suited to the same things people have enjoyed for the last million years - Farming, Gardening, Garments, Woodwork, Foundry, Arts etc. Allowing other countries to take 90% of the ONLY jobs these folk are suited to is a greed driven travesty.

A 33% local production policy would go a long way to correcting this tragedy and re-opening the hundreds of manufacturing plants we will need in the next 'denial of supply'.
Obviously, the price of the locally produced goods will be higher than those imported from Asia.

Import tariffs CAN be acceptable to all exporting nations,
for two reasons..
1. Asian nations do not want to see high unemployment in the Western nations - that will impact on our ability to import goods from them. They know we have lost millions of jobs to Asia but they simply assume that we have retrained those workers to other fields. As they begin to understand our unemployment situation, they will be very willing to accept the small impact of 33% Local Production..
Asia would rather we westerners were all employed and able to purchase more of their goods. They might even assist us with the investment and the technology to refurbish and streamline our rusting production plants.

2. For too long, China/Asia has been exporting billions of hard products and accepting a billion paper IOUs in return! This is becoming extremely dangerous..
A fundamental definition that many people forget is that TRADE means exchange of GOODS.. Exporting billions of goods MUST be matched by Importing billions of goods! Not matched by billions of IOUs.
The IOUs (US Dollars, Euros etc.) are supposed to be just temporary 'place holders' to balance the books.. The placeholders - in and out - should always hover around zero.
Hording placeholders is like hording Zimbabwe currency! If anything goes wrong in Zimbabwe, you are bankrupt.
China is starting to panic over the trillions of foreign dollars that it is stuck with. They will need to scale back on exports to the USA and start importing more goods from them. [see 'the China Bubble']

Many factories that have been abandoned by off-shoring multi-nationals should be nationalized and the retrenched staff 'un-trenched'.

wip..