Gee, you think?

The signs have been imminent for some time, but in July, comments by adidas global CEO Herbert Hainer alerted the world to the cost-based shockwaves running through China’s manufacturing heartlands.

“China produces about 50 percent of our shoes. This will change in the future as salaries in China become too high,” Hainer said in an interview with German magazine Wirtschaftswoche. “We have entered an agreement with one supplier in India so far. We will jointly open production facilities there. Other countries such as Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam are also on our list.” Hainer added that some of adidas’ production in China may also shift back to Eastern Europe and Russia.

Yeah.

Salaries become too high.

So now we have the truth, don't we?

That, by the way, was the threat.  It was followed through upon.

(Incidentally, Foxconn recently announced the same thing, for those who argue that this was a "one-off" or that the 2008 date on the original somehow invalidates the argument.)

There is no intent to build a middle class, to lift people generally, to employ people who then buy your products and services with their salaries.

No, this is a swarm of locusts.  The only intent is to strip-mine the labor and poison the land, air and water.  As soon as the people who you have been abusing get tired of it and start pushing back, you simply leave.

Our "trade policy" is predicated on exactly this -- we enable it while at the same time claiming to stand for "human rights."  The Libertarians are even more-galling -- as the only political party requiring a non-aggression oath for membership, the hypocrisy dripping from 90% of the candidates and the utter refusal of both national and state parties to take up strong anti-aggression language while clinging to the polemic of "free trade" in their platforms define both hypocrisy and bigotry.

It's all fine and well to prattle on about "gay marriage" and such, but the reality is that man has a long history of abusing people "over there" -- out of sight, out of mind.  The rampant pollution and slave-like conditions, often enforced with literal black-listing and state-spnsored destruction of the people's previous way of life, leaving the people a choice of sewing for the equivalent of 50 cents a day or starving, is part and parcel of the "competitiveness" that these firms seek.

No firm can get away with this sort of practice in a nation where unalienable rights are respected, there is a rule of law, and there is redress available in the courts for environmental damage and slave-like conditions.  

There are many who claimed that China was a "miracle" in lifting people from rice-paddy subsistence farming to "the middle class" in factory work.  That was and is a lie.  The former farming lifestyle was destroyed outright with pollution and resource theft, leaving the people unable to choose.  The promises made of an upward mobility in lifestyle was a lie; instead of reasonable hours and working conditions the employees are worked ridiculous hours, expected to produce at rates beyond reasonable human output and then discarded like a broken horse when the inevitable health problems become manifest.  Meanwhile the people -- including children -- are poisoned with unfiltered raw industrial waste dumped on land, air and water.

When the people have finally had enough and rebel, despite their communist government threatening to kill them all, the manufacturers simply shrug and move onward -- to Indonesia, Vietnam or somewhere else where they can find yet another group of people to screw and poison.

There is no sustainable policy here.  There is no "free trade"; this is raw abuse of people and property.  The support of such policies is the support of slavery, assault and even homicide.

To our government and the political parties, including the Libertarians, I say this: Enough.