I remain puzzled by the lack of historical perspective on trade and some appreciation for global ramifications.

Here's a 1995 paper noting that US textile employment peaked in 1948 and apparels peaked in 1973 - long before NAFTA, et al. It specifically notes Caribbean offshored production, as the Caribbean & Latin America used to be our own sweatshop, as ordained by the Monroe Doctrine, until we fell in love with Deng Xiao Peng in the early 80's.

Nevertheless, decrease in employment doesn't equal decrease in production, as productivity per worker for US industry has increased greatly. One other book denotes that the US imports & deficit in these industries had increased significantly since the Tokyo Round took effect in 1982. Blaming it all on NAFTA or even China is misleading.

I still don't understand how we relate trade in low-skilled sectors with giving poor foreign countries a chance in developing lower-skilled markets, presumably while the US moves up-market in skills and products. Since apparel sweatshops have been the bottom of the barrel for a century or more (including well-known fire disasters), it would be expected as we get fewer immigrants that more of this low-skilled work would be done abroad - Mexico, Philippines, Saipan/Guam ("US-based" sweatshops kinda, with legal & illegal immigrant workers) & of course China/Vietnam.

If we do put price supports on internally produced goods, are we fine with the increased poverty in foreign countries? Brazil managed to build up a very good ethanol market but the US prohibited Brazilian imports because because because - especially because of heavy US government subsidies for corn. Brazil of course can't compete against such subsidies, so is locked out, while Americans pay more for corn. I'm sure the same is true for textiles & apparel.  Is that fine with us?  Let the Chinese and Mexicans and Peruvians eat dirt? or is there a Plan B I don't know about to relieve world poverty?

[I remember shopping for kids clothes a decade or 2 ago and a women proudly declared she didn't buy clothes made in Vietnam because she'd heard about Nike mistreatment - and then filled her shopping cart with goods from China which no doubt was made by prison laborers and new migrants to the city paid $3/day under horrific conditions, etc. etc. - we're so selective in our information & decisions that I keep waiting for someone to try to piece together the big picture].

Apple has yearly revenues of some $182 billion, which I assume is mostly domestic origin despite some foreign outlays - gross margin is estimated at 65%, and Chinese assembly is a pittance. Likely bigger charges are Japanese displays and Korean chips, while core materials for manufacturing - e.g. phone case, motherboard, etc. - are likely  tiny as well. God knows at 0.06% of profits they don't put much into paying taxes.

Back when I was looking into toy manufacture, cost of goods was about 10% of retail price - so the rest of the chain (e.g. ex-China or elsewhere) makes up 90% of the costs, with typically 50% gross margin - typically the US take  (interestingly, Barbie was never made in the US - first produced in cheap post-war Japan & later moved to China).

So second, where is that upwards job mobility that we were promised? While I agree China is anti-competitive, distorts its currency (like the US distorts its own - such as Bush's "weak dollar" policy to stimulate exports), and puts barriers to our exports, we're also fighting with the rest of the world over the low end of the barrel.

So where's the real beef? blocking the trade deal won't recreate a WWII-style American manufacturing sector or textile/apparel juggernaut like we used to have. What do we actually want or expect?