You said "we have is a choice between fewer American manufacturing jobs (automation) or no American manufacturing jobs (outsourcing). People don't want to hear that, but those are the alternatives."
Why is it impossible to pay closer to the world market rate for labor, at the U.S. federal minium wage of $7.25/hr? I'm not saying you're wrong, these are intended as real questions :)
In practice the answer was traditionally "unions". The United Auto Workers won't let you eliminate all pensions and benefits and pay minimum wage, but they can't stop you from building a factory in Mexico, so what happens?
In theory we could try to compete with Asia on labor costs, but nobody really wants that. It's better to have middle class jobs than a larger number of subsistence-level jobs, especially when the output is the same.
I think quite a few companies would love to try and compete with Asia on labor cost, and a good many have. I'm not trying to argue against the value of corporations or anything, but I think it's generally agreed that the goal of corporations is to make as much money as possible for their shareholders. To that end, companies are going to pursue profits (i.e. lowering labor costs) over creating good paying jobs whenever they can. I'm sure many CEO's would, in theory, prefer to keep middle class jobs over profits, but in reality many of them know that they will be replaced if they do. It's rare that they can have it both ways. Also, it seems to me that given the choice between creating a few middle class jobs or a larger number of subsistence level jobs, large corporations have more often chosen the latter. "creating" more jobs looks better on paper and it's easier to fire someone if you have a larger pool of candidates to replace them with, or, better yet, pick up their slack while being paid the same.
On the subject of unions, I was interested to see here, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm, that in 2016 only 10.7% of workers were union. I certainly agree that unions have traditionally been a force in keeping wages high, but I don't think they are really the best case to use as an example of US manufacturing as a whole. I'll be the first to say that I haven't really researched it, but it seems to me that quite a lot more then 11% percent of US manufacturers have moved their operations overseas.
People will take the best job available on the market. If bringing back manufacturing brings back a lot of subsistence level jobs, you won't have people in middle class jobs leaving those jobs for the subsistence jobs. The only people who take those new jobs are those who are in a worst position than what the subsistence level would provide them, and thus are better off with the subsistence level job than without.
This is basic free market economic theory that any economist (other than perhaps Marxians) would agree with.
