<i>But those skills are expensive because the same skill level person in the US has a different pay than the person in China.</i><p>I don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s true, or at least, not true for the vast majority of workers.<p>A typical US manufacturing worker is an order of magnitude more productive (a good, if imperfect, proxy for skill) than a Chinese one, and if anything is underpaid for the value they provide. China just has massively more labor available.