(1/27/12) Prestowitz quoted in Seattle Times

Yes, we can bring manufacturing jobs back here

There's no inevitability about Asia maintaining dominance. America until very recently dominated high-tech manufacturing jobs but allowed them to slip away because of purblind policies.

Jon Talton

Special to The Seattle Times

Thanks to the reporting of The New York Times, most Americans are just waking up to the brutal realities of the offshoring of high-tech jobs to make Apple's iconic products, with Chinese workers doing this under serflike conditions.

As the newspaper reported last week; "Employees work long hours, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long, that their legs swell until they have trouble walking.

"Underage workers have helped build Apple's products, and the company's suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

"More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers' disregard for workers' health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens."

Click here to read the entire article at the Seattle Times.