> in their early industrial periods.

> The same will happen in other developing economies

Most western countries developed in an era where trade was nowhere near as globalized and instantaneous as it is today.

A steel mill in 1920s Pittsburg wasn't directly competing or face disruption from a steel mill in Essen, compared to today when you are competing with public-private steel mills in China, India, Vietnam, Iran, Indonesia, etc which while also unionized and (relatively) well paid jobs, are fine working 6 day workweeks and 10-12 hour shifts for a $6,000-9,000 a year salary with a pension and free or subsidized housing, and can export finished products globally in days instead of months.

Heck, even the oil industry is now outsourcing critical geological and petroleum/chemical/mechanical engineering jobs to India [0]

And this is the crux of the issue - a major reason the US and Western Europe had manufacturing dominance throughout much of the 20th century was because it had the right mix of human capital, financial capital, and technology concentrated within their borders.

This isn't true in the 2020s anymore - a lot of technologies are fairly democratized now, a lot of alternative domestic capital markets have formed, and research output and human capital has expanded massively across countries.

Heck, China, India, and ASEAN today share developmental indicators comparable to or significantly higher than the European portion of the Warsaw Bloc during the 1990s.

And even in newly industrialized countries like South Korea and Turkiye, the same abusive working standards in manufacturing industries remains, but now being powered by migrants from Vietnam/Indonesia/China or Syria/Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan respectively.

[0] - https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/big-oil-is-offshorin...