Chinese Glass to Adorn New World Trade Center

It used to be that low cost, high bulk items were made close to the customer. After all, shipping adds a lot of cost to an item and there comes a point where shipping it from across the world doesn't make economic sense. Thus when carmakers go abroad the first things they look for locally are low cost, high bulk items like tires, batteries, and seat foam.

Does glass count? Perhaps. A lot of glass is still made in the United States, especially in Ohio. As a great NYT article yesterday points out, though, the tipping point where it's cheaper to outsource even glass may be arriving. The first 20 floors of the new World Trade Center (pictured above) require a special blast proof glass. When the call for bids went out, the cheapest bid came from, and went to... Beijing Glass. That's right, a Chinese company will supply the glass for these floors. An American company won the bid to supply the glass for the rest of the floors.

There's a trade war brewing on this front. American glassmakers have filed dumping petitions, hoping to gain some relief from Chinese imports through a temporary import tariff. Even if that happens, though, the jobs that have been lost in the U.S. are unlikely to reappear. In the last 9 years, glassmakers in the U.S. have shed thousands of jobs, cutting employment by more than 30 percent.

Glassmaking Thrives Offshore, but Is Declining in U.S. - NYTimes.com