There’s more at stake here than just a few stray socks. Textiles and footwear and wiring are typically among the earliest steps in the development process. Poorer countries use these subsectors not simply to gain income and begin urbanization, but also to build the sort of organizational and training experience to move up the value-added chain into more sophisticated manufacturing and systems. The relocation of these subsectors to more advanced economies in general, and their increasing automation in specific, denies countries that have not yet begun the development process the opportunity to
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