Is it possible to reconstitute local manufacturing and local food markets, or has Globalization ultimately made this impossible?

The global economy and marketplace have impacted local industry and local manufacturing harshly. With consumers having choices from international companies able to import their products, a common market pool for the whole world, it has become more difficult for the local merchants to thrive. Also, many Western companies have established themselves in developing countries, such as McDonalds and Starbucks, with over 31,000 and 18,000 locations operating worldwide respectively. While the influx of multi national corporations has created economic opportunities for many in the communities that they operate within. …show more content…

This would force the importation of the product from a foreign country which would obviously hamper the ability of local establishments to be able to compete in that market. In fact, some experts think that because of globalization, in the future all food consumed in America will be imported from elsewhere. It has become financially beneficial to import food instead of growing it locally. This change in economic patterns in response to globalization has hampered the growth of the local industry (Obstfeld, 2000). And functioning in this way will certainly hamper the local manufacturing and food markets to be reestablished and flourish. Another factor of globalization that is well documented is that of outsourcing jobs to developing countries with a cheaper labor force. Much of this outsourcing has come in the manufacturing sector with many American workers losing their jobs to countries such as China and India. This outsourcing has a great negative impact on the local industry as it deprives it of a reliable workforce (Kantor, 2012). Without stemming the flow of such work overseas, it would make it very difficult to reconstitute the local manufacturing. For those countries that receive these workers however, there is an enormous benefit to their manufacturing sector. The influx of capital from foreign companies investing in their country and the employment opportunities they provide for the workforce give a boost to the