Much of the debate over the past years about the benefits and the costs global specialization, primarily the rapid advance of China as a major manufacturing center has been less about the financial costs — the $ 12 trillion dollars of additional liquidity that the US consumers offered to the world (the
cumulative US trade
deficit from 1990 through 2015 compared to the over $ 3 trillion dollars in trade surplus
run - up by China over this same period — and more in terms of the jobs lost and the impact of foreign products on American wages in manufacturing.