Hey! I know! Lets all get our aircraft maintained by dirt cheap Chinese labor in China!
It's taken how long for Qantas to spot a trend? Ten years? Bunnings was selling Chinese power tools at least Ten years ago.
So anyway Qantas management heaves itself off its backside, looks around and decides that China is the flavor of the moment - Ten years to Fifteen years after retailers and miners worked this out. But Hey! Airlines are conservative right? So why does it matter when we go to China as long as we go?
Because the Chinese cost advantage is already disappearing! Qantas is too late, you missed the boat! Remember you heard it first from Sunfish:
Meanwhile, the China-US seesaw is about to swing the other way. Offshoring is out, 're-inshoring' is the new fashion.
"Made in America, Again" - a report this month by Boston Consulting Group - said Chinese wage inflation running at 16pc a year for a decade has closed much of the cost gap. China is no longer the "default location" for cheap plants supplying the US.
A "tipping point" is near in computers, electrical equipment, machinery, autos and motor parts, plastics and rubber, fabricated metals, and even furniture.
"A surprising amount of work that rushed to China over the past decade could soon start to come back," said BCG's Harold Sirkin.
The gap in "productivity-adjusted wages" will narrow from 22pc of US levels in 2005 to 43pc (61pc for the US South) by 2015. Add in shipping costs, reliability woes, technology piracy, and the advantage shifts back to the US.
The list of "repatriates" is growing. Farouk Systems is bringing back assembly of hair dryers to Texas after counterfeiting problems; ET Water Systems has switched its irrigation products to California; Master Lock is returning to Milwaukee, and NCR is bringing back its ATM output to Georgia. NatLabs is coming home to Florida.
Boston Consulting expects up to 800,000 manufacturing jobs to return to the US by mid-decade, with a multiplier effect creating 3.2m in total. This would take some sting out of the Long Slump.
World power swings back to America - Telegraph