WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross' recent remarks that the coronavirus outbreak could bring jobs back to the United States have sparked criticism, as many called him "insensitive" and said it made no economic sense.
Calling it "a spectacularly insensitive reaction" to China's coronavirus epidemic, Noah Smith, a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, wrote on Monday that it's "heartless" to say so at a time when thousands of Chinese people have been infected, with millions more huddling indoors as the disease spreads.
The epidemic might cause multinational companies to rethink their reliance on China, Smith said in an opinion piece titled "Coronavirus isn't bringing jobs back to America.
"Companies can't help but turn to it as a source for components and manufactured goods," he said, adding that the United States, Japan and South Korea are "especially" dependent on China in this regard.
The outbreak could accelerate the trend of supply chain diversification to other locations, but that won't be enough to get multinationals to abandon China, especially "given the lure of its huge domestic market," Smith said.
Moreover, alternatives are unlikely to be in the United States, as companies might look for other low-cost countries, such as Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Ethiopia and the Philippines, Smith said, noting that each country has a "limited" ability to absorb production from China.
Paul Krugman, a Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist, also refuted the commerce secretary's remarks, saying that Ross "flunked microbe economics."
In an opinion piece published earlier, Krugman wrote that what Ross and his colleagues "apparently still don't understand" was that modern manufacturing isn't like manufacturing a couple of generations ago, when different countries' industrial sectors were engaged in "fairly straightforward head-to-head competition."
"These days we live in a world of global value chains, in which much of what any given nation imports consists not of consumer goods but of 'intermediate' goods that it uses as part of its own production process," Krugman said.
In such a world, anything that disrupts imports -- whether it's tariffs or a virus -- raises production costs, and as a result if anything hurts manufacturing, he said, adding that the coronavirus isn't good for America.
Noting that Ross' comments came off as "tone-deaf, inappropriate and insensitive," Jack Kelly, a senior contributor of Forbes, wrote that the commerce secretary's assertions were "frustrating" since the answer was not so simple.
"Major U.S. corporations that have substantial operations in China can't just pack up their boxes and leave," Kelly said. "They have factories, offices, vendors, suppliers and employees to consider."
Ross' remarks have also drawn harsh criticism from netizens on Twitter. "People are dying, this guy thinking about jobs," Riaz wrote. "Not a shred of humanity is this sick being," MaxCat tweeted.
Joshua Potash, among others, said he couldn't believe the commerce secretary actually said it. "There is always a new, horrifying bottom," Potash added.
