ABSTRACT
Today, the Rustbelt regions of Europe and North America are at the forefront of a
global competitive struggle to retain jobs and investment in the face of an economic
challenge the like of which Western economies have never before experienced. In
the 1970s, energy-poor Japan and the lesser economies of the East Asian Pacific
Rim launched an export-drive of monumental proportions to earn the foreign
exchange to buy the fuel needed to keep their economies functioning. Although it
did not directly cause the demise of the heavy industries such as coal, steel and
heavy manufacturing the Rustbelt regions specialized in, this global burst of
competitive power helped undermine the structures of production, eased into
place over the previous century, and engendered a perception in the West that
things could never be the same again. Markets for heavy industry could not be
recovered at their former scale, labour markets could never be so full of secure and
well paid jobs, the future lay in developing or attracting new jobs in new industries.
