This is a book, as the title suggests, about the causes, consequences and perhaps above all, politics of deindustrialization. On the face of it, this is obvious because of the title, but actually we need to be clear about what this means, which is far from straightforward. This is in part because deindustrialization is not quite as well defined as some suggest, and indeed some media leave out any clear definition beyond bleak reports of rust- belt areas and run- down towns where employment in once secure manufacturing jobs has declined. Not unrelated, it is often assumed that deindustrialization is a phenomenon specific to the Global North and is a bad thing, an undesirable phenomenon. This position is not intrinsically incorrect or indeed correct, but it needs to be carefully argued and linked to wider implications, not least the aggregate effects on a particular national economy, as well as regional implications within that economy.

This in turn potentially leads us away from simply focusing on deindustrialization per se, part of which involves a focus on the politics of deindustrialization. As we shall see in the chapters that follow, most of the literature on deindustrialization is focused on the Global North, although this is changing, and most of it focuses on economic measurements. This is perfectly acceptable and much of this work looks at different ways of understanding the causes of deindustrialization. Although often briefly spelt out in the literature, understanding the causes of deindustrialization will have political implications – for example, if job losses in manufacturing in the US are caused by cheap manufacturing imports from the Global South, then this might, and indeed has given rise to protectionist pressures. So, in that sense we need to consider the links between the economic contentions about deindustrialization and the politics that might follow from these arguments. Moreover, politics are not simply derived from economics in any straightforward way, and even if the case is made that so- called industrial decline is a product of the rise of Southern manufacturing, this might resonate even if the evidence for it is not very strong. But this in turn may have deep political implications, as we shall see.