Onshoring manufacturing

[WendyBG]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/05/business/economy/supply-c…

**Supply Chain Woes Prompt a New Push to Revive U.S. Factories**

**Companies are testing whether the United States can regain some of the manufacturing output it ceded in recent decades to China and other countries.**
**By Nelson D. Schwartz, The New York Times, Jan. 5, 2022**

**....**
**Mr. Knizek of EY-Parthenon expects industries with complex and more expensive products to lead the resurgence, including automobiles, semiconductors, defense and aviation and pharmaceuticals. Anything that requires large amounts of manual labor, or that is difficult to automate, is much less likely to return...**

**China retains huge advantages, like a mammoth work force, easy access to raw materials and low-cost factories...**

**Despite the big announcements and the billions being spent, it could take until the late 2020s before the investments yield a meaningful number of manufacturing jobs...** [end quote]

Loss of manufacturing jobs has hollowed out the opportunities for the many average people in our country who lack higher education.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP

It’s no coincidence that the precipitous decline of manufacturing employment began in 2000, coinciding with advances in computerization and also the rise of China as a manufacturing/ mercantile power.

I applaud every successful onshored manufacturer. But these trends aren’t going away.

Wendy

[Leap1]

I applaud every successful onshored manufacturer. But these trends aren’t going away.

Wendy,

With rising wages and lower interest rates along with stabilized inflation when the monetary policy relaxes the US is the place the best place to manufacture goods.

We have demand side econ which will truly improve our standard of living.

[OrmontUS]

With rising wages and lower interest rates along with stabilized inflation

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That’s just a snapshot in time. Without a significant level of protectionism (which I personally object to), few will build an expensive factory employing a significant number of people knowing that as soon as a foreign source sells their product for less, their business will dive. That said, I see no problem with building highly automated factories which employ few people to manufacture products in the US (especially when local and national tax dollars subsidize those companies).

In fact, the defense industry thrives on huge (unnecessary) domestic manufacturing programs. Even the Pharma companies, many (most?) of which are foreign, expect to continue top be subsidized by the US taxpayers by being allowed to charge above-market prices in a bizarre protective environment where more cash is paid to lobbyists (and then to Congress people?) than even in the defense industry.

Jeff