Here's a "grassroots" initiative bringing manufacturing back to the USA from Asia, https://reshorenow.org/ It was started by Harry Moser, the third generation of his family involved in USA manufacturing--primarily the Singer Sewing Machine Company... at one time a huge New Jersey factory of 5 million square feet. His main tool is free-to-use software, the
Total Cost of Ownership Estimator
Most companies make sourcing decisions based solely on price, oftentimes resulting in a 20 to 30 percent miscalculation of actual offshoring costs. The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Estimator is a free online tool that helps companies account for all relevant factors — overhead, balance sheet, risks, corporate strategy and other external and internal business considerations — to determine the true total cost of ownership. Using this information, companies can better evaluate sourcing, identify alternatives and even make a case when selling against offshore competitors. See Impact of Using TCO Instead of Price for further explanation.
The message makes sense to this AC, don't worry about national politics, work the cost numbers in detail and let the numbers guide purchasing decisions. He reports that many, many purchasing managers never look beyond the simple price quote--of course that will be cheaper from off-shore. The reality is that when all the relevant factors are included, in many cases it's actually cheaper to buy locally.
For a somewhat independent assessment, the Association for Manufacturing Technology (AMT) summarizes the Reshoring Initiative year-end report from 2024 here, https://www.amtonline.org/article/reshoring-initiative-annual-report-287-000-jobs-announced with a Figure 2 caption, "Reshoring Initiative Library: The cumulative number of jobs brought back since 2010 is nearing two million (Figure 2) - about 40% of what we lost to offshoring."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by gnuman on Wednesday November 26, @01:51PM
Tariffs make "on-shoring" actually less likely, unless you only sell internally. If you want to sell outside of US, well, probably not a good idea to "on-shore" any of that production into US.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mrbeast-goes-mainstream-inside-jimmy-100000809.html [yahoo.com]
Let's just say, small business manufacturers can't meet Trump and give him a new watch or gold bar to get a carve out. So, if you are producing something in US for US-only, maybe it's good to "on-shore" (if you can find workers). But if you are "on shoring" to export to the world? The numbers don't lie.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 26, @02:22PM (4 children)
We have to "reshore" education first
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 26, @02:47PM (2 children)
>We have to "reshore" education first
Define education.
Do you mean job skills training? Yeah, that would help.
What would help more is if there were jobs available for those skills to apply to after graduation.
We're pretty far down the Ouroboros / chicken-egg loop, something needs to straighten out the system and get it feeding from renewable resources.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by krishnoid on Wednesday November 26, @04:10PM (1 child)
My first thought was basic reading [slashdot.org], writing [soylentnews.org], and arithmetic [slashdot.org], but maybe those count more as "skills", rather than "education".
Having jobs available for those skills, though -- isn't that what the new deal [britannica.com] was about almost a century ago?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 26, @05:43PM
> what the new deal [britannica.com] was about almost a century ago?
Yeah, and the richest 0.1% are being prevented from becoming relatively richer compared to the masses as quickly as they wish by concepts in the New Deal that they have been undermining ever since. Basic education became a veiled target ~20 years ago with a "Malicious Compliance" act of "No Child Left Behind" - they dropped the veil a little while ago and are just gunning for all competent education for the masses now.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 26, @06:45PM
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday November 26, @02:59PM (9 children)
> overhead, balance sheet, risks, corporate strategy and other external and internal business considerations
Costing is difficult when overseas competitors use techniques such as "embrace extend extinguish", "loss leaders" and other equivalent sneaky tricks.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 26, @03:50PM (8 children)
> "embrace extend extinguish", "loss leaders" and other equivalent sneaky tricks.
These tricks aren't sneaky, they're business as usual - something the naive fall for but anybody who's been around the block more than once knows all too well as "just good business." There is no honor among thieves, and less among business competitors.
I believe the old intentionally teach the young "idealism" and "fair play" as an advantage for the old to hold over the (majority of the) young.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by krishnoid on Wednesday November 26, @04:19PM
I mean, you don't *have* to be that sneaky all the time [deming.org]. I bet if the naive watched at least a couple intro videos on game theory, they'd be less naive -- but maybe still as undeservedly optimistic [www.foo.be] when dealing with others.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mcgrew on Wednesday November 26, @04:40PM (6 children)
These tricks aren't sneaky, they're business as usual
Today, yes. Dishonesty today is business as usual, honesty in business is very rare today. I remember a time when every CEO wasn't a heartless criminal like they all seem to be today. Money has been transformed from a tool to a pagan god.
When masked police can stop you on the street and demand that you prove citizenship, your nation is a POLICE STATE
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 26, @05:53PM (3 children)
Can you specify which time you're talking about? Because I don't see it.. Must be a boiling frog thing
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Wednesday November 26, @06:35PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 01, @01:36AM
Now their ice cream/milkshake machines don't work.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday December 09, @02:30PM
Can you specify which time you're talking about? Because I don't see it.. Must be a boiling frog thing
It was the time between the Great Depression and Ronald Reagan. Read the book Saving Capitalism [wikipedia.org] by Robert Reich. Sorry, that link is the worst Wikipedia article I ever saw; the documentary was after the book. You can probably find the book in your local public library.
And of COURSE it was a "boiling frog thing"!
When masked police can stop you on the street and demand that you prove citizenship, your nation is a POLICE STATE
(Score: 2) by bussdriver on Wednesday November 26, @07:07PM
look into the modern US religion: mammon.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Sunday November 30, @09:50PM
> I remember a time when every CEO wasn't a heartless criminal like they all seem to be today.
I remember a time when it was the norm, instead of the exception, for a CEO to interface with their customers, to manifest a modicum of personal accountability. Today's "leadership" arrangements seem designed to insulate the CEO from all those messy conflicting considerations, the better to focus on the next quarterly report's margins and growth forecasts.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Wednesday November 26, @04:14PM (1 child)
Visual Capitalist says [visualcapitalist.com] jobs actually have been lost...
So which is it, more jobs or lost jobs?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 26, @04:41PM
Here's another source, https://blog.uwsp.edu/cps/2025/01/29/u-s-manufacturing-employment-a-long-term-perspective/ [uwsp.edu]
The included plot of USA manufacturing jobs from US Bureau of Labor data shows:
+ Lots of oscillations between 1970 and 2000, including an overall peak around 1979.
+ A major loss of manufacturing jobs from 2000 to 2010. [Cultural reference--the movie "Outsourced" is from 2006, although that was more about office jobs than manufacturing.]
+ A slow increase from 2010 to now, but with a sawtooth notch during covid that has recovered back to the pre-covid level.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 27, @12:51AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPFuxllzo08 [youtube.com]