It wasn’t ‘progressives’ who moved inefficient, union-ridden jobs overseas for the cheap labor—it was the market. And that was better for the US than the protectionism it would have taken to keep them here.
But the combination of the new US energy boom—primarily led by gas fracking—and the increasing use of technology in manufacturing is allowing for a mini renaissance in US manufacturing. That’s exactly how and why it should have come about.
One area where progressivism (and the sellout GOP) is killing the country, however, is in the massive import of multigenerationally unskilled labor. We can’t compete with the rising labor of Asian countries with high school-dropout illegals-made-legal. That’s just a simple, ugly truth.
I hope the new technology and a coming energy boom really do help things out, but from experience I remain doubtful as to how much they can do. New technology manufacturing doesn't employ many people, particularly those with low skills. There is going to be a lot of resistance to fracking, even though it does seem like it can solve our energy needs for the next century plus.
The bottom line is that every nation needs a few people who do the basic job of connecting bolt A to nut B. Americans are not going to survive this century by selling each other insurance and hamburgers.