Another reason to bring work back to the US or other western countries: intellectual property. You build your factory, give them the designs, the parts lists, the assembly instructions. After starting production and building up the supply chain, a manager of your factory goes down the street, uses your designs and assembly instructions and starts building YOUR product. For less than you. And then starts selling it for a little less money and a lot more profit.
Even in “The World is Flat”, the author states that non-compete agreements didn’t seem to translate into Chinese.
Automation will take over. I saw a piece on robotic workforces. They had a robot that could do intricate manual tasks and it cost 3.40 an hour to operate (including purchasing cost) it would last at least 3 years maybe longer AND the machine that would replace it will be more efficient and most likely cost less or nearly the same.
It don't take breaks it won't join a union it won't need health insurance and it doesn't call in sick, it doesn't get overtime and it will work all holidays and even when the weather is bad. It just needs occasional maintenance.
They had another piece showing a warehouse. Each Robot there could do the work of one and a half people 24/7 (only down for recharging time) They were even cheaper.
Manufacturing jobs are not coming back in big numbers. Robotics will replace most humans in these jobs.