The number one reason US manufacturing has left the US is, and always has been. cheap labor. And the trend has been going on since the 1950s before the EPA and most regulations even existed. There are other factors, but whatever is next has been a distant second to cheap labor.
Not true. Labor intensive industries will shift to where labor is cheapest. Manufacturing goes where it is cheaper to manufacture. Labor is only one component.
Other components include educated workforce, government provided incentives/subsidies, taxation, regulations and laws including environmental. So manufacturing jobs can come back to America provided “the cost” of manfacturing is attractive to do so.
Labor intensive jobs will never come back unless the US becomes a 3rd world economy while the rest of the world including Africa burgeons.
Or unless more Americans begin to get a clue that the $950 billion in welfare and low wage subsidies now being paid annually to working age Americans are related to the fact that there are few jobs for lower skilled Americans.
All this money some think is being saved by manufacturing in cheap labor nations is simply being paid for by present and future taxpayers through ever increasing government subsidies to lower skilled Americans, who always have been and always will be part of our population.
Is $950 Billion Per Year in Means Tested Aid Enough
Just as we pay for that "cheap" illegal alien labor through many government benefits, we also pay for those "cheap" foreign imports by numerous subsidies to our lower skilled unemployed and those employed in low paying jobs.
The 'savings' realized by some companies are just being shifted to the taxpayer, present and future.