Posted on 02/07/2015 5:52:17 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
In the last decade, we’ve lost millions of manufacturing jobs to outsourcing. According to U.S. News and World Report, there are now 5.1 million fewer American manufacturing jobs than in 2001. The lure of low wages, tax advantages, and other cost savings has made for a seemingly straightforward calculus, and manufacturer after manufacturer, supported by intricate spreadsheets, has abandoned ship, until offshoring has become the emerging mantra of the new millennium. U.S. companies that still manufactured locally have slowly become outliers.
Interestingly, this dynamic now seems to be changing, as we’re beginning to see more manufacturing in the U.S. Total output from American manufacturing relative to gross domestic product is back to pre-recession levels, with more than half a million new jobs. According to the Reshoring Initiative, 15% of this job growth results from reshoring alone. There are many reasons for this shift back to the U.S.
More bang for the buck.
The first has to do with cost. It used to be cheaper to manufacture outside the U.S.; now the costs are now converging. In the manufacturing sector, the U.S. is still among the most productive economies in the world in terms of dollar output per worker. To be more specific, a worker in the U.S. is associated with 10 to 12 times the output of a Chinese worker. That’s not a statement about intrinsic abilities; it merely reflects the superior infrastructure of the United States, with its higher investments in automation, information technology, transportation networks, education, and so on....
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
I’m far from an idiot as you’re aware.
So, what is your position with the Fed, lol?
I’m still here. Got a new job. Manufacturing. Putting in 74 hours this week. Sadly, it’s mandatory. I gave up posting threads about Fannie and Freddie before the crash. No one cared but the free-traders.
To begin with, this is another issue where the states can expect the feds to stick their big noses into intrastate manufacturing because of the ill-conceived 17th Amendment imo, corrupt senators helping the corrupt House to make constitutionally indefensible laws that screw things up for USA manufacturers.
In fact, consider that when the country was first established that the rich paid all the federal taxes to keep the feds operating.
“The rich alone use imported articles, and on these alone the whole taxes of the General Government are levied [emphasis added]. … Our revenues liberated by the discharge of the public debt, and its surplus applied to canals, roads, schools, etc., the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings.” —Thomas Jefferson to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1811.
I suppose that if I were a corrupt, tax-hungry federal politician that I’d try to think of laws to discourage companies from manufacturing things in the USA so that feds could raise more revenues from imported goods.
Next, while we do need state governments to act responsibly and take care of the environment, it remains that the constitutionally undefined EPA is going look for ways to make it difficult for prospective USA manufacturers to be economically competitive, until company owners wise up to the fact that the EPA has no constitutional teeth to tell anybody to do anything.
In fact, the same thing can be said of intrastate labor. While manufacturers need to work with state lawmakers to make laws to assure workers of reasonable wages and working conditions, how long will it be before patriots wake up constitutionally clueless manufacturers to the idea that the feds have no constitutional power to regulate intrastate wages and intrastate working conditions?
Or is Mr. Roemer possibly anticipating robot-based factories?
So given the unconstitutional federal policy obstacles that prospective new “MADE IN USA” manufacturers will be facing, I’m not sure why Mr. Roemer is seemingly optimistic about it at this point in time, especially since lawless, pro-union Obama is still in the Oval Office.
Otherwise, what am I overlooking?
Some one needs to investigate and discuss how much the eco-warriors have contributed to the war on industry, my gut feeling is that it’s a good amount.
Just convince the American People not to buy anything made outside the United States.
Apple will be broke in a Year.
Lookee here. Manufacturing is coming back without governmental intervention, but the protectionists are still correct—we need the government to intervene.
Ford Taurus, proudly assembled by the bailed out UAW.
Hyundai Sonata, proudly assembled by American Workers.
Wow.... 74 hours!!!
I HOPE you get paid hourly!!!!!!!! (just damn lol)
After the dollar crashes and a Chinese Pez dispenser (and everything else at WalMart and Target) costs $1,200 you can be DAMNED SURE Manufacturing will blaze a flaming trail back to the USA.
It will make Carl Lewis seem like a tortoise.
There will be a tidal wave of on-shoring.
Thanks for the article.
It is not just several good arguments about why manufacturing should come back to the USA from China (reshoring) - it is actually happening.
Investment in new manufacturing capacity in the USA has grown in the last few years, and new money has pretty much stopped going to China. Lower cost producers in Asia have picked off a lot of China’s low-end investment, and the USA is getting some high-end, and some close to the source type of products.
They mention the USA’s cheap energy advantage from fracking, but oil and gas are also feedstock materials themselves for making some products like plastics, fertilizers and a bunch of chemical processes.
The price of oil and gas may fluctuate, but other factors which the article points to will likely increase steadily. Increasing speed in the supply chain and lowering of inventory and transportation costs demands local supply. Increasing automation/robotics will dramatically narrow the labor cost differences, which was the major reason for off-shoring.
Rapid technical innovation is something we excel at, and which the Chinese can pretty much only steal - another reason that companies have been starting to avoid them.
We won’t gain as many jobs, but we will gain some very good ones, a nice shot to GDP and additional tax revenue.
China will be well and truly screwed. The Government there may have to try to convince a hundred million young adults to go back to rice farming or something. They won’t have the big trade surpluses to spend on their military buildup, without printing excess money.
So we are well positioned for an economic boom if a good President comes in next term, and the Republicans hold the Senate (it will be a tough cycle). A few reforms could bring a flood of investment and growth.
You mean like every other country does to us?
Don't forget the H-1b's.
3D printing on all levels, along with the bringing of graphene and carbon fiber reinforced plastics down to affordable levels will increase those trends, in my opinion.
If you bought your gold for $422 and it closed yesterday at $1264, you're up a bit less than 200%
More importantly, for national defense reasons, on American soil.
Get real.
All the more reasons the factories should be in the USA if labor is a non factor.
Importing cheap Chinese crap and retailing it doesn’t create wealth.
The United States still manufactures the best guitars in the world. They are very expensive because they take a lot of man hours and man hours in the United States are very costly.
You want to bring back manufacturing into the United States? Then we either lower our wages down to third world rates, or we introduce tariffs.
Either that or just make sure Americans buy American built stuff. We can’t compete with people who make 50 cents an hour when we have to pay them 100 times that.
Are we as Americans willing to pony up the bucks to buy a widget made in America that costs $100 when we can get it from China for $5?
Of course we'll probably have to get engineering students from India and Pakistan to run them, as math and sciences are "courses Americans don't want to take."
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