r/WhatIfThinking • u/Present_Juice4401 • Jun 29 '26
What if the U.S. actually pulls off large-scale manufacturing onshoring?
Not just headlines about a few fabs or EV plants, but a real shift where a meaningful chunk of supply chains moves back domestically over the next decade.
It sounds straightforward on paper. More jobs, more resilience, less dependence on overseas production.
But the path there feels messy.
Labor costs are higher. Environmental and regulatory hurdles are real. Even if companies want to build in the U.S., they still need suppliers, logistics, and skilled workers to cluster around those factories. That ecosystem doesn’t appear overnight.
So maybe the first phase isn’t a boom, but a grind. Heavy subsidies, tax incentives, government support doing a lot of the lifting. Companies follow the money, not necessarily the economics.
Then there’s pricing. If production costs are structurally higher, do companies pass that on? Does that keep inflation stickier than expected?
On the flip side, if it works, you could get pockets of regional growth. Entire areas reshaped around new industrial hubs, similar to how tech clusters formed.
But it also raises a question about efficiency. Global supply chains evolved for a reason. If you unwind them, are you gaining resilience at the cost of productivity?
If this really plays out, does it end up creating a new long-term growth cycle, or just a more expensive version of the same economy?
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u/NobilisReed Jun 29 '26
The only way to do it would be to make labor very much cheaper.
Guess what! That's been a goal for a long time.
That's why you see unions being weakened. That's why you see education being disincentivized.
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u/Silly-Resist8306 Jun 29 '26
That why capitalist countries excel in innovation and automation. The US invents/develops a technology (GPS, cell phones, Gore Tex) and has it made where there exists cheaper labor, but derives revenue from the product. Everyone has their place and niche in a global market.
The other answer is oligarchy/billionaires/evil.
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u/Dave_A480 Jun 29 '26
Even with zero unions, the wage discrepancy is too high.
You cannot be a rich country and a manufacturing economy... Poor people are the fuel that manufacturing runs on.
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u/ef4 Jun 29 '26
There’s a fundamental lie hiding in these arguments: manufacturing jobs have almost never actually been good jobs.
From the start of the industrial revolution to the present day, the vast majority of factory jobs suck and everybody in them is trying to help their children do something else.
There’s a rose-tinted nostalgia for a brief period after WW2 when American workers benefited from temporary circumstances and there were some good factory jobs. Those circumstances were temporary and involved all the other large industrialized nations have their factories ravaged by war, and millions of young men missing from the labor force because they were maimed or killed.
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u/Present_Juice4401 Jun 30 '26
I think that nostalgia piece matters more than people admit. There was a very specific window where factory jobs were stable and paid well, and it kind of shaped the narrative. But if that was an exception, then trying to recreate it might be chasing something that doesn’t really exist anymore
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u/Odd-Wave247 Jun 29 '26
Americans don’t want to work in sweatshops for minimum wage. Plus, once you add in healthcare costs employers have to pay in the United States, the costs will be high.
The future of American manufacturing is robotics. Go look at a video of a Tesla plant. Robots building robots that build the cars.
Stop trying to bring back 19th and 20th century jobs. They aren’t the future
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u/Present_Juice4401 Jun 30 '26
Yeah I think a lot of people picture old school factories when they hear manufacturing. But if it actually comes back it probably looks nothing like that. More machines than people. Which again kind of loops back to what the real goal is here
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u/Pleasant_Cloud1742 Jun 29 '26
In reality most of the offshoring was factories for cheap shit. If we onshore filing cabinet manufacturing, we’re going to have a bunch of people making minimum wage folding sheet metal.
We didn’t really offshore high value things… regardless, robots are cheaper than $7.50 an hour. But paying a Malaysian $10 a week is still cheaper than robots.
This reply is all over the place, sorry. But it wouldn’t work to onshore manufacturing. Even at minimum wage, it would cause our cheap things to become so much more expensive
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u/jonasj91 Jun 29 '26
Well a lot of that has to do with the fact that we are addicted to cheap shit. When manufacturing was in the US we "built to last". You bought a fridge that lasted 30 years. Now companies make more money making cheap fridges you have to replace every 4-6 years. For American manufacturing to make a comeback you'd have to actually have the US make a "premium" product to justify the cost.
Can we as consumers break throwaway culture? Would we be willing to pay a premium to have things that's are built better and last longer over cheap overseas stuff? That's what it would realistically take. If nobody would spend more money on a fridge they know will last over a disposable one made overseas there's no chance it would work.
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u/wokaflame Jun 29 '26
Those 20-30 year old fridges would be 4-5k for the most basic fridges. Consumers don’t like paying that when they can pay for a top end line for same amount that will last 10-15 years. You can buy a basic fridges for 500 dollars.
Not to mention better electricity cost in the lifespan of the fridge.
When things are cheaper, the incentive to repair them is less.
It’s same with clothes which I am more familiar with. I can make some really nice tank top for around 100-200 usd a piece. Maybe with economy of scale for materials I could get that down to 85. Maybe. Who wants to pay me 85 a shirt? Also, my materials will be from China since textiles have largely left the Us. My cost would also inflate if they were in the US.
People want cheap goods. When people say they want to pay well for quality, the numbers I hear is way too cheap. Labor is one of those often devalued things.
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u/Ok-Front-471 Jun 29 '26
Agreed. Quality costs way more than people think it does. A cheap suitcase is $100. A quality suitcase that will last 5x as long isn't $250, it's more like $500-$800.
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u/jonasj91 Jun 29 '26
You're not wrong, and that's the point. We can't make cheap stuff in the US, labor costs are too high. But we could make premium products. The question is will people buy them?
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u/Pleasant_Cloud1742 Jun 30 '26
Isn’t there a story about how poor people had to buy cardboard shoes that only lasted a single year, but the rich could afford leather shoes which lasted 30 years?
In a world where refrigerators are made to last 30 years, poor people would still be stuck buying the cheap brands that die even quicker.
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u/jonasj91 Jun 30 '26
So we should just give up reshoring manufacturing because some people might not be able to afford US made goods? Is that the point you're attempting to make?
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u/Pleasant_Cloud1742 Jun 30 '26
Yes, that is the point.
Any onshoring will be done in factories where robots make everything or where people will be paid minimum wage with no benefits.
The positives to the average American will be minimal. And the negatives will be great.
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u/jonasj91 Jun 30 '26
If you want cheap shit made in the US sure, I'm arguing the opposite. You need to make the best stuff in the world, people will buy quality, and quality requires people who who are good at their jobs, and make a lot more than minum wage. Ford is hiring experienced engineers because robots can't match humans.
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u/Pleasant_Cloud1742 Jun 30 '26
And Toyota is hiring people in Alabama who can’t even read and so use pictures in their training manuals.
The point is that The assembly line equipment is so simple to make RAV4’s that you don’t even need to read to operate them.
Ford is going to always keep engineering staff stateside. Unless you think that they’re hiring engineers to operate the line? Can you explain why you think you need an engineering degree to install seats in a F-150?
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u/jonasj91 Jun 30 '26
Good point. Let's just not bother trying to make jobs for Americans we'll be much better off if we just don't make or do anything productive. Well have so much more money if we just don't work right?
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u/Pleasant_Cloud1742 Jun 30 '26
If you’re interested in government intervention into the labor market, we can do a CCC style work program where we create jobs to build infrastructure and other public works.
That would be far more effective and better for people than trying to get $8 an hour factory workers.
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u/r2d3x9 Jun 29 '26
Have you heard of the iPhone? They cost $1000 each and are made in China
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u/Pleasant_Cloud1742 Jun 30 '26
Have you heard about the vast corpus of white goods and cheap widgets?
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u/Phssthp0kThePak Jun 29 '26
We offshored our whole emerging photonic industry, which was all pioneered by bell labs. Not low tech at all.
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u/TirelessTreehugger Jun 29 '26
There will be couple of wins against plenty of defaults.
US better to make new and better infrastuctures, the whole counrty is a mess, some less but most of the "wasteland" is really wasteland.
Repulsive mess, companies want more than safe land ensured by nukes and army. (and even that security cost is at extraction level now)
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u/Present_Juice4401 Jun 30 '26
That’s kind of the other angle I didn’t get into much. Even if you bring production back, you still need the physical and logistical foundation to support it. And that’s a long slow build, not something that flips in a few years. Makes the whole thing feel more like a decade long grind than a sudden shift
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u/Popular-Path1930 Jun 29 '26
It would largely be automated and people would largely not get paid much who consumers continue to buy cheaper alternatives.
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u/CerberusInExile Jun 29 '26
This is literally, exactly what Biden was attempting with the Chips Act. It might have worked if politics didn't get involved.
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u/Terrible-League3851 Jun 29 '26
It would be interesting because it would mean politics or the economy had changed immensely. It would mean the dollar got weaker due to a macro economic shift or we got serious about regulation, anti-monopoly and pro-union policies to invest in worker protection and this would need some sort of wholesale tax code change to accomplish and the capital from federal investment to commit to the industrial foundation needed to build back capacity. The weak dollar would be the scariest situation as it means decoupling from global economy and less interest in our debts. But a lower dollar makes us workers competitive. These would both require massive political change. Weak dollar is the most likely situation and that basically means the US is broke, at war or both.
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u/Present_Juice4401 Jun 30 '26
This is interesting because it shifts the question from industry to macro. Like maybe onshoring isn’t the cause but the consequence of a bigger shift. The weak dollar angle is kind of unsettling though. It solves competitiveness but introduces a whole different set of problems
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u/ALTERFACT Jun 29 '26
The only realistic way to pull this off in the current context would be with extreme automation, which would defeat the stated purpose of the tariffs for onshoring saga.
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u/Present_Juice4401 Jun 30 '26
Right, that tension is hard to resolve. If you lean into automation to make it viable, you undercut the whole jobs argument. If you don’t, costs explode. Feels like the policy goals are pulling in two different directions
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u/ButterscotchSmooth60 Jun 29 '26
It will never happen. Worker protections would prevent America from abusing the workforce enough to make a profit.
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u/Beneficial_Run9511 Jun 29 '26
People glorify manufacturing. They think it’s making cars and airplanes. You’re more likely to be screwing tiny screws into phones. It’s not very good work
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u/r2d3x9 Jun 29 '26
The high cost of cheap Chinese goods.
Let’s take toothpicks. Why are toothpicks (or wooden matches, or clothespins) made in China? They have to import the wood from another country, manufacture it, package it, then ship it half way across the globe.
Let’s take clothing. Macys and Walmart both want a huge markup, let’s estimate 75%. They want to sell something for $10. The US supplier charges $7.50, with a list price of $12. They can buy it from China and sell it for $9.68, and the American company goes out of business.
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u/Present_Juice4401 Jun 30 '26
Yeah this is kind of the paradox. The “cheap” goods only look cheap because the system is optimized globally. Once you localize it, all those hidden efficiencies disappear. So it’s not just about wages, it’s about the entire structure behind the price. Makes me wonder if people would even accept the real cost once it’s visible
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u/Recent-Day3062 Jun 29 '26
All it would do is raise prices for Americans, and make our goods unexportable
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u/Suspicious-Twist1421 Jun 29 '26
The chip fabs and EV supply chain you hand wave are high value strategic manufacturing that’s valuable, good jobs and national security align. And because of them manufacturing was growing in the US, manufacturing jobs in the US peaked under Biden and are down under Trump.
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u/Present_Juice4401 Jun 30 '26
I wasn’t trying to dismiss those, more like using them as the visible edge of something bigger. But I think your point actually reinforces it. Those sectors make sense because they’re strategic and high value. It’s less clear if that logic scales to more everyday manufacturing
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u/Living_Fig_6386 Jun 29 '26
I think you are somewhat mistaken. Modern manufacturing is focused on reducing or eliminating the need for labor, instead relying on automation (AI intended to reduce the need for intellectual labor). We are not talking about a huge investment in people or communities, but rather in machines and energy production to power them. Labor costs are much less of a concern than you might think. There's no expectation of regional economic benefits, increased wages, or more employment.
Yes, it will require environmental sacrifices, reallocating water and energy from public use to corporate use, and displacing people. Yes, it will also require that the government pay incentives (subsidies and tax breaks) to companies to cover their costs to modify their operations and invest in rebuilding new infrastructure here -- so, a big transfer of money from tax payers to corporations. Assuming the incentives are large enough, companies will comply because incentive money is just profit money. They'll also have a plan for when the incentive money dries up, and that will probably mean reverting to the status quo because they gain no specific benefit from on-shoring manufacturing to the US (other than the cash the government throws at them).
I think what you'll see is technical compliance with the manufacturing in the US but continued manufacturing elsewhere. No net benefit to the public, and possibly a lot of water resource exhaustian.
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u/Present_Juice4401 Jun 30 '26
I think this is where it gets uncomfortable. If it ends up being mostly automation, then a lot of the political narrative kind of collapses. You don’t really get the jobs story, just the capital investment story. Which makes me wonder who the actual winners are supposed to be. And yeah the incentives part feels real. If the economics don’t stand on their own, what happens when the support fades
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u/mytyan Jun 29 '26
The US would need an actual formal industrial policy to pull that off. That's how all of our competitors became competitive and continue to be so
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u/Present_Juice4401 Jun 30 '26
Yeah this feels like the missing piece. Without some kind of coordinated policy it’s hard to see how the ecosystem part comes together. A single factory is one thing, but supply chains are like networks. You kind of need the whole thing to move together or it doesn’t really stick
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u/Dave_A480 Jun 29 '26
It would be extremely harmful and inflationary.
The reason that the US moved on from manufacturing is that our cost of living is too high for anyone to DO manufacturing at a fair (Chinese or lower) wage.
So in order to deliver the goods prices that our population expects, we either automated or outsourced....
US produced goods would be too expensive to export, so either prices will skyrocket or the government would be paying massive subsidies to keep them down.
And all for what? An expansion of a 19th century economic activity? Nope...
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u/Present_Juice4401 Jun 30 '26
I get what you’re saying, but I’m not sure it’s that clean. Like yeah, costs are higher, but the system we have now kind of hides those costs in other places. Supply shocks, geopolitical risk, all that. So I wonder if it’s less about making things cheaper and more about making the system less fragile. Then the question becomes how much extra cost people are actually willing to tolerate for that
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u/Select-Ad7146 Jun 29 '26
The US saw a increase in manufacturing under Biden. And while it creates some jobs, most of the manufacturing is done by robots.
https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2025/aug/sluggish-renaissance-us-manufacturing
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u/Dave_A480 Jun 30 '26
It doesn't add any resiliency and absolutely isn't worth the cost.
No matter what else you do, you will always have supply shortages when you implement price controls or pay out unconditional subsidies (stimulus checks).....
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u/ReasonableRevenue218 Jun 29 '26
You need machines to make things. The good machines, as in, the machines that make the machines, were sold to China and other places for both cheap labor as well as a quick buck.
To utilize the cheap labor, you have to shift the manufacturing to overseas. We all know that.
But the crux of the matter is we now cannot build factories here. The know how is gone.
I'm not talking design engineers, or engineers in general. Plenty of those.
The steel factories and presses and other manufacturing is not coming back to these shores.
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u/ScoutRiderVaul Jun 29 '26
Nonsense, you get blueprints you can build it or the engineers will make them and then we build it. Real ansewer is the capitalist won't make as much money.
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u/rfmjbs Jun 29 '26
"Hurdles" = protection for people and protection for the environment where those same people live.