<story><title>The US is building factories at a fast rate</title><url>https://www.businessinsider.com/us-building-factories-census-data-chips-act-inflation-reduction-act-2023-6</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wizofaus</author><text>Surely though there&amp;#x27;s still plenty of places in the world that, on the basis of labour costs, it would be vastly cheaper to operate than in the US. On that basis I&amp;#x27;m not convinced wage growth in SE Asia is the primary reason the US manufacturing industry is deciding to reshore. Is the same phenomenon occurring in other wealthy countries that haven&amp;#x27;t put in place taxpayer funded incentives to do so?</text></item><item><author>FrustratedMonky</author><text>Exactly. The factories follow the Cheap Labor.  From US to China, then it was China to Thailand&amp;#x2F;SKorea, then from Thailand to India.&lt;p&gt;Probably don&amp;#x27;t have chain correct, and it is different for different industries.&lt;p&gt;But there was definitely a progression of &amp;#x27;local salary goes up&amp;#x27;, &amp;#x27;time to move to next cheapest country&amp;#x27;.</text></item><item><author>alexose</author><text>Another important factor is that China&amp;#x27;s workers make more money than they used to, especially relative to the West.  There&amp;#x27;s not as much of a cheap-labor-arbitrage opportunity as there was in the early 2000s.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s a chart illustrating this point: 
 &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;i.insider.com&amp;#x2F;532ccb18eab8eadc39f33da6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;i.insider.com&amp;#x2F;532ccb18eab8eadc39f33da6&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>obblekk</author><text>&amp;gt; The US has added around 800,000 jobs in manufacturing employment over the last two years, employing around 13 million workers&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s too early to know, but if it turns out the solution to decades of economic misery for middle class blue collar workers was&lt;p&gt;1. 50% tariffs on China, and&lt;p&gt;2. $100B of subsidies to chip makers and green tech...&lt;p&gt;The reversal of Reaganomics we&amp;#x27;re living through will become permanent for at least another generation, and for good reason. Maybe a good time to start a company selling to the government.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jstarfish</author><text>&amp;gt; I&amp;#x27;m not convinced wage growth in SE Asia is the primary reason the US manufacturing industry is deciding to reshore.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not. This is disaster planning.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;re being forced to bring production back home because we can&amp;#x27;t keep outsourcing to a region subject to control by a potential adversary. If war breaks out with China, access to Taiwan for chips or Vietnam for socks is going to become difficult. Blockades will be immediate.&lt;p&gt;If this were about money, we&amp;#x27;d move production to South America. That we&amp;#x27;re keeping it this close to home after years of shopping everything globally suggests we&amp;#x27;re building infrastructure for a supply chain that can&amp;#x27;t be interfered with by foreign governments.</text></comment>
<story><title>The US is building factories at a fast rate</title><url>https://www.businessinsider.com/us-building-factories-census-data-chips-act-inflation-reduction-act-2023-6</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wizofaus</author><text>Surely though there&amp;#x27;s still plenty of places in the world that, on the basis of labour costs, it would be vastly cheaper to operate than in the US. On that basis I&amp;#x27;m not convinced wage growth in SE Asia is the primary reason the US manufacturing industry is deciding to reshore. Is the same phenomenon occurring in other wealthy countries that haven&amp;#x27;t put in place taxpayer funded incentives to do so?</text></item><item><author>FrustratedMonky</author><text>Exactly. The factories follow the Cheap Labor.  From US to China, then it was China to Thailand&amp;#x2F;SKorea, then from Thailand to India.&lt;p&gt;Probably don&amp;#x27;t have chain correct, and it is different for different industries.&lt;p&gt;But there was definitely a progression of &amp;#x27;local salary goes up&amp;#x27;, &amp;#x27;time to move to next cheapest country&amp;#x27;.</text></item><item><author>alexose</author><text>Another important factor is that China&amp;#x27;s workers make more money than they used to, especially relative to the West.  There&amp;#x27;s not as much of a cheap-labor-arbitrage opportunity as there was in the early 2000s.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s a chart illustrating this point: 
 &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;i.insider.com&amp;#x2F;532ccb18eab8eadc39f33da6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;i.insider.com&amp;#x2F;532ccb18eab8eadc39f33da6&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>obblekk</author><text>&amp;gt; The US has added around 800,000 jobs in manufacturing employment over the last two years, employing around 13 million workers&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s too early to know, but if it turns out the solution to decades of economic misery for middle class blue collar workers was&lt;p&gt;1. 50% tariffs on China, and&lt;p&gt;2. $100B of subsidies to chip makers and green tech...&lt;p&gt;The reversal of Reaganomics we&amp;#x27;re living through will become permanent for at least another generation, and for good reason. Maybe a good time to start a company selling to the government.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bobthepanda</author><text>Japan and Korea have plenty of domestic manufacturing. Europe also has some off shoring into the peripheral countries into its customs union.&lt;p&gt;The issues are generally that in the next largest potential cheap manufacturing sources (South Asia, SE Asia, Africa) they’re either not big enough or have extremely poor logistics and red tape. A big part of the East Asian miracles have been extensive infrastructure and bureaucratic emphasis on making exports as efficient as possible.</text></comment>