Is U.S. Manufacturing Making a Comeback?

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Is U.S. Manufacturing Making a Comeback
You'll find that a Chinese firm, Lenovo, is building an assembly plant in North Carolina. I know it's just one firm, but I cannot think of when a Chinese firm offshored to the U.S. before. So is the U.S. poised for a manufacturing upswing of sorts, or are these just temporary factors?

A lot of the factors for new manufacturing are based on costs alone, but I have the sense productivity may be apart of it. The article references Rochester, NY, a city once dominated by Kodak until a decade or so ago. A native of that region, I can say the article's assessment of Rochester is accurate. There are a clutch of optics and other scientific firms there that have been great at training new workers, and I honestly feel smaller manufacturers have saved Rochester from the fate of other cities, like Buffalo or Detroit. A few foreign firms have located to the area in recent years, too.

Yes. If you use the term "manufacture" in a broad sense (to include natural resource and intangibles production), it's going better than it has for years. The effective weakening of the dollar, labor inflation around the world, and increased European energy costs have created a competitive advantage for the US marketplace.

The new energy boom is a very exciting story in itself. I have heard the U.S. could be energy independent by 2035.

It is a major story, but it's too complicated to explain in a soundbite.

Now, the 2035 projection I saw was....questionable, and if we're thinking of the same ones, probably meant "Canada and the United States".

Conditions are favorable.

An educated workforce is available at record low wages.

The whole country is a Brownfields of empty buildings.

Tax incentives are offered for jobs.

There are a lot of small markets, particular to the US, fast changing, that no one outside the country could reach.

Preferance is given by State and Local for local production.

The problem is waiting for Some Corporation to do it. That is not how new business starts.

I think the Chinese are in for Culture Shock in South Carolina.

When IKEA located in southern Virginia, another Right To Work State, as soon as the plant was up and running they Unionized.

Even our low wages would be a fortune in China, that does not have Unemployment, Food Stamps, Unions, Lawyers, Courts with South Carolina Juries.

It may look good on paper, close to the East Coast computer market, American know how and quality. South Carolina is not Silicon Valley, and never will be. Gateway, HP, Dell, could not make it work in technology centers.

Their product, PCs, are in the decline and being replaced by Smart Phones and Tablets. The market will not last the life of the factory.

Dated mass market products are not good, but conditions in general are.

In the old days, we built during the downturns for cheap, and were in place for the next boom. Booms seem to be lacking in our future.

This talk of 2035 is wild, there are a lot of other factors that are converging. 2017 is now long range thinking. Debt, Climate, Advancing Technology, the future is going to change much faster than the past.

The good, large companies are small employers, small and local are large employers. As the economy falters, more local production becomes possible.

Large companies work for Banks, Stock and Bond holders. Small companies work for the Employees, Customers, and Local Taxes.

Avoid industries that take Large Capital to produce a cheap product.

Craft Industries, local and domestic markets, where change is the norm, have always survived.

To catch whatever next wave comes, you must be on the water.

A promising trend that I hope continues. Some contributors I see are: 1. Global wage equalization (relatively speaking) 2. Decreased shipping costs and time to market for good intended for sale in the U.S.

Obama, neoliberal scum that he is, openly said that exports are the only answer, that is the way to make maximum profits and keeping workers a cost in that production and thus meaning that wages must be suppressed which is what is desired.

Exports are both a way to measure the competativeness of your products, and a way to balance out your imports.

US exports 1 Billion of Auto Parts, US imports 1 Billion of clothing. In theory (never in practice), the currencies should stay about the same.

At Obama is doing a better job than the EU politicians. The austerity over here isn't working at all.

That is an interesting observation given that Obama is an economic incompetent.

ruveyn

Calculated Risk seems to think the US economy is making a comeback, and exports are a big portion of that.

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2013/ ... right.html

Whereas the austerian Eurocrats are just malicious?

The US is being saved by Gridlock. Europe can reach a concensus to do the wrong thing quickly, we have barely a quarter of higher taxes, and a lack of results.

The hundred year projection of not spending a Thousand Dollars now, is a saving of One Hundred Trillion.

I would vote them out of office, but would be against those who would run.

Better to ignor them, and do what America has always done, start a business in the garage, and be lax on paperwork.

There is nothing the government can do for the main employer, those who hire one to five workers, except look the other way.

What is wrong is the lack of those who would hire one to five.

That was the American Culture that produced. We bought our jobs, our freedom, and did not look for it being given to us.

The other side of that is we did not pay 50% to someone to manage us, before taxes.

When people get poor the old ways come back.

Automation is a bigger part of wage depression than any government policy. Well, there isn't exactly wage depression in manufacturing, per se, so much as an increasing educational requirement among factory workers that results in a de facto wage depression. I do not think it will be long before manufactures require new hires to have a bachelor degree or higher.

With the inflation of u.s. currency those B.A s and M.A.s will be working for peanuts, which is the solution. When the U.S. becomes a low wage country unemployment will diminish.

ruveyn

Compared to the austerity nuts in the EU he has done a great job. The DJ reached 15k, whereas our stock market is still half of what it was in 2000. The rate at which unemployment increases in the Netherlands is itself increasing. And having the largest tax raises in decades isn't going to help either. Apparently austerity means taxing the crap out of people.