I think the problem is mostly plastic components, especially miniatures. These requires injection molds and then manual labor to remove the parts from the sprues, clean them and glue them together (as miniatures are expected to come assembled in board games).

I think the labor cost alone makes it not possible to manufacture them in the west. But also ignoring that, consider that injection molding for miniatures can be more expensive in the west in itself. Usually because factories work on a different scale and have higher requirements for minimum order quantities, but also because they do not work usually with miniatures so they would need to adapt their tooling, expertise and know how for this specific kind of product.

Imagine a factory injection molding chairs suddenly receiving a quote for a bunch of miniatures, they can do it, but they are going to charge you for the time needed to figure out how, and for the changes in the lines.

Consider also that usually miniatures 3D files are stl or obj because they are sculpted, while the factory might work only with cad as that's the standard in manufacturing. These two are radically different and there is no easy conversion from stl to cad, which would require it being re-modeled in most cases.

Also, with a chinese factory you can expect to give them 3D files and they will take care of everything (designing molds and avoiding undercuts). I'm sure this has separate cost in the west as it involves a specialized expertise which is for sure more expensive than in China.

Btw here's a nice writeup from a person that tried to open a game factory in the USA, he doesn't even mention plastic parts though. https://www.superheumann.com/post/my-year-in-manufacturing-g...

One of the problems is industries just take so long to start. They need enough scale to start creating sub-suppliers that spot efficiencies that are worth exploiting to pull costs down. And board games are probably not the tentpole product to do that, if there is one at all.