No, it's local manufacturing theater.

The US does a lot of manufacturing, second only to China, but not low margin stuff that isn't economic.

Trying to "bring back" that sort of thing is idiotic and is entirely performative and induced by the current incompetent administration.

China is a genuine threat but the right solution is to move it to other friendlier countries instead of losing money trying to do it in the US.

Stupid is a reason not to do it.

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deaddodo 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is the part that blows my mind. People seem to think the US is incapable of and does no manufacturing. It is the second largest manufacturer[1], and has a capacity about 65% of what China does. Which is 350% of the next largest manufacturing country.

What they stopped manufacturing was menial and low-end product; because it's not price-effective to have 100 Americans sit on an assembly line and solder SMT components for $7-18/hr. Instead, those potential workers pivoted into service jobs and office work.

1 - https://www.safeguardglobal.com/resources/blog/top-10-manufa...

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rayiner 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> What they stopped manufacturing was menial and low-end product

This statement is as inaccurate as the comment you’re trying to debunk. The fact is that China leveraged it’s low-end manufacturing work to work its way up the chain and now is the leader in many areas: https://itif.org/publications/2025/09/23/how-china-is-outper.... E.g. China has been investing heavily in radar technology and as a result has air to air missiles with comparable range to the U.S. https://en.defence-ua.com/weapon_and_tech/why_the_us_is_alar...

There are synergies to having the high end stuff and the low end stuff in the same place. The story of IBM developing System 360 mentions the benefit from the ladies who wound the wire core memory and the guys who designed the computer on the same campus in New York. We gave that up when we outsourced the “menial” stuff abroad.

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delfinom 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes/no.

China at this point is hard in automation, beyond anything the US has. China is well past the peak of sweatshops.

As someone in the manufacturing space in the US, the biggest issue we have in the US is that manufacturing continues to die. Any manufacturing we have left is the old guard dying off. It comes from a range of issues from companies refusing to invest in younger employees, to the cost of real estate (both buy or rent) for commercial properties being absurd..

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apercu 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Fair, but there is tons of HIGH END manufacturing we could do that we just don't, even though there is every incentive to do so.

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CPLX 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That’s just not the reason though.

The reason we can’t do manufacturing is because Wall Street demands capital light business models.

That, in turn, is an outcome of being the global reserve currency.

	▲	twoodfin 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The reason we can’t do manufacturing is because Wall Street demands capital light business models. Not at the (AI) moment.

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WillPostForFood 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The US manufacturing situation is much worse than you suggest, and is top heavy with low margin boring industrial stuff. Largest sector for US manufacturing is Chemicals, which includes fertilizer, petrochemicals, pesticides, and some pharma. The second largest sector is Tobacco, Food, and Beverages.

I think some more "low margin" computer and chip manufacturing would be healthy.

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AngryData 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It is apparently economic to do so in China and apparently any other place you want to outsource it to. Does smaller and one-off productions have as high of margins as high speed automated stamping machines running 24/7? No. But that doesn't mean it isn't profitable at all.

And quite frankly, who gives a fuck if top owners and investors get maximum returns, boo hoo they got 4% return instead of 8%, that is still far better than the average working class's deal. Our entire problem is a suffering middle and lower classes that need decent work, they will still be happy even if the product they make is a bit lower margin because they are paid hourly, not paid by dividends and stock options which is where all the higher margins profits go. Average citizens pay has not correlated with increased company profits, and increased company profits isn't what makes society stable, so the investor class is going to have to suck it up and take the hit unless they want their entire house of cards to collapse.

	▲	CPLX 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes you’ve hit on the reason. Very few people understand this. The reason we don’t invest in manufacturing is because of requirements for return on capital. Ask yourself why GM is doing massive stock buybacks in the era of global transition to electric cars. Why aren’t they using these huge sums of cash to invest in the next generation of products and instead literally just sending the money out the door?