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You make valid points, but the way you couch them comes across as being from someone who doesn't directly have manufacturing experience. I do, and have worked in electronics manufacturing my whole career (15 years). My company is based in the US (San Jose) but the two largest campuses are in Mexico & China, each of which contains >10,000 employees. Yes, making electronics in the US would cost more, but you'd be surprised at what "cost" is most important to corporations when making those kinds of decisions. Depending what is being built, time to market & location of profit/revenue can be more critical than labor cost. At this point, Chinese wages in the first mover cities of Shenzhen/Guangzhou and Shanghai/Hangzhou/Kunshan have increased to the point of being noncompetitive with other regional options (Malaysia, Vietnam, Bangladesh), but because the Chinese domestic market is so huge, many companies are just relocating to cheaper places like Dalian, Fujian or Chengdu. Having the entire supply chain in one country is hugely compelling. Factory labor in the US, even in high skill, high tech manufacturing, is still typically <$15/hr, with starting pay closer to $10/hr in many places. It doesn't make a bit of sense to build things like mops & brooms here, nor does it make sense to build extremely low margin electronics (like many consumer goods), but the manufacturing economy in the US is actually thriving now. It just happens that it's lately been high margin, complex stuff, military equipment, and a few other select types of goods. US corporate taxes are too high, but the EPA isn't strong enough (in my backyard, just look at how Duke Energy got away with throwing coal ash into a local river for yeeaaaarrs). Most electronics factories produce nearly 0 CO2 emissions anyway. That's mostly limited to heavy industry & raw materials refining. State governments make stupid decisions, too, like offering short term tax breaks for companies to invest in factories there, but with no consideration for what happens when the company leaves immediately after the tax incentives disappear. Again in my backyard (North Carolina), we lead the nation in solar farm investment in 2014 ... but it was 80% due to tax incentives and 20% due to Apple & Google building data centers here. I don't think the problem is NIMBY politics in most cases. The problem is short sighted politicians and greedy consumers. |