America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

America does need to bring back manufacturing. Not because a manufacturing job that pays $25/hr is somehow better than a service job that pays $25/hr.

The US needs to bring back manufacturing for strategic reasons and in strategic areas.

And it needs to have the capability to scale up manufacturing in response to emergencies.

But also, importantly, the US doesn't need to do this by onshoring all manufacturing. Near shoring and friend shoring will have to be extremely important components of adding these capabilities, and unfortunately, teh actions the US is taking will likely hurt nearshoring and friendshoring and will end up making the US less strategically capable in manufacturing even if it's able to reshore a significant amount of manufacturing.

A skilled assembly worker makes closer to $30 or $40 an hour than $25. And that doesn't account for overtime. A skilled tradesman can make $40+.

Manufacturing is skilled, well-paid labor that requires commitment, attention, and care. That is why there's a shortage of labor--not because of wages.

>>A skilled assembly worker makes closer to $30 or $40 an hour than $25. And that doesn't account for overtime. A skilled tradesman can make $40+.

In theory. In practice the numbers are way lower.

As some one who has done quite a big time in India IT services firms, have lots of war stories, our Delivery manager would often tell us if US managers only knew adjusted for regular all nighters, whole week on-call hell weeks. Development phases where teams would be working days at stretch in office. The actual per hour rate of an engineer in India is at best $1 - $5 an hour. You just can't bill the customer that way.

Only reason why this even works is India is still poor and people work for anything.

Im sure, adjust for everything(in real practice) manufacturing hourly wages in China aren't all that different and wouldn't be surprised if they are at something like $1 per hour, or something such.

Americans have little idea how much affluence and luxury their ordinary citizen has. Most of the world would do anything even to be poor in the US.

Fair enough to say nobody in the US is signing up to work a hellish factory job for $1/hr anytime soon.