America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

We never stopped manufacturing, we just stopped employing people.

> We don’t have the infrastructure to manufacture

That's trivially false given we're the second-largest manufacturer in the world. We just don't want to employ people, hence why we can't make an iphone or refine raw materials.

The actual issue is that our business culture is antithetical to a healthy society. The idea of employing Americans is anti-business—there's no willingness to invest, or to train, or to support an employee seen as waste. Until business can find some sort of reason to care about the state of the country, this will continue.

Of course, the government could weigh in, could incentivize, could subsidize, could propagandize, etc, to encourage us to actually build domestic industries. But that would be a titantic course reversal that would take decades of cultural change.

I'm American and heavily involved in manufacturing for industrial/mining/agricultural customers.

'We just don't want to employ people' is a gross simplification. We do want to employ people, and lack of skilled labor is a serious problem which has hampered business growth for years,

The first unspoken problem is that very few young people want to live where many factories are located. I can't blame them. I certainly jump through hoops to live in an area well removed from the industry I work in but not everyone has this luxury.

The second is psychological. How many kids do you know who are ready to commit to a future of 35+ years of factory work in their early twenties, even with reasonable pay. This influences manufacturer's hiring practices because of the 'skilled' labor thing. Putting time and resources into training employees when there is a high probability they will make a career change within 3 years isn't really acceptable.

This is HN, so I don't know if this resonates but as a thought experiment, would you take a welding/machine operation/technician position for 25 - 45 USD/hr (based on experience)? Overtime gets you 1.5 base rate and health insurance + dental + 401k is part of the deal. All you need is a GED, proof of eligibility to work in the United States and the ability to pass a physical + drug screen on hiring. After that, no one cares what you do on your own time if you show up, do your job and don't get in an industrial accident. Caveat, you have move away from anything remotely like a 'cultural center' but you do have racial diversity. Also, you will probably be able to afford a house, but it won't be anything grand or anywhere terribly interesting.

There is a dearth of applicants for jobs exactly like what I've posted. Why don't people take them?

> This influences manufacturer's hiring practices because of the 'skilled' labor thing. Putting time and resources into training employees when there is a high probability they will make a career change within 3 years isn't really acceptable.

We've had decades of large companies laying people off (effectively) without warning, and the lessons of "don't trust an employer" are... fairly well understood by a lot of folks. If I had the promise of working some place for, say, 20 years, with a statistically 0% chance of being let go because someone wanted to goose the quarterly numbers to get their bonus... yeah, I'd have gone for it years ago. Even 25 years ago, that wasn't much of an option with most companies. Lean/Kaizen/JIT were all big movements by the 90s and ability to ramp down headcount was a requirement for most companies.

Where does 'skilled' labor for specific types of manufacturing processes come from? High school? With slashed budgets and worsening teacher/student ratios?

Businesses could step up and create environments that people competed to work at - pay decently, invest in their workers and community - but that requires a commitment to stick with the people and community even in the lean times. And most companies don't want to, or more likely simply can't, operate that way.

30 years ago I considered positions like that. Some of my family and friends did, and were there for years - decades in some cases. I don't think there's many of those left any more.