'Made in America' more attractive to manufacturers

America is the new third-world.

Expect all the incoming obs to be part-time, non-union and sans benefits.

Agreed Never Submit.

Change you can believe in.

Made in China is still more attractive to manufacturers, and Americans can't seem to get enough of Made in China stuff.

If you are talking about salt and pepper shakers, I'm sure they can be made in US. But American workers have to learn to use modern digitally driven production technology, or the jobs will never return to US in a big amount. Now only workers in Germany, Japan, and more recently, China are well enough educated to run this equipment. It is a matter of education success or railure of US workers.

gokai_wo_maneku: I believe Japan has realized the -not so- hidden cost of doing business in China, along with all the risks to your intellectual property and the requirements for technology transfer - "teach me please, I will stab you in the back later". I don't believe the problem was so much with labor force skills here in the US when it comes to modern production means but unions. That problem has progressively been solved.

Ryu-1inOH, I am only writing what I hear from US clients. They say there are abou 2 million jobs open in tech production, but no workers who can even read the manuals to learn how to use the machines.

gokai_wo_maneku: I am not doubting you there :-). I was myself raised and educated in Europe and have been living in the US for the last 15 years. I will certainly not question the fact that the eduction system here needs to be reformed to say the least. I believe though, that it is not much that the American worker is not educated, it is more like the ones who are are not too interested in production chain type of jobs and the unskilled labor force we have filling those positions is 'not indigenous' and do not master the English language. Plus the unions insisting that many of those production tasks remain manual doesn't help. We end up with high tech, fully automated production chains built in Mexico to work around that. Of course, the labor force we get in Mexico don't have the technical skills to handle that. Go figure...

Another benefit of leaving China - no more worries about copies and knock-offs.

It's going to be a perpetual cycle of pushing-up the standards of living. I've always said the way to stop outsourcing to China is to raise CHINA'S standard of living to more closely match ours. Once that happens China is no longer attractive as an outsource destination and some other country with an excessively low cost of living will take its place as the outsource destination.

For computers, it went U.S.; Mexico; Taiwan/Malaysia; China. For cars, it went U.S.; Japan; South Korea. The pattern will continue as long as the free market is allowed to operate. The U.S. will slip back in there from time to time as countries improve their standards of living, but the "go to" country for manufacturing will forever be a moving target amongst the world's countries. We have it now, but I don't expect it to last longer than a decade (maybe even only five years or so)