Comment by runako

> say currently it costs $15 to make thing 1m units of X in China and $50 to make 10k of them in the USA. USA could be scaled to make 50k of them for $40 and 100k for $30. 1m could cost like $25.

So here we are assuming that we could get a 50% reduction in cost by scaling to 1m units of a thing. The problem with this logic is that many product categories currently made overseas were produced domestically at scale until relatively recently.

This assumption also appears to imply that the goods in question either have a very low labor input or are produced using automation that is not available to Chinese manufacturers.

Reframing my initial question, what advantages would a US manufacturer have today that they didn't have in e.g. 1990 that would allow them to manufacture for only 66% more than the same manufacturing in China?