Comment by danans

> The states have lots of cheap reliable power (not perfectly reliable, but close enough).

Industrial electricity rates are pretty much the same in China and the US, from 8-9c/kWh. In both countries, however, electricity is going to face upward price pressure from AI datacenters.

> Production close to engineering makes for a lot of savings because when a part is designed you can get a prototype to testing faster.

This already exists in the US. In California, for example, there are many specialty prototype manufacturing companies that focus on this problem specifically. They are adjacent to the r&d firms designing the products.

That's not the type of manufacturing that the recent debate over reshoring is about. It's about production scale manufacturing - creating an American Shenzen with an equivalent amount of jobs - and very soon. But any such capability will be heavily automated, so it won't produce the equivalent jobs.