Comment by mbesto

> In my opinion one of the biggest reasons we won't see manufacturing come back to Western countries is that we still believe this is how most factories operate.

Not really, American manufacturing is already automated. Manufacturing jobs have steadily decreased[0] while output has increased (or stayed steady) in manufacturing since the early 2000's [1]. There is only one reasonable explanation for this -> automation.

While it is true that the Chinese are indeed automated their manufacturing, it still doesn't negate the fact that companies like Foxconn still have 200k employees in China.

IMHO the real reason you'll never see manufacturing come back to the USA is because you can't convince people who are already in less manually intensive labor conditions to go back to more manually intensive labor conditions. Said differently, it's easier to get someone who's family has spent decades doing back breaking work in a rice paddy to work in a factory for slightly better pay than it is to do the reverse.

[0] - https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-9/forty-years-of-falling...

[1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GOMA