Re-shoring Of US Manufacturing

If you get nothing else about my website Biiwii.com, Notes From The Rabbit Hole and well… me, you probably get that I hate b/s and hype.  I went so heavy handed on the 3D Printing hype because I really hate b/s that is so obvious and yet makes so much money for those running the promotion.  But even more than that, because I took it kind of personally, being an ex-US manufacturing guy and all. I had my eye on 3DP over a decade ago as a potential threat to what I did for a living.  It wasn’t then and it isn’t now for people in the industry.  It is a really cool technology and in the right niches, it will be disruptive.  The keys in refuting the ridiculous, hype inflated valuations of the 3DP stocks however, are ‘niches’ and competition.  Moving on… As I was wrapping up my days in manufacturing a couple years ago I did notice a trend toward re-shoring of manufacturing to the US for a variety of reasons.  This in the face of a certainty in the mainstream financial and economic media that ‘we do not make things in America anymore.’ Yes we do, and we are making more and more things in America.  My source (who was so important in alerting me to the brewing up-ramp in the Semiconductor capital equipment sector – and hence manufacturing as a whole – over a year ago) advises that what was a fledgling trend toward bringing things back ‘in-house’ to the US (from China, mostly) is continuing apace. So that is another hype refuted; ‘we don’t make things in the US anymore’.   Oh really?  In my contact’s note to me yesterday, there was doubt about how long this manufacturing cycle will last because formerly depleted inventories have been topped off.  But there was no doubt about this on a bigger picture:  “One thing is for sure.  A lot of manufacturing is coming back to the US/North America.”