06.02.2013
There seems to be an ongoing debate about whether manufacturing plants are coming or going. Harry Moser, founder of the Reshoring Initiative, has been involved in several of these arguments over whether or not "reshoring" is fact or fiction. Perhaps it’s somewhere in the middle, where the truth supposedly lies.
Study results were released last month from the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation (MAPI) and concluded that “Runaway plants [defined for the survey as a plant that closes in the United States and reopens in a foreign country with a lower operating cost structure, producing the same product(s) that will be shipped back to the U.S.] are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to job and plant destruction within U.S. manufacturing.
"A widespread, more fundamental reason for the decline in the number of manufacturing plants (and manufacturing jobs from openings and closings) is the sourcing decision to purchase intermediate goods from foreign rather than domestic suppliers. Although economic forces and business requirements seem to be shifting in favor of domestic sourcing, there is little evidence that a manufacturing revival has occurred—the necessary positive economic and strategic forces are not reinforced by supportive public policy.”