While moving these jobs home will never make the US a manufacturing giant again due to advances in productivity, …
Not to pick on you, but this kind of statement is made so often that it's become received wisdom that "nothing's made in America anymore." But the US remains the largest manufacturer in the world. And while I don't have the numbers on manufacturing employment by country (anybody know where to look?), I'm sure the US is by any measure—including employment—a "manufacturing giant", even if it is more heavily roboticized and thus needs less labor for equivalent productivity.
Technically, China nosed ahead of the USA as the world's biggest exporter of manufactured goods a year or two ago. Which means we're not on the top anymore, but also goes way against the popular misconception that the US has had a weak manufacturing sector for decades.
Not that Americans should see China exporting more goods as a sign that the US economy has fallen apart. China has over four times the population, meaning it's exporting less than a quarter as much stuff per capita. China could grow to export four times as much stuff and that still wouldn't be a sign that the US's manufacturing sector is declining, only that it's holding its position.
And realistically, the US's manufacturing sector is incredibly strong - not just compared to other countries in the present, but also in comparison to itself in the past. I've got no idea why Americans get so worried that the country can manufacture so much stuff so profitably and with so little labor input that most their citizens get to work in the booming service and leisure economy made possible by that unprecedented level of efficiency, and feast on the luxury it produces, instead of grinding away on assembly lines. It seems nobody's quite capable of seeing the forest for this one particular infuriatingly backward-looking tree.
American manufacturing is large and sclerotic. The US numbers are reliant on large capital goods: aircraft, weapons, industrial equipment, etc. These industries are heavily subsidized and uncompetitive. Compared to Germany's network of small manufacturing firms, manufacturing in the US is structurally weak.
You're right. I guess what I meant to say is that we won't see the same kind of manufacturing we did in the past. As in we won't return to the "glory days" of manufacturing as a primary employment sector.
Not to pick on you, but this kind of statement is made so often that it's become received wisdom that "nothing's made in America anymore." But the US remains the largest manufacturer in the world. And while I don't have the numbers on manufacturing employment by country (anybody know where to look?), I'm sure the US is by any measure—including employment—a "manufacturing giant", even if it is more heavily roboticized and thus needs less labor for equivalent productivity.