The Wall Street Journal's U.S. Companies on Pace to Bring Home Record Number of Overseas Jobs covers data from the Reshoring Institute showing that American manufacturing firms are shifting jobs back to the U.S.
Key quote:
"American companies are on pace to reshore - or return to the U.S. - nearly 350,000 jobs this year, according to a report expected Friday from the Reshoring Initiative. That would be the highest number on record since the group began tracking the data in 2010."
Reshoring is a trend that has long been forecast to happen. The New York Times 2010 article Is Manufacturing Coming Back to the U.S. reads much like the recent Wall Street Journal article.
And while the four words most wrong in forecasting are "this time it's different," this time it seems different.
The pandemic exposed the weaknesses and lack of resiliency in global supply chains.
And the war in Ukraine, coupled with geopolitical strife between the U.S. and China, has countries worldwide looking to become more self-reliant - or at least not reliant on countries not viewed as close friends.
This may lead to a world with two major trading blocks. Key quote from Foreign Affairs' The End of Globalization?:
"But it now seems likely that the world economy really will split into blocs—one oriented around China and one around the United States, with the European Union mostly but not wholly in the latter camp—each attempting to insulate itself from and then diminish the influence of the other."
So it does appear that reshoring - and the related trend of nearshoring - may finally be happening.
