Report: Reshoring of American Manufacturing Jobs at ‘Record High’
The number of manufacturing jobs that have been reshored to the United States is at a “record high” as concerns swirl over supply chain dependency on China, a new research report details.
The report, published by the Reshoring Initiative, reveals that a record number of American manufacturing jobs have been brought home after being offshored and outsourced to foreign countries over the last two decades when China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO).
“In 2021 the private and federal push for domestic supply of essential goods propelled reshoring and foreign direct investment (FDI) job announcements to a record high,” the report states.
In 2022, the report projects that about 350,000 American jobs are expected to be reshored to the U.S. labor market — another record after 2021 set a record when 260,000 American jobs were brought home.
“If the projection is achieved, 2022 will bring the total jobs announced since 2010 to over 1.6 million,” the report continues.
Reshoring Initiative
Reshoring Initiative
Researchers suggest that reshoring of American jobs from overseas has trickled slowly since 2010 but has taken off in recent years because of a number of factors, including federal support for domestic manufacturing, supply chain woes from the Chinese coronavirus, tariffs, and the increase in shipping costs:
Other important forces included increased recognition of the total cost of offshoring and rising concern over U.S. dependency on China. [Emphasis added]
For the third year in a row, reshoring outpaced foreign direct investment (FDI). FDI did set an all-time record in 2022 as a result of large companies making huge investments in [electric vehicle] batteries. [Emphasis added]
A similar recent analysis by Bloomberg showed that former President Trump’s hyper-focus on American manufacturing, mostly via billions worth of tariffs, helped spur an industry boom.
The number of American jobs being reshored, though at a record high, pales in comparison to the number of American jobs that have been eliminated as a result of decades-long free trade policy governing the economic consensus in Washington, DC.
From 2001 to 2018, U.S. free trade with China eliminated 3.7 million American jobs from the economy — 2.8 million of which were lost in American manufacturing. During that same period, at least 50,000 American manufacturing plants closed down.
Those massive job losses have coincided with a booming U.S.-China trade deficit. In 1985, before China entered the WTO, the U.S. trade deficit with China totaled $6 billion. In 2019, the U.S. trade deficit with China totaled more than $345 billion.
Meanwhile, a study from 2019 found that permanent U.S. tariffs of 25 percent on all Chinese imports would create more than a million American jobs in five years. American manufacturing is vital to the U.S. economy, as every manufacturing job supports an additional 7.4 American jobs in other industries.
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