Shaun Rein: manufacturing is not coming back to the U.S.

Don't get me wrong, this is definitely going to bring pain to the Chinese economically.  You're already seeing scores of cheap manufacturing already closing shop and relocating to Vietnam and Cambodia. Let me also be clear, they're moving to cheaper destinations.  They're not going to bring jobs or manufacturing back to the United States.  It's just not going to happen.  American doesn't have the manufacturing ecosystem: workers, land, laws that help promote strong manufacturing.  

You're already seeing TSMC, Taiwan's big semiconductor company, has spent billions of dollars trying to build semiconductor factories in Arizona and they've had huge problems, from a human resource standpoint, from a quality control standpoint and from a regulatory standpoint.  This was supposed to be Joe Biden's baby.  So it's a pipe dream, to use a word that Janet Yellen, the former U.S. Treasury Secretary, said.  It's a pipe dream to bring all this manufacturing back to the United States.

It's much better for China to make what it's good at and the United States to make what they're good at.

~ Shaun Rein, "'Made in USA:' A Wishful Scheme Dressed Up As Policy," 9:55 mark, Thinkers Forum, April 23, 2025