>We absolutely can do loads of stuff onshore with some investment "Some" investment is a gross understatement. Manufacturing is highly skilled work. This proj

>We absolutely can do loads of stuff onshore with some investment "Some" investment is a gross understatement. Manufacturing is highly skilled work. This project failed because they simply did not have enough people involved who understood the forging process; they tried to build an automated system to perform a process that they did not fully understand. Making metal into shapes involves a near-infinite array of subtleties, nuances and gotchas; automating that work requires a deep understanding of all those edge cases. HN readers should be able to draw clear parallels with the failure modes of large software projects. The fundamental bottleneck in any effort to reshore manufacturing is the supply of skilled labor. Skilled American manufacturing workers are retiring faster than they are entering the workplace. We are plugging the gap with automation, but that only gets you so far, as this example illustrates. Reversing that decline will take a generation or two, because there's a chicken-and-egg problem. Good manufacturing workers need years of on-the-job experience, but the number of manufacturing jobs is limited by the lack of skilled workers to fill the vacancies that already exist. "America first" is a jingoistic slogan that devalues the manufacturing workforce. China did an incredible job of creating a world-class manufacturing economy. Cheap labor was an important stepping stone towards that, but it's no longer the decisive factor. If you don't respect your rivals, you can't understand how to compete. American manufacturing has a network effects problem and there's no quick or easy solution to that.