> Much of this I assume is due to labor costs. It's not, it's network effects/economies of scale. Everything is highly automated already. > We're already seei

> Much of this I assume is due to labor costs. It's not, it's network effects/economies of scale. Everything is highly automated already. > We're already seeing some basic techs start to return back to higher-tech, higher-labor-cost countries (like the US Gulf Coast) because of automation improvements. China is better at automating electronics manufacturing than the United States and has a decade or two lead on us. They also have policy advantages the US can't dream of, like building a new set of factories in 3 years instead of 5-7, with housing for all the workers and centralized water/power/gas utilities. The government is also capable of writing blank checks and forcing the finance industry to fund things that they otherwise wouldn't. The current administration is not smart or agile enough to address the root causes of the decline in American electronics manufacturing and motivated by individual greed instead of national dominance. Look at the Chinese auto industry to see how they're able to mobilize sectors much faster than anyone else. The US cannot hope to compete using a 20th century model of globalized economies where we pretend China is only competing with sweatshop labor. That has not been true for 25 years.