If you want to convince businesses to reshore manufacturing, you're going to need more than a patriotic slogan, says Harry Moser, founder of the Chicago-based Reshoring Initiative.
In a Q&A with our sister publication, Crain's Chicago Business, Moser says the group brings "data and math to the arguments we make."
Manufacturing costs are just one part of the reshoring equation, one that is heavily weighted in favor of production in low-cost countries.
"But what is often missing here is the cost of freight and duty and the carrying costs of inventory — the products from China can take three months for delivery while products made here might take a week — and then add other things like travel back and forth to Asia by your designers and engineers, and intellectual property risk and even out-of-stock risk," he added.
With those numbers added in, production in the U.S. is competitive a third of the time.
Complications that rose out of China-based manufacturing in the past few years have added to the balance in favor of the U.S., Moser also noted.
"Surveys in 2012 showed that just 8 percent of American companies were planning to reshore. The same surveys 10 years later showed that 91 percent of companies were either reshoring or planning for it," he said.