This is precisely the problem.

Plus, even assuming there existed lots of people to fill the gap, why would they sign up for manufacturing jobs? They pay like crap. Unions and worker rights have been gradually chipped away at for years and now they're straight up chainsawing them. Why work a monotonous job that pays at or just slightly above minimum wage, has skills that aren't really transferable should you decide to change careers, is rough on the body and doesn't even provide proper health care or sick days to rest, and employers will call you in during natural disasters with the threat of firing you otherwise and then leave you to literally die while pretending it's not their fault when you do die? [1]

It's companies and the government saying, "We want everything, and in exchange, we'll give you nothing. And you will be happy." No American sees their kid growing up and thinks, "I hope my child will one day work long hours at a factory." People in some countries do, and it's because those jobs are a step up from the current standard. Factory jobs in the US are, in many cases, a step down and that step keeps lowering. High tech/high skilled manufacturing can be an exception, but the bulk of the jobs they're hoping to bring back aren't that.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/11/02/g-s1-28731/hurricane-helene-t...

I don't know that I agree with this. The US is too large a market to ignore, and this is effectively raising the profit margin for local production. Foreign companies will either move some portion of manufacturing to the US (for the domestic market), or cede the market completely, and I don't know that they're prepared to do that (well, maybe Chinese ones are). Factories have a long lead time, so even if this is abolished at the end of his term, they'll be locked in with sunk capital costs. The main reasons not to do this are a) abandoning the market, as mentioned, or b) you think you can hold out long enough until the political landscape changes.

If the people aren't there, wages will rise until they show up. Most labor shortages aren't an actual shortage of labor, unless you genuinely can't produce that skillset domestically, or your labor market is so tight that no one is unemployed; rather, they're a shortage of wages. Pay enough, and someone will do the job. This is especially true for low-skilled work. There is not, and never will be, a shortage of cleaners, for example, because anyone can do it, so as long as there are unemployed people and the wages are good enough, someone will do the work.

And even if these jobs aren't in running these factories, they've still got to be built. Money is a powerful motivator, so I have no doubt they will. Companies will bleed because of this, but there are clear benefits for the US working class even if they're paying more. The gamble is obviously that the benefits outweigh the negatives of higher prices overall. Modern economics says no, but modern economics also believes in service-based economies, and that countries should only produce what they're good at, which, eventually, becomes a repudiation of the nation state. No country wants to buy bullets from an enemy, even if they're cheaper, and the web of infrastructure and industry necessary to maintain a defense industry mandates that at some point, you abandon the theory. Which is to say: I don't know, but I'm also skeptical that economists do.

I heard a great story from a colleague that worked in fashion development in the UK. There's a big push for "Made in the UK" clothing and consumers associate it with quality, but the items are lower quality, because the UK lost its garment manufacturing skills 50+ years ago. Meanwhile Asia has gained those skills, so if you buy clothes from China they are likely higher quality than you'd get here and cheaper.

This is not always the case, Italy still makes high quality leather goods, Portugal is still making good shirts and trousers etc, but for the most part as economies have moved away from manufacturing into services they have lost the skills and to force manufacturing to happen there means accepting higher priced, lower quality products.

> The US doesn't have the people to do the actual manufacturing

The core issue is that, historically, experienced workers have passed down their knowledge to new generations, ensuring a steady accumulation of expertise. However, when factories close and seasoned workers retire or move to other fields without training successors, a vast amount of valuable knowledge is lost. Rebuilding this expertise is both difficult and time-consuming. Subsidies will be required to support local production - initially yielding lower-quality or significantly more expensive goods - until the Western world relearns how to manufacture at scale.

Furthermore, if you want to build something, you likely won’t do it by hand. You’ll need machines to automate the process or enable complex material operations. Rebuilding this capability from scratch will take time, as existing manufacturers lack the necessary capacity. Additionally, similar equipment is produced much more cheaply in China, creating another challenge that must be addressed. What’s likely to happen is that Chinese manufacturers will establish companies in the United States that replicate their production facilities elsewhere (e.g. mainland China). They’ll ship in parts, and final assembly will take place in the U.S. This approach allows them to bypass trade restrictions while maintaining cost advantages. I already know of several cases where this is happening.

No people, no supply chain, and no total lack of environmental regulations mean most manufacturing jobs are not coming back no matter what the tariffs are. It's not just one reason that the manufacturing jobs have left, but a conflation of reasons.

Unless… well, unless you eliminate the EPA, invade Canada and Greenland and take their raw materials, and make people so poor that they take up factory jobs again.

didnt you listen to the 70 year olds planning this? we're just going have the robots do it.

you know how people said putin was surrounded by an echo chamber and thats how he got stuck in ukraine? Thats the us now but with billionare VC's and 2nd tier 1980's NYC real estate developers. Look at their numbers and listen to them talk, they're genuinely not grounded in reality as whole group and theres no fixing that

This is basic economics that the administration refuses to understand.

Trade allows you to consume beyond your nation’s manpower and resource constraints.

And it’s even stupider when you’re putting tariffs on raw materials like Canadian lumber. So not only do we need to magically find millions of workers to work in these new factories we also need to find a bunch of lumberjacks and start cutting down our own trees? We’re at 4% unemployment, who’s going to do this work?

We literally don’t have the people to make this work.

> The US doesn't have the people to do the actual manufacturing.

A usual lack of high qualified low paid workers?

Well they can always go back to child labor like Florida is planning to - https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/25/business/florida-child-labor-...

I recently listened to an episode of the Search Engine podcast where they showed how hard it is to manufacture something completely in the USA: https://www.searchengine.show/listen/search-engine-1/the-puz...

(Spoilers, the problem they had was that even when they found companies to manufacture their bbq scrubber, it was harder to find someone in the USA to make the parts that are used to make the parts.)

Suppose you even find those workers. How are american products going to compete with cheaper chinese / european ones. People over there are used to much lower wages / purchasing power. You can look at Tesla vs BYD prices as an example

In real life, people are spending years looking for jobs making enough to barely survive. I should tell them about your video you saw, if only they know.

Eh. This always gets presented as a, "Why don't Millennial/Zoomer/Alpha men want to work?" Lack of training? Maybe. But I see that as more of a subset of the actual issue, which is two-fold: work conditions and compensation. So many jobs suck, and pay less than they should, and provide no real opportunity for growth. Let's break it down:

Jobs that suck: bad hours, bad bosses, bad processes that create inefficiency and stress.

Jobs that don't pay: can't afford a house, can't afford to date/get married/have children, can't establish a stable lifestyle .

Jobs that don't allow for growth: masters don't pass along their skills, managers don't promote (and, eventually, step aside), employers push employees out with stagnation and the hoarding of opportunities for nepo-hires or outsiders.

And why are we in this situation? Essentially, because someone likes the way things are. Managers and seniors don't want to change their work styles, even if those styles are dysfunctional. Employers don't want to pay. Older workers don't want to leave, or jeopardize their marketability by training juniors.

Every young worker can tell you about their experiences with older workers who promise to train and won't, managers who promise advancement and don't, having to be in the office at an ungodly hour or the warehouse or factory late into the night. And for what? Nothing of the American Dream, at least without putting up with the more ridiculous end of the job spectrum, or having been born into money, or having been lucky enough to rub shoulders with someone born into money.

It's Japan's hikikomori problem, transposed. Japanese authorities constantly blame the shut-ins, but outside observers recognize that the problem actually lies with the "functional" side of society, and its unwillingness to confront the way it alienates and produces perfectly reasonable, if dysfunctional, responses in these men (and women).

Agreed, the root of the problem is that America has relatively zero modern manufacturing infrastructure and manpower, especially compared to China. Those MAGA folks just don't know this. Offshoring happened not just because of cheaper price; China already had a much better environment even 20 years ago thanks to billions of people.

> sectors like the military, construction and the automotive industry each have 100K+ positions that they are unable to fill. A return to manufacturing adds to that shortage.

Feel free to offer higher wages than the previous stagnant wages.

If there was a real labor demand shortage wouldn't there be actual wage growth though ?

Good thing we're deporting so many people then.

Actually there are people who are ok to do physical jobs but they are getting deported now.

If this is true, why are US wages stagnating?

What's up with the corresponding 7 million young women of working age?

>Apparently there's some 7 million young men of working age that are...missing in action. Self-isolated, gaming, addictions.

And you never wondered why that is?

> The US doesn't have the people to do the actual manufacturing

I am willing to move anywhere in the US to do any manufacturing job if it means that I will be paid enough to afford a house with two bedrooms and basic living expenses. I have a bachelor's degree and have been unable to find such an arrangement. So where exactly are all of these unfilled jobs that you speak of? Are they unfilled because we don't have the people, or because they're trying to pay in peanuts? Unfilled because we don't have the people, or because HR departments are filtering away qualified resumes based on voodoo? This outlandish claim you're making that we don't want to work is offensive to a lot of people who are aware of their own existence and know that you're spouting bullshit to trick people into more wealth inequality.

Your 7 million young men aren't 'missing', you're just refusing to hire them. The jobs don't exist.

Can you blame the new generations for not wanting to work their asses off doing arduous manual labor, payed a minimum wage that is barely enough to afford a single room?

Republicans made work awful. I've heard some wanting to get rid of minimum wage too. Do you think this will help?

> Apparently there's some 7 million young men of working age that are...missing in action. Self-isolated, gaming, addictions.

perhaps we'll see something akin to "forced conscription", except for industrial work

> The US doesn't have the people to do the actual manufacturing ... I'm sure you'll have Apple investing in a mega plant where 50 educated people push some buttons though.

I feel like this could be used to steel-man the Trump administration's plan, though, should you want to. The best-case outcome here for America is it forces large capital investment in automated manufacturing facilities based in the US by making manufacturing that relies on cheap overseas labour expensive enough that the investment is worth it.

I'm doubtful, but, in the unlikely event it works like that, and this comes online in the next couple of years without causing a catastrophic wipeout in the mid-terms, Trump will look like a genius.

IMO it would have been much smarter to explicitly incentivize this with tax breaks and start with small tariffs that would ramp up a little bit each month, if it's the plan, and not just incoherent policy making.

[dead]

The best option would be to close the gap with immigration but alas...

The US has recently loosened laws regarding child labor. It’s how other countries produce items cheaply, why not the US?

That El Salvador prison could also come in useful.

No one will want to do lower income jobs while the cost of living is high and continues to rise. Wear and tear on the body is also not compensated, not to mention healthcare being expensive. Meanwhile, I do CRUD apps and work remotely 20/hours a week with no bodily harm (on the contrary, I have time to work out and make bad posts on HN)

No one in their right mind is going to choose manufacturing over what I have if they can do both, and most people could honestly learn to do CRUD apps. Even if my salary were to go down by 5-10% yoy due to people moving in, I'm still in a better position for the other reasons mentioned. I'd have to be below manufacturing and blue collar wages to get me to switch.

The only sensible explanation is that they're trying to force people to have to take these jobs by crashing the globalized parts of the economy because they are obviously better than starving and dying homeless.

All this assuming that Trump isn't just intentionally trying to destroy the country.