> Only cheap labor can bring manufacturing back to the US. Are Americans willing to work in factories for the same wages as the Chinese and Indians? I don't see it happening.

Under conditions of free trade with low-wage countries.

Free trade with low-wage countries is a policy choice, but a lot of people confuse it for a natural law.

> Are Americans willing to work in factories for the same wages as the Chinese and Indians? I don't see it happening.

Create enough poverty and soon people will be willing to do an awful lot of things.

That is the point of cheapening the dollar, BTW. The local wages can stay 'high' dollar denominated, but the euro-denominated value of those wages drops. It was for some time the strategy of the Chinese central bank; you can keep export good costs low by controlling your currency to weaker. The trick is to do that while everyone is paying you for your stuff.

Cheap labor wouldn't necessarily bring manufacturing back to the USA. Over time much of the labor can potentially be automated. But environmental and zoning rules effectively ban entire industries such as metal casting. If we want those industries back then we'll need a major realignment of public policy that goes beyond just labor.

Cheap labor requires cheap rent and cheap goods. You can't have indian/chinese wages at American cost of living.

How do you bring down costs? generally you'd need to restrict real estate. Lock down rent costs for both residential and commercial.

What if the "same wage" as Chinese/Indians nets you close to the same basic necessities and purchasing power as those countries.

With a weak dollar, those wages will be more equal.

You have a baseline of prosperity and life in your head.

The Heritage guys have a weird perspective where they idolize the early Federalist US and the Reagan Era. Prosperity for the common man wasn’t a highlight of either era, to put it mildly.

In 1790s New York, for example, “local control” meant that many of the people of upstate New York were a sort of serf-like tenant living on the estates of the great men, Dutch patroons who played ball with the colonial and State political infrastructure. They had the freedom to pay rent until their landlord was willing to let them go. That existed into the 1840s, when the country started getting woke.

So we can address housing issues with creative solutions. Why do poor people need their own apartments? Stuff them into a tenement. You can easily fit 15 people in a two bedroom apartment so they can build drones or whatever.

Of course, but even if Americans were willing to do that kind of work for those wages it wouldn't have much impact. The kind of manufacturing that makes serious money doesn't and usually can't use cheap labour, not in the long run at least. And in those parts of the economy where cheap labour is effective, agriculture for instance, the availability of cheap immigrant labour is simply holding back innovation.

But the US is a major manufacturing nation anyway. US manufacturing output is more than half of that of China while having only a quarter of the population.

When groups like the far right say bring back manufacturing they are just posturing to those voters who have been disadvantaged by changes in the commercial landscape that reduces the number of unskilled and semi-skilled jobs. If they really cared about those people they would support massive improvements to education and training so that at least the next generation had a chance rather than idiotic schemes to 'bring back' the kinds of work that no one needs.

I don't think they are going to ask.