The Reindustrialization of the US

The U.S. has the best ecosystem in the world for innovation and business and the best energy supply conditions for the next two decades.

In March 2020, I claimed as others did that “the world has become highly dependent on Chinese production; therefore, it is necessary to consider decentralizing the model. Examples might include diversifying sources for the production of raw materials and basic components and/or making economically viable the approach between the areas of production and final consumption.”

The Chinese model is beginning to reveal structural failures, such as the decline of its financial viability and the accelerated aging of its population, indications that concentration of production in China has, in the best of cases, reached its limit.

Geopolitically, the confirmation of Xi Jinping as president predicts that political developments between China and the U.S. will fail to produce greater commercial and productive integration — quite the contrary. The decision by the U.S. regarding the production and availability of microchips will in itself have significant consequences. This particular constraint will have an impact on China in the coming years.

But why is the U.S. considered an alternative if it also has problems and weaknesses? Because there are no better candidates.

The Third World continues to have the advantage of relatively cheap raw materials and labor, although we cannot forget that the cost of labor is really a manifestation of its productivity. But the entrenched problems of infrastructure, productivity and political instability disqualify it. In addition, there is its cognitive inability to understand that Marxism is a historically proven failure.

Mexico might be saved, without Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Mexico might serve as a sort of China, with proximity to the U.S. for productive processes requiring cheap labor, until robotization and artificial intelligence take hold.

Europe and especially its productive leader, Germany, will hardly emerge unscathed from the energy crisis resulting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, even if the conflict were to be miraculously resolved soon. German industry will not be the same, even if Germany, which historically speaking needs to be wrong twice about important matters before it can understand its mistakes, understands that Russia is not to be trusted.

The U.S. is not free of stupid politicians in both parties; some of its highway infrastructure is aging, lacking the skilled labor it requires for repair; but in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. Its ecosystem for innovation and business is still the best in the world; its demographics are the least decadent of the truly developed countries; and it has the best conditions for reliable and relatively cheap energy supply for the next two decades.

Industrialists are not casino speculators. They think in the long term, and that is why Americans themselves, along with Europeans and Asians, are relocating part of their manufacturing to the U.S., as evidenced by the recent Kearney report on factory relocation.