Thread by @Noahpinion

Reshoring U.S. industries is going to be very hard, because of economic geography.

But it's still worth a try, and some people on the political right are now beginning to think seriously about how to actually do it:

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

It's important to understand how utterly and completely Trump failed when it came to reshoring.

Even before coronavirus, the longest expansion on record had failed to restore U.S. manufacturing to its pre-2008 peak.

Now the folks at @AmerCompass -- a new think tank on the political right, focused on economic issues but from a very non-libertarian perspective, have come out with a Reshoring Initiative full of ideas for succeeding where Trump utterly failed.

americancompass.org/essays/moving-…

This raises the possibility for interesting right-left debates and collaborations, since think tanks on the political left, like @EconomicPolicy, have been urging reshoring for a long time:

epi.org/press/the-grow…

The @AmerCompass folks give five reasons for wanting to reshore manufacturing industries. #3 and #4 will be by far the most contentious, but they're also the most economically significant.

Some of the Reshoring Initiative's ideas are interesting and original, and might have big effects.

americancompass.org/essays/on-rese…

Other ideas are pretty standard fare.

americancompass.org/essays/on-tax-…

Some are quite protectionist.

americancompass.org/essays/on-dome…

And still others are just plain bad ideas -- holdovers from the libertarian era.

americancompass.org/essays/on-regu…

But it's great to see people on both sides of the ideological divide thinking about reshoring.

Doing it successfully -- if it can be done at all -- will require a major transformation in the way we think about the relationship between industry and government.

This should be the start of a national conversation about reshoring, not the final word.

(end)

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…