Would it be possible to bring back manufacturing to the west?

Honestly, it's possible but it would raise the cost of living and there's a few economic and social barriers that would need to be adjusted...and I honestly don't think that's gonna happen. The west hates change.

Unbridled capitalism is the reason why offshoring became a popular phenom. In most westernized countries, businesses are subject to humanitarian labor standards, safety standandards, hourly labor laws, and minimum wage restriction. That means extraditing manufacturing is a cheaper choice because there are countries where...basically...slave labor is perfectly legal. It's a result of caring about money more than ethics. It lowers costs exponentially.

Also, China in particular is not subject to the same emissions and environmental waste standards as most western countries, again making their manufacturing astronomically cheaper. If you want to know more about it, look up "carbon credits" (we have sold them en masse to china).

Also there is the social stigma against manufacturing work, the unnecessary emphasis on higher education, the lack of trade school and apprentice work, and the lack of available jobs in these areas that has lead to entire generations of people that have absolutely no knowledge of trade skills. That's not true of every western country, Australia, for example, encourages the trades. America doesn't.

But anyways, this is the fault of all the uber pro capitalist people, who now, funnily enough are rumbling about starting a war with China.

You guys do realize you're the ones that made them a superpower?

No one wants to work in factories when they can get more on benefits

I suspect a lot of manufacturing will - eventually - shift back to places like the USA and Europe. I can imagine that advances in robotics, 3D printing and AI will someday make it cheaper and quicker to produce many products relatively locally rather than on the other side of the world and then ship them to consumers.

Of course, the work of the relatively small number of people employed in those factories won't have much in common with that of the traditional manufacturing workforce, and their skill-set will be very different.

We recently bought a new Škoda car, and my research prompted the YouTube algorithm to suggest a 20 minute video of how the cars are actually made. It's not quite what I outlined above, since there are still people working on some bits of the production line, but a huge amount of the process happens in vast buildings with only a couple of technicians sitting in a booth, apparently waiting for something to go wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJuKMYIPsXk

Nope. Its cheaper to manufacture stuff in China, and capitalism is all about profit.

They should transition manufacturing to mexico and the US. But thats not likely to happen with an establishment president. Political donors wont approve of it so it wont happen. Whether its republican or Democrat really doesnt matter its all about establishment or non establishment. If its an establishment politician its gonna be abunch of acting like they want one thing when they really dont.

I believe that you will be seeing some of the manufacturing return to the USA; but not most of it.

Its a world economy now and we are competing with at least 50 other countries that have an educated population base that work for less money than what we do in the USA.