Old article (2/Apr/2024), superseded by analysis from 23/Apr/2024:
“Things are going mostly to plan” isn’t very interesting.
Except, they could. Reshoring manufacturing was already accelerating before the Chips Act etc with some seasonal back and forth. [1] The increase in labor costs in China and the pandemic have been US Administration independent in causing reshoring, the US shale oil revolution making electricity and many manufacturing inputs globally competitive in price was influenced by successive Administrations including Trump, but the trade war with China motivated a chunk of reshoring and that still animates policy today and that was started by Trump.
The factory investment charts speak for themselves.
Except it doesn't. Factory building isn't the only metric for progress of reshoring manufacturing and graphs do not interpret themselves. In that chart the overall trend of factory building investment remains elevated through the Trump administration over the previous administration even though the fervor of the shale revolution and the subsequent reshoring was cooling off. Why? The factors that I previously mentioned.