Best == cheaper. Could you do it in the US? Probably. But it'd take longer and you'd have to pay more money.
There are other places, as the comment above mentioned, that can produce for cheaper.
The US could do the exact same. Many high-quality, sophisticated goods are made in the US.
It's just cheaper to do in China because the salaries are lower and the costs of establishing more efficient business infrastructure are lower.
And since these companies care more about cost than anything, they choose China.
People invest in things that maximize returns. 30 years ago they had a choice: invest in building out more manufacturing infrastructure in the US, or doing it in China. China was, and is, less expensive to run. So China got the investment dollars.
You could absolutely build any product in the US. You'd just also have to build the infrastructure to build the industrial base, and that means spending more money than you would in China.
It always comes down to cost. Always.
The US is still an economy with the ability to tackle very complex tasks with its industrial base. Up until fairly recently, it was a major destination for people seeking higher education and work in specialized fields in STEM, which is necessary for the execution of the projects that companies like Apple want to do.
The problem is that we now have an anti-immigration administration, and are home to a number of multinational companies - Apple's a great example - that feel that their one and only obligation is to create value for shareholders. They don't want to throw the money needed at American engineer salaries, because money paid to the American engineer is money not paid to a shareholder.
We can possibly deal with the administration. The US isn't the only country in the world with a nativist movement; China does it with non-Han peoples within its borders. The real hangup is making a bunch of Americans with capital feel some sort of loyalty towards their own country and its workers.
"The real hangup is making a bunch of Americans with capital feel some sort of loyalty towards their own country and its workers."
People didn't culturally decide they don't want these sorts of jobs, business did, because short term monetary benefit. The other stuff may have come along after but could easily be reversed. But currently there is no need to reverse because US business only cares about short term monetary gain.
All this talk like this is some huge systemic thing is BS. If there were jobs, it would all happen. Just like it did in China.
Second, it takes a huge amount of engineering talent to do what China is doing as well. In the US, a lot of engineering talent has been attracted to software (or other service industry jobs), where there's a lot of money to be made, and you can sit on your ass and argue on an orange-colored website all day. I prefer that to wearing a hardhat and waking up at 6 AM to go to a factory.
Third, China concentrates a lot of this talent into dense cities, and people make a lot of sacrifices to live there. You're definitely not gonna convince an HVAC guy to leave his suburban home and sell his pickup truck to go live in a dormitory in a dense city and ride a scooter. In China, there's plenty of people that are itching to leave the countryside for the city, leave their families, and search for a better life. In the US, people that live outside of cities, generally want to live there, and aren't interested in relocating. Most developed nations feed this need for skilled labor by importing labor from countries where people have a strong desire to better themselves but don't have a cultural expectation of a backyard and a white picket fence. But the US has had a fucked up immigration system for a long time now.
Fourth, China pulls out all of the roadblocks in order to facilitate the growth of their industrial base. They don't need to go through 10 years of planning to build something, they don't need to argue with a local zoning board, and if they want to build something they don't wait for the free market to decide to do it. If they want to support an industry, they just do it. Single-party unitary governments are efficient as fuck. Of course, this comes with many drawbacks, which politically are just not viable in the US.
1. The HVAC guys would definitely fill the the quick turnaround, small shops that surround the manufacturing industry in China if that was an option.
Culturally doesn't matter. The majority of young men I know are underemployed and hate the service industry, but would be a fit for having their own adjacent business like that ones in China that get so hyped as enabling their dynamics. I think you are very focused on the crowd you know. The young people I know are so itching to create they have 3d printers, or make fishing flies, or make their own clothes.
2. Sounds great, if you live in the bay area or other tech scenes. I no longer do. I left tech to work (albeit tech) in a factory. For the majority of people I know, what you lay out it isn't an option or on the table. They are under-employed in brain dead service jobs they hate, and that do not provide them a future. They would jump on building up the adjacent small businesses that China's manufacturing depends on and that people here hype as 'wow, you can find a shop that does XYZ'. The stuff people say 'we just don't have in the USA'.
3. Small town America was factories since forever. I don't think China's way is the only way. We have a very good transportation system whereas when China established it's manufacturing it didn't. I think your view is myopic here and clouded with 'the China way'.
4. Again, the 80% of America you seem to ignore, pulls out all the stops for shitty ass 50 employee employers to build. You seem to be focused on a very small part of the US.
Nothing you say is a limiter IF the jobs are there. American companies pulling the jobs killed American dynancism, not any of the things you list. If it's TRULY no longer about cost, we could EASILY do it again. The people I met in China weren't better than the average American. They were great, and I think very highly of China. But the advantage I saw were wages, and people from the countryside willing to put up with a lot, but I don't think they will put up with as much long term (and I hope they don't have to, again the people I met are all great people and I hope the best for all of us). And a side of environmental pollution (I know 2 guys that moved their factories to China purely because of savings by not having to be environmentally friendly. So many that falls under your regulation, but that isn't a long term solution/state for China and that was a decade ago, maybe things are changed for the better already).
> 80% of America you seem to ignore, pulls out all the stops for shitty ass 50 employee employers to build. You seem to be focused on a very small part of the US.
It's easy to get politicians to give out some tax breaks for a reelection campaign. It seems to be damn near impossible to actually get anything done that actually matters. We frequently spend billions of dollars to support manufacturing investment and have nothing to show for it.
Just look at Foxconn in Wisconsin, as an example. Over $1 billion and half a decade and still nothing. China could've had a whole city built. We were just trying to get 13,000 factory jobs, but we couldn't even manage that.
But we'll probably just talk past each other past this point. It will be interesting to see what happens. Like I said, I remember the Japan scare. Then all manufacturing going to Mexico (and my dad making sure he didn't buy the heche en mexico lable) before it finally landed in China.