If the pandemic taught organizations how to deal with the fragility of global supply chains, current geopolitical and trade tensions are testing even the best manufacturing and logistics practitioners. While it’s tempting to simplify the process by increasing domestic production, "Made in America" is easier said than done, especially when you’re in tech. Not only does it cost more, but it also requires a knowledgeable workforce that, at least for now, just doesn’t exist.
The Reshoring Initiative, based in Sarasota, FL, has a mission to bring manufacturing—and more specifically, well-paying manufacturing jobs—back to the United States. In its 2025 Reshoring Survey Report, published in collaboration with talent acquisition firm Regions Recruiting, it makes the argument for investment in training and education to fulfill the need for skilled workers.
“The success or failure of training millions of workers could skew the outcome of U.S. reindustrialization momentum in either direction,” the report stated. Without a reshoring surge, it forecasted 2.1 million manufacturing jobs will go unfilled by 2030. That carries with it an estimated $1 trillion loss to GDP.
Harry Moser
Image credit: Reshoring Initiative
Steve Koenig
Image credit: CTA
Ted Romanowitz
Image credit: Futuresource
One of the ways to train manufacturing labor is through apprenticeships, observed Harry Moser, president and founder of the Reshoring Initiative. He also argued that industry needs to do a better job of marketing its career opportunities to a culture that still views a university degree as the only ticket to a successful life.
“We’ve got to convince kids and their parents that they don’t have to go to college,” Moser said. “They can get training instead of more education—or both. There’s a route, through an apprenticeship, to make more than the average Ph.D.”
The Trouble with Tech
In an ideal world, there are considerable benefits to domestic production of AV systems.
“Assuming it’s possible, the advantages would be having supply chains that are closer to the customer, reducing transportation time and creating more efficiencies,” said Ed Brzytwa, VP of international trade at the Consumer Technology Association, headquartered in Arlington, VA. However, for Brzytwa, that possibility is slim when it comes to consumer electronics.
To gain an understanding of the domestic manufacturing landscape for Pro AV, one can look to consumer electronics. Back in 2023, prior to current tariff complications, CTA published “Building a Resilient U.S. Consumer Technology Supply Chain” in collaboration with Kearney, a management consulting firm.
While the study argues it’s wise to decrease the United States’ dependence on China and Taiwan for tech components such as communications and AV equipment, computers, and semiconductors, manufacturing them at home isn’t realistic. "It may be conceptually and politically attractive to think about reshoring most or even all of the consumer technology supply chains to the United States, but it’s simply not practically or economically feasible given the scale and complexity of required resources and underlying economic production structures,” the report stated.
While the concept of producing everything domestically may be attractive, the world is too interconnected for this to be viable, said the CTA's Ed Brzytwa. “There’s a perspective in this administration from the top down that everything that we consume in the United States has to be made in the United States,” he said. “They think that by putting up tariff walls or making trade really complex it’s going to depress imports and force people to use domestic manufacturers and suppliers. But it just may not happen—especially if you’re a company that makes a complex technology product with a lot of different inputs and you can’t source those inputs at a competitive cost in the United States. You’re more likely to do it from outside the United States and then import the finished good, even with the higher tariff rate because there’s less complexity.”
The raw materials required to fabricate these products aren’t available in the United States, and there is a significant labor shortage. CTA and Kearney estimate that bringing consumer electronics manufacturing to America would require a $500 billion investment and a tenfold increase in workforce, one that would cost significantly more than overseas labor.
“You need a workforce that’s willing to put in the hours to be skilled and then to execute on those skills,” Brzytwa said. “I think, in the short run, that’s not likely to happen unless there’s a significant effort by stakeholders in the United States to make it happen.”
The U.S. also lacks the infrastructure necessary to support consumer technology manufacturing, noted Steve Koenig, vice president of research at CTA. “Our analysis showed that it would take a decade-plus to really start to build back,” he said.
It’s also difficult for companies to commit to large-scale construction in the U.S. when the rules of trade are in constant flux. “It’s hard to make long-term business investments and plans when you just don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Ted Romanowitz, principal consultant at Futuresource Consulting, an advisory firm based in St. Albans, England.
Plus, truly supporting domestic electronics manufacturing extends beyond the construction of fabrication facilities that produce semiconductors. “This is also about upgrading electrical infrastructure, and [opening] more deep sea ports and railways. It would really be across the board,” Koenig said.
'Multi-Geography' Solution
This isn’t to say that America must remain dependent on China and Taiwan. Instead, CTA and Kearney promote a “multi-geography” collaboration between the U.S. and its treaty allies and trade partners such as France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, the U.K., and Vietnam.
“I think there’s an underappreciation, generally speaking, of how integrated supply chains are in the technology industry across the world,” Brzytwa said. “No one country is self-reliant for the production of technology products. There’s got to be an array of supply chain relationships across countries in order to make any kind of technology manufacturing happen.”
However, in a hostile trading climate, this can be difficult to achieve. “Just because you have some trade problems with those countries doesn’t mean they’re adversaries,” Brzytwa argued. “It means that you have to work through those problems like in any relationship.”
Being allied requires countries to tolerate some level of interdependence. “And for me anyway, that means providing for tariff relief on imports from those countries, particularly the inputs that are made in those countries," Brzytwa argued. "It doesn’t make a lot of strategic sense to restrict that trade with our historic allies and key aligned trading partners that share our values.”
