I don't know if that's ever going to happen for a lot of these companies. Amazon for instance is a distributor and cloud provider. Apple more then likely won't ever fully bring manufacturing back, not with how little they spend in labor costs in Asia. Trumps plan to set a minimum salary for imported IT workers wasn't terrible, but i don't know if it had much of an effect.
For the most part a lot of manufacturing is going to move towards automation. Even the fast food industry is heading that way. in the next 10-15 years there are going to be a LOT of people displaced in the workforce by simple machines, we're(as a people) going to need to find jobs for them, otherwise they become dead weight on a system already being strained.
The really interesting thing about amazon is how little they actually make in terms of profits, while at the same time the owner continues to out pace the rest of the elite in terms of straight cash homie. It would be interesting to see what he does with his $156 billion dollars If i had maybe 2 of those billion and 5 years, I bet i could solve a good chunk of the homelessness.
The automation displacement argument has been around since the days of the industrial revolution and Henry Ford's assembly line.
A few things to keep in mind when discussing automation replacing or displacing people:
1. Manufacturing is not moving towards automation. It's already there and has been there for decades.
- Yes it's improving. PLC's, Robotics, Pneumatics etc... are getting better and in my experiences quite reliable. But you will always need an operator, a technician and an engineer.
- Automation is absolutely necessary. It doesn't usually displace the employee rather it makes the employee more productive which allows the company to compete.
2. Automation usually only happens after some growth. New businesses or small businesses do not fully automate until they have established some level of growth. There's a threshold in which it makes sense to automate an assembly process. The more flexible a company needs to be the less automated it will be.
- If a company makes plastic forks then it makes sense to invest in a fully automated process.
- If a small company makes personalized forks then the process becomes less automated and would need people to finish, inspect, hand pack and ship the product. (That's overly simplified to demonstrate the point)
4. For every fast food chain that automates their process there's a mom and pop restaurant that needs a cook or busboy. Pretty much the same in any business. Larger automated companies are less flexible product wise than smaller more customized companies.
Bringing manufacturing back to the US would help solve or reduce a lot of the social issues we have today. imo. Reducing or eliminating corp tax rates would be a wonderful step in that direction. Basically expand the workforce and decrease government aid.
Anyway that's the gist of it.