There must be a label for people who try to make the world conform to their mental modal. Insane? Blind? Overly optimistic? Ego maniacal?

I have many years of experience in manufacturing. Almost a decade of experience as the cost analyst of a mid-sized manufacturing company (along with other duties). Articles in national media pretending to explain manufacturing miss the target so far it’s good practice to set the target in front of a big hill to stop the shots.

Politicians are even worse. I cannot remember a single instance where a politician discussing manufacturing had anything better than a broad macroeconomic view.

I understand Trump wanting to boost manufacturing in the US. It’s a national security issue. He promised some of his constituency that he’d bring good paying jobs to the US for them. It boosts his ego. I’d love to see a resurgence of manufacturing in this country.

But telling Apple that they had better start assembling iPhones in the US or face penalties borders on Fantasy Island.

Check a similar strategic move. Does anyone remember way back when WalMart heavily advertised “Made in America?” Do you remember the sudden pivot to “Always Lowest Price?” I worked in product development for a couple of manufacturers of consumer products who depended on sales through WalMart. The cost pressures were brutal. You sought every edge.

Does anyone realize how long it takes to build a factory from scratch? And where would the manufacturing and tooling engineers come from? And the assembly line workers? Those would not be high-paying jobs. Apparently the work is seasonal. The work intense. Americans have shown a disdain for applying for that sort of work.

Perhaps the best piece I have read in national media looking at Americans view of working in manufacturing is this piece from NPR news (a totally unexpected outlet).

President Trump has been upending the global economy in the name of bringing manufacturing back. President Joe Biden signed into law massive investments aimed at doing something similar. The American manufacturing sector is reviving after decades of decay.

But there’s something a bit weird undercutting this movement to reshore factory jobs: American manufacturers say they are struggling to fill the jobs they already have.

According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are nearly half a million open manufacturing jobs right now.

The article continues to discuss pay. I lived in a manufacturing-intense area of the country in west-central Ohio. Pay for factory workers fell for decades until it hit minimum wage. The head of the local Chamber of Commerce and the head of the local United Way both had told me that factory workers simply could not survive on their pay.

If manufacturers raised wages, that would most likely offset any supply chain gains.

Before I could finish the above part of the essay, here came an article from The New York Times. What a bunch of unadulterated crap was in that article. They quote “analysts” about costs to make the iPhone in the US. How can an analyst outside a company do enough research and math to calculate that when internal cost analysts have a hard time deriving numbers. Then there was the Fox

Somewhere in my reading the reporter thought FoxConn had up to 500,000 engineers working in its assembly factories. I wonder what was the definition of engineer. Must be another case of sloppy reporting.

John Gruber, a respected journalist covering Apple writing at Daring Fireball (and not a manufacturing guy by any stretch), wrote a scathing review of the New York Times article. Really a good read.

Advisors in the Trump administration would do well to check the work of The Reshoring Initiative, an organization providing statistics and advice for the benefits to companies bringing manufacturing back to this country.

Naturally it is a complex subject. I only wish people could learn a bit more about manufacturing before going off half-cocked.