[UFO Chicago] Google and US Manufacturing

[Brian Sobolak]

Since this comes up at meetings a lot:  Interesting that this a minute but
extant trend towards manufacturing in the US again.  If you read these
articles, most reference the 1-2 stories over and over again (GE,
Catepillar).  I'm sure there are many smaller stories than 1 big GE
factory that don't make it into papers.  It also doesn't really indicate
if factory pays anything close to a tolerable wage:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/technology/google-and-others-give-manufacturing-in-the-us-a-try.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp&pagewanted=all

"Since the 1990s, one American company after another, including
Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Apple, has become a design and marketing shell,
with production shifted to contract manufacturers in Shenzhen and
elsewhere in China.

Now that trend may be showing early signs of reversing.

It’s a trickle, but some American companies are again making products in
the United States. While many of those companies have been small, like ET
Water Systems, there have also been some highly visible moves by America’s
largest consumer and industrial manufacturers. General Electric and
Caterpillar, for example, have moved assembly operations back to the
United States in the last year. (Airbus, a European company, is said to be
near a deal to build jets in Alabama.)"




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