savingusmanufacturing.com

For the past three decades, outsourcing was the cornerstone of U.S. manufacturing. First, manufacturers outsourced to Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.  Then, manufacturers started outsourcing to China after it was granted Most Favored Nation status in the year 2000.  As I have written in my three books and over 300 articles, returning manufacturing to America is critical to rebuilding America’s industrial base. This process became known as “reshoring” after Harry Moser founded The Reshoring Initiative in early 2010. Returning manufacturing to America through reshoring is critical to rebuild America’s industrial base to ensure that we have the commercial and military/defense products needed to keep Americans healthy and safe

I had the honor of being an early supporter/collaborator of The Reshoring Initiative after I wrote about why it was important to understand “Total Cost of Ownership” when selecting vendors to manufacture products.  I based my opinion on the hard copy worksheets of the National Tooling & Machining Association and the American Mold Builders Association. Harry Moser called me after reading my article and told that he had just founded The Reshoring Initiative and “created the Total Cost of Ownership Estimator® – a free online tool that helps companies account for all relevant factors — overhead, balance sheet, risks, corporate strategy and other external and internal business considerations — to determine the true total cost of ownership.” He trained me in how to give presentations on TCO and authorized me to be a substitute speaker for him on the West Coast or when he had a scheduling conflict for a trade show or conference. Every year, Harry provides me with new data so that my presentations remain consistent with his presentations.

The good news is that reshoring is rapidly increasing and making a significant impact on U.S. manufacturing, driven by supply chain resilience, geopolitical risks, and government incentives. According to the 2024 Reshoring report by The Reshoring Initiative, “244,000 jobs were announced in 2024; 1.7 million jobs have been filled since 2010.” Reshoring is improving our country’s self-sufficiency capacity for goods essential to our economy and national security according to a number of surveys and reports that I highlighted in my article titled, “Is Reshoring Making a Difference and Increasing?” published March 19, 2025.

When I asked Harry why he started the Reshoring Awards, he responded, “We started the Awards, initially as a feature of the NTMA/PMA Purchasing Fairs that connected industrial buyers with contract manufacture providers of machined components and tooling. When the Fairs ended, we promoted the awards to the national industry and included AMT, SME and FMA as supporters.” He added, “We wanted to establish a Reshoring Award to “motivate more companies to reevaluate their offshoring and see that it is often more profitable to produce or source domestically.  We hoped that other associations would choose to support similar awards to show that their industries are now successfully reshoring.”

On May 25, 2017, The Reshoring Initiative andPrecision Metalforming Association (PMA)invited companiesthat have “successfully reshored parts or tooling made primarily by metal forming, fabricating or machining to apply forthe First National Reshoring Award. There was one award for buyers and one award for suppliers.” To be eligible for an award, a product or component has to meet the following criteria:

• Reshoring or foreign direct investment (FDI) of the work occurred between Jan. 1, 2010, and the year prior to the year’s award.  April 30, 2026.
• Work had to be returned to North America from outside North America.
• The products, parts, or tooling reshored must be made primarily by forming, casting, fabricating, or machining, including additive machining.

The criteria for winning are:

• Number of North American jobs created
• Dollars per year of sales reshored or nearshored from further offshore
• Capital investment
• Product innovation
• Process innovation
• Success of the project
• Completeness of application

Bonus points are awarded to PMA, AMT, SME, FMA, and NTMA members. Winners include companies ranging from 20 to 15,000+ employees.

On October 31, 2018, AMT (The Association For Manufacturing Technology) and NTMA (National Tooling and Machining Association) joined the Reshoring Initiative and Precision Metalforming Association (PMA) to invite “Companies that have successfully reshored products, parts or tooling made primarily by metal forming, fabricating, casting or machining, including additive manufacturing,” to apply for the award…the work must have been reshored between January 1, 2013, and December 31, 2018, from outside North America to North America.” 

These four organizations have continued to grant Reshoring Awards every year since 2018.  The winners by year are:

2018 – Mitchell Metal Products, located in Merrill, WI

2019 – Sherrill Manufacturing, located in Sherrill, NY

2020 – Die-Tech & Engineering, located in Walker MI

2020 – Trenton Forging, located in Trenton, MI

2021 – ACME Alliance, located in Tempe. AZ

2022 – Hardinge, located in Elmira, NY

2023 – Hobson & Motzer, located in Durham, CT

2024 – Sumitomo Drive Tech., located in Chesapeake, VA

2025 – Marlin Steel, located in Baltimore, MD

2025 – GE Appliances, located in Louisville, KY

The 2026 Award will be presented at IMTS 2026 to be held September 14-19, 2026 at McCormick Place, Chicago, IL.  The event will take place on the Main Stage between the North and South Halls, probably at 9am on Sept 17th. Applications are due by May 31, 2026. The application form is located at  https://www.amtonline.org/article/reshoring-award.  You may email Harry Moser at <harry.moser@reshorenow.org> for a file for applying.

While each of the above recipient companies may have had a variety of different reasons for reshoring using the Total Cost of Ownership Estimator®, the reality is that companies will only bring back the majority of offshored work if the economics of producing in the U.S. justifies doing so.

In last year’s Reshoring Report cited above, The Reshoring Initiative issued a call for smarter industrial policy that included the following to increase reshoring:

• Massive investment in skilled workforce development (modeled after German apprenticeships).
• A 20% lower USD to improve global cost competitiveness.
• Retention of immediate expensing of capital investments.

I agree with these recommendations and have expressed in previous articles that the actions needed to achieve more reshoring are the same as needed for rebuilding manufacturing in general. These include developing a national manufacturing strategy that encompasses corporate tax reform, regulatory reform, Border Adjustable Taxes (aka VATs), and a Market Access Charge while addressing the predatory mercantilist practices of other countries with regard to currency manipulation, product dumping, and government subsidies.

President Trump has addressed tax reform and regulatory reform, but the other recommendations still need to be addressed.  While we can take advantage of tariffs being a key motivator for reshoring now, we need to have other beneficial policies in place for the future to have long-term growth of our domestic manufacturing base.

The Reshoring movement is gaining momentum as recent surveys show that a majority of U.S. manufacturers have either reshored or are actively evaluating reshoring portions of their production.  President Trump’s tariffs are only one factor in the increase of reshoring.  According to The Reshoring Initiative, the most common incentives for reshoring include shorter lead times, higher product quality and consistency, lower inventory levels, better responsiveness to changing customer demands, minimal intellectual property theft risk, and improved innovation and product differentiation.:

Data from the Reshoring Initiative shows “As of November 2025, we have recorded over 7600 cases of manufacturing companies that have brought work back to the U.S and from 2010 through November 2025. 2.3 million jobs returned from offshore vis reshoring and FDI.” This article will discuss why reshoring IT services is also critical to the success of American manufacturers and the protection of our national security.

The idea for this topic was presented to me by David Vickery, President of IT GuidePoint Corporation (or IT GuidePoint) who is a fellow member of the Coalition for a Prosperous America whom I used to see on our monthly member calls.  He has been reading my blog articles regularly and contacted me after reading my previous article about Marlin Steel Wire Products.  We met via Zoom last Wednesday and discussed why it is critical to reshore IT services.

David said, “I founded IT GuidePoint Corporation in May of 2008 after a decade as a principal at a publicly traded consulting firm in the Midwest that focused on $50 to $500 million manufacturing and distribution companies. My company focuses on Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software optimization and new software selection for manufacturing and distribution companies mostly in the Midwest states of Illinois, Iowa, and Indiana. Let’s say you have a bad implementation and you need someone to review it and help you go through and say, why isn’t it working for us? The business system that you use on your computer to enter orders, ship things, check inventory, run the lines through the manufacturing plant all connects in some way, shape, or form to your planning or ERP system. I like to use the word business system because most people because most people just can’t get their arms around ERP unless they’re in the industry. I work with a network of specialized consultants, including former CIOs and CFOs, to provide practical solutions for clients facing challenges with their business systems.”

He told me, “I believe that your latest article has the same core principle highlighting the value of full domestic self-sufficiency. At least, that is my view because it is a repeated theme in your articles that America must stop outsourcing critical production and become self-reliant with no more depending on China for steel, baskets, chips, printed circuit boards, etc. I’m trying to take that message into the digital realm discussion: ERP and IT systems are now the “nervous system” of every modern manufacturer. Outsourcing those services to non-US citizens creates the same national security, IP, and supply-chain vulnerabilities that David Greenblatt warns about with physical goods. Defining “Made in the USA services” to require USA-citizen ERP/IT resources is simply completing the self-sufficiency picture you already champion.”

David shared his experience from MBA school in the 1990s, where a professor accurately predicted that outsourcing would eventually affect white-collar jobs, similar to how it had impacted blue-collar manufacturing jobs. He mentioned reading an Economic Policy Institute report that said “By 2010, trade deficits with Mexico had eliminated 682,900 good U.S. jobs, most (60.8 percent) in manufacturing.” 

I mentioned that a 2017 Economic Policy report stated,  “Growth in U.S.–China trade deficit between 2001 and 2015 cost 3.4 million jobs.

He emphasized how the hollowing out of rural manufacturing towns leads to broader economic decline, affecting everything from infrastructure to educational systems when major manufacturing plants leave. He said that he wrote an article called Rural Manufacturing Perspective that talks about the little town that he grew up in where manufacturing and agriculture together kept the town going because it has a ripple effect. He said, “When a major manufacturing plant goes away, it can destroy a town. When you hollow out Main Street, you hollow out the churches, you hollow out the infrastructure, the educational system, the police, and the fire department.”

I told him that I understood what he was saying as I wrote blog articles about small towns in North and South Carolina that were nearly destroyed by losing their furniture and textile industries. Everything gets hollowed out because you don’t have tax payers and the local businesses don’t have customers. Both of us agreed that the loss of these jobs in rural America is particularly crushing because there’s no other options for these people.

David mentioned that Deloitte’s 2026 manufacturing industry outlook predicted companies are going to invest another 20% in domestic computer systems. David said, “I’m trying to take that message into the digital realm discussion: ERP and IT systems are now the “nervous system” of every modern manufacturer. Outsourcing those services to non-US citizens creates the same national security, IP, and supply-chain vulnerabilities that David Greenblatt of Marlin Steel warned about with physical goods. There is a security risk when you outsource your ERP and IT systems, which are basically the brains of your business, Intellectual Property, trade secrets, and all that kind of stuff. You have to be really, really careful about who gets access to that information and from what country

He added, “Defining ‘Made in the USA services’ to require USA-citizen ERP/IT resources is simply completing the self-sufficiency picture you already champion. Modern Manufacturing firms like Marlin Steel depend on a sophisticated software implementation behind the scenes for things such as inventory, scheduling, finance, pricing, customer service, quality control, supply-chain management, robotics integration, etc. If that ERP/IT layer is outsourced to be delivered and supported by foreign providers or non-citizen contractors, the entire ‘Made in America’ claim has a hidden security leak.”

I said, “Definitely, because if China has access to your IT systems, they can steal your intellectual property from your CAD systems.  They learn how you price your products, how you schedule production, what your wages are, et cetera. I can’t understand how American manufacturers can’t see that any foreign company that has access to all of your IT systems can get any data they want about you. Very few Chinese companies are privately owned companies. They’re either partially or fully-owned by the government or they have investors that are top-level government employees or CCP members.

David responded, “That’s right, and it’s so dangerous. Not only that, but the configuration of ERP systems takes specialization and knowledge of specific business functions. All of these programs take expertise.  I could name 100 different ERP software programs besides the well-known NetSuite, Infor, Global Shop, and SAP. What we do is we listen to people. The software is made to be infinitely generic because it has to be able to support a very wide swath of companies. So, we have to come back and give them two or three options to configure the software to meet the needs of their company. If you have consultants from another country that don’t speak the English well, they aren’t going to be able to understand what you want and need. They may have a different thought process about quality. My thought process on quality is that it’s not done until it’s 100%, right, and I don’t care how long it takes.”

In closing, David said, “It seems like you have spent decades writing about how to save American manufacturing. I’m asking the ‘Made in the USA’ community to evolve their definition to include ‘Made in the USA’ by U.S. citizens when they select IT & ERP implementation resources for all the positive community and domestic self-sufficiency reasons you outlined.

We agreed that sourcing IT services with American companies will provide a company with the following tangible benefits:

• In person consulting vs. consulting via Zoom, phone, and email
• Personal interaction in configuring the ERP software to fit the needs of your company
• Reduced risk of key company data being stolen

• Compliance traceability
• Domestic accountability

We need to do whatever it takes to rebuild our manufacturing industry to ensure that we have the commercial and military/defense products needed to keep Americans healthy and safe.  Reshoring of IT services is another way we can ensure that we have a secure domestic supply chain.