Revealed: Meaning “made in America”
George and Lisa Winton of Swanney, Georgia, discuss the foundations of the Winton Machine Company and the meaning of “made in America.”
Winton Machine, an Atlanta-based manufacturer, is eager to hire. So far, there are few takers.
CEO and co-founder Lisa Winton has been looking for a sales representative since March. The work of the mechanics has been open even longer, with fewer than 12 applications in the past year, and no one has had the skillset needed for the job.
Winton has done what he can to attract workers, including forming a relationship with the local technical college, providing applicants with flexible time and rehiring retirees. Still, maintaining her staffing was a challenge.
Promoting more domestic manufacturing through Winton’s concerns, through customs duties, will only exacerbate the problem.
“If more factories move into the area, who are they competing with? They are competing with other factories,” she said. “All of the different kinds of jobs available, whether it’s a mechanic, maintenance or assembly — they have to come from somewhere.”
President Donald Trump has said it ranges from baseline tariffs of 10% for trading partners to 50% for steel imports., “Ra roars” in work and in factories.
“The final game is to produce here. The countries that want to produce here don’t pay tariffs. That’s the ultimate solution,” Trump’s top trade advisor Peter Navarro told ABC News in early April.
It’s not clear that America is preparing for that shift.
Depending on the industry, building a new manufacturing facility can take up to 10 years, and experts say the country’s infrastructure is not ready to handle additional plants. Meanwhile, labor shortages in manufacturing could mean new factories are struggling to play their role.
“If the Trump administration’s vision brings manufacturing back to America, not just some sectors, but in a large number — if that vision is not realistic, if that vision is not realistic.”
Why does it take time to build a factory?
The number of companies shifting production to the US due to tariffs is not clear. Those re-shore are facing a long process.
“Most companies do not decide to build or lightly plant onshore or new factories,” said Erin McLaughlin, senior economist at the Conference Committee, a nonprofit business research group. “This is for most companies that have strategy years ago.”
First, companies need to know where to build. According to McLaughlin, the location should be close to a transport corridor, excellent water supply and a stable electric grid.
After that, the company must purchase the land, obtain appropriate permits and inspections, design the factory, purchase equipment, and select the construction team.
Only then can they begin construction. McLaughlin said the process usually takes three to 10 years.
According to Jeff Bischoff, Chief Sales Officer at Lexington, Kentucky Designer Builder Gray, Timeline can challenge the timeline with growing competition for sites with access to a stable electrical grid.
“Power generation is not catching up right now, depending on demand,” Bischoff said. “All utilities are trying their best to chase it and go beyond that. But it’s a process that lasts a few years.”
Trump acknowledges the need for infrastructure changes and believes it will take him about two years to gain his vision for manufacturing and operations.
“We need to build something called a factory. We need to build energy. We need to do a lot,” Trump said on April 7th.
However, McLaughlin believes that the two-year turnaround to strengthen the US manufacturing sector could be optimistic. Even if the executive order speeds up federal approval, factories still need to worry about state and local permits, she said.
According to labor market analytics firm Lightcast, about 20% of US foreign-born manufacturing workers, there could be more complications as the Trump administration continues to crack down on immigration. The even higher share (approximately 30%) is foreign-borns under construction.
“We don’t want to rely too much on one trading partner for certain matters,” McLaughlin said. But “I don’t think the US is ready.
Why manufacturers struggle to hire
Trump’s push for more factories comes after a dramatic decline in manufacturing employment. After accounting for about 22% of non-farm employment in 1979, manufacturing operations constitute only 8% today.
According to Robert Lawrence, a Harvard professor of international trade and investment and author of Curve: Curve: Manufacturing Can Still Provide Inclusive Growth, even if tariffs could eliminate the entire US trade deficit, they would only hang out about 10% of the share of employment.
“Even in the most successful forms, this is barely noticeable,” Lawrence said.
Other experts warn that even that level of growth can exacerbate the employment challenges faced by manufacturers today.
For years, manufacturers have struggled to fill jobs during the post-pandemic construction boom, as supply chain issues encouraged more manufacturers to build facilities closer to their homes.
Deloitte’s 2024 report found that the number of US manufacturers rose by more than 11% between the first quarter of 2019 and the second quarter of 2023. Despite growth, manufacturing jobs have remained essentially flat since 2019, discounting dips from the pandemic era.
It is partly due to automation. Today, factories have fewer workers. However, a first quarter survey by the National Association of Manufacturers found that almost half of manufacturers say attracting and retaining talent is a major challenge. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that as of April there were 381,000 manufacturing jobs.
By 2033, manufacturing could potentially have 1.9 million jobs for 1.9 million jobs due to the gap between skills and applicants.
“There’s absolutely no one ready to do these jobs,” said Rachel Sederberg, senior economist at Lightcast. “That will be a very important issue if more and more manufacturers return to the US.”
One problem is that manufacturers are aging from the workforce. According to a recent report from LightCast, more than a third of US manufacturing employees are over 55 years old and are approaching retirement.
And attracting new talent to fill these positions was not easy.
As factories turn to more automation, manufacturers say they are struggling to find talent with the right skill set to manage more advanced technologies.
“Not all manufacturing jobs today require a degree, but all manufacturing operations today require skills,” said Carolyn Lee, executive director of the Institute of Manufacturing, a nonprofit focused on workforce development and education within the industry.
Lee said that by acquiring these skills, he will become one of the most in demand today, from one to two days to apprenticeship programs for education and maintenance technicians for up to four years.
There are signs of renewed interest in trade work. Registration with public two-year institutions focusing on vocational programs increased 14% year-on-year in 2024, surpassing 3% growth in four-year public schools, according to a report by Wells Fargo on May 12th.
However, Lightcast has discovered that there are still not enough students to learn relevant skills to meet job demands. For example, Texas in 2023 had just 400 mechanics programs completions in Texas in 2023, compared to around 16,000 related jobs in the state.
Research suggests that manufacturing’s reputation as dirty and dangerous has reduced the industry’s appeal to young Americans, particularly during periods of low unemployment.
Deloitte’s report is a “another set of expectations” between millennials and generations of Z workers, many of whom were forced to go to college instead of working in trade, making it difficult for manufacturers to attract and retain workers.
“The consensus among American manufacturers is that this generation of Americans don’t want these jobs anymore,” says Northwestern Qian.
Fear of lower wages may be alienating workers.
Manufacturing today is well paid, and some studies show that there tends to be better payments than other sectors that don’t require a university degree. However, as of 2018, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average hourly revenue for manufacturing employees is short of the average revenue for the entire employee.
What kind of work will more manufacturers produce?
There is a reason why many American companies rely on factories overseas. Operating in the US tends to be more expensive.
One is the high labor costs. The average mechanical operator salary is nearly $45,000 in the US, compared to $15,000 in the US and under $5,000 in Vietnam, according to the Reshoring Institute, a nonprofit supporting expanded US manufacturing.
It is also expected that companies will increase production costs for many domestic manufacturers as they will need to pay more for inputs shipped from other countries.
This could potentially reduce costs for manufacturers towards increasing automation.
“If you’re a factory worker and you need to pay an average of $36 per hour benefits, you tend to hire a very small number and instead buy automated equipment and robots.”
Winton of Winton Machine said it already saw an increase in demand for automation from companies designing and producing factory automation for manufacturers in HVAC, aerospace, construction and other industries.
Winton hopes to see jobs created if manufacturing promotes tariffs. She believes automation will allow for less high quality positions, as opposed to a significant influx of physical labor.
Already, manufacturing relies on more university-educated workers. According to the USA Today analysis of the Census Bureau’s US Community Survey Data, nearly 32% of private manufacturing workers had at least a bachelor’s degree in 2023, up from 22% in 2006.
“To build all the parts and pieces, we need to build engineers and engineers to design to build this factory automation,” Winton said. “I think we have people. Do you have a skill set? That’s the question.”
