Reshoring Initiative’s Harry Moser named to Industry Week’s Manufacturing Hall of Fame

In 2011, the Initiative will progress from Phase 1 (broad communication and dissemination of the concept and tools) to Phase 2 (regionally focused reshoring events that result in a measured number of jobs actually brought back). The Reshoring Initiative’s Purchasing Fairs are designed to help U.S. manufacturers find competitive U.S. suppliers, and meet face-to-face in one-on-one introduction events that will result in more business for U.S. manufacturers.

“It’s clear that offshoring is still huge—a half-a-trillion dollars a year huge,” says Moser, “whereas reshoring is tiny in comparison. However, the U.S.’ $500 billion-plus per-year trade deficit is an economic cancer causing high unemployment and raising the U.S. budget deficit. It’s clear the balance of trade can’t stay like it is. It’s unsustainable. Reshoring is the most efficient and direct way to overcome part of the problem.”

Moser notes that offshoring gets a bit murky when examining the amount of goods that American companies buy from offshore and ship to the U.S. for sale versus what they make offshore and ship here. “Is something offshored if it was never made here in the first place?” Moser asks. “Second, there’s everything shipped into the U.S. by other countries. Is it offshored if you have no factory here? Clearly it’s imported, and it is imports relative to exports that counts.”

Moser says there are many “interesting layers” to the offshoring game, and solutions to getting companies to move work back to the U.S. are not simple or easy. He points out there are huge issues such as taxes, the dollar’s value against foreign currency, trade issues, and more that need to be addressed. The Reshoring Initiative is just one small way that Moser hopes to help get the ball rolling and provide information to companies to help them rethink their decision to offshore.

“Reshoring breaks out of the waiting-for-policy-decisions problem of government efforts, the economic zero-sum game of tax or borrow and spend, and the increases in consumer prices from relying solely on currency adjustment,” Moser said. “Reshoring takes jobs directly back from offshore—often from the LLCCs that have grown so rapidly over the last decades at the expense of American workers, American manufacturing companies, and the overall U.S. economy.”

Moser also believes that if all companies would use the tools provided by the Reshoring Initiative to calculate what it really costs them—the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)—when they go offshore, including Intellectual Property losses and other costs of manufacturing offshore, “they might rethink where they manufacture.” The Reshoring Initiative offers free software to help manufacturers calculate the real offshoring impact on their P&L, which can be downloaded at www.reshorenow.org.

Can reshoring solve all the problems? No, admits Moser. “But can it get more done than the government spending hundreds of millions of dollars in an attempt to create jobs,” he says. “Has the Initiative been an overwhelming success? Well, it hasn’t saved the whole economy yet, but it’s still the best game in town until government takes the initiative to do something to save manufacturing. Anything that brings more attention to this cause is good for our country. If your company offshores, I encourage you to use the Initiative’s free software and reevaluate your sourcing decisions.” —Clare Goldsberry