Can we measure whether “reshoring” is real?

Announcements about plant openings and closings make good political fodder. Politicians from both parties are guilty of extracting trends from single events, leaving context behind: “Jobs are coming home!” “Traitorous companies are leaving the United States!”

A popular claim over the years is that Washington policies have succeeded in either shaming or incentivizing American companies to bring manufacturing “back” to the United States, even if manufacturing overseas had been additive to domestic production. How can we know whether such “re-shoring” is actually occurring, and to what degree?

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