Cheaper to Manufacture in U.S. Than China, Firms Find

One of the biggest problems people and forecasters make is to extrapolate from current trends into the future. 

But trends change. Consider textile manufacturing, once a staple in the U.S. Northeast and U.S. Southeast. 

Rising costs have made it more expensive to spin yarn in China than in the United States, said Brian Hamilton, a 2012 doctoral graduate of North Carolina State University's College of Textiles, who wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on the global textile industry.

He found that in 2003, a kilogram of yarn spun in the U.S. cost $2.86 to produce, while it cost $2.76 to produce a kilogram in China. By 2010, however, it cost $3.45 to produce a kilogram in the U.S. and the cost in China had jumped to $4.13 per kilogram. U.S. production costs were lower than Turkey, Korea and Brazil.

Perhaps you have heard the phrase "and the last shall be first." Sometimes it happens in business.