Reshoring fails

The push to bring manufacturing home is growing. A bill circulating in the U.S. House of Representatives would pay Intel and other semiconductor producers to set up chip foundries in the United States instead of Asia. Other efforts aim to boost domestic manufacturing of solar panels, electric batteries, and other building blocks for the clean-energy economy. Bolstering domestic production has other benefits too, starting with increasing the number of higher-paying jobs.

Yet it can become too much of a good thing. Production concentrated with a few U.S.-based manufacturers will make the country more vulnerable to shortages, rather than less. A rush to reshore production that U.S. companies long ago outsourced or in which they no longer hold cutting-edge expertise would be a recipe for mishaps and bottlenecks—also making Americans less safe, not more. And the sheer amount of subsidies required for any large-scale reshoring will create an open invitation to powerful corporations and their Washington lobbyists to game the system, favoring not the best or most innovative companies but the best-connected.