I’m a recently retired CEO of a small US-based hard-tech manufacturing company with a global customer base, and a global supply chain. I’ve lived and breathed this stuff 24/7 for decades.

It takes 3–5 years to start up a new high tech factory, and that’s after the product development is far enough along that you know the processes you’ll use to build whatever it is. And the suppliers, which also have to onshore to support this, and won’t start until the above is well under way.

And that period won’t even start until the current uncertainty over what the President is going to do, or reverse, or reconsider, or fantasize doing is resolved.

That’s before you even consider if we offended so many people all over the world that it will take a generation or two before they’d even consider “buying American.” And then, only if the price and quality is competitive. Which is going to take huge investment, by the companies taking it on, but also by the USA in education, standards, and a long list of other things.

We’ve spent decades digging this hole until Trump found a buried vertical mineshaft and jumped down it. Going to take a long hard climb out.

I actually had to look at the question log for this – I couldn’t imagine that it had actually been asked in March, 2025, but yes, someone really is this deluded.

Manufacturing isn’t “back in America”. It will take several years to build up factories and train staff, even if they start tomorrow. And since the tariffs are changing basically by the day, no one, absolutely no one, is going to make that sort of commitment – they’d spend a billion only to find out the tariffs were revoked just as they turned on the machines.

Why would anyone want to “buy American” anyway? We have our own manufacturing in Europe. Thanks to EU regulations, it is almost always of much higher quality than US made stuff. There was a prime example in the news this morning: Tesla. There’s a European car manufacturer that’s sort of eponymous with shoddy quality, the Romanian brand Dacia. They fail at a rate of about 13% at the annual inspections. Tesla fail at a rate of 20% – far exceeding any other brand.

Face it, the whole trade deficit happens because Americans make crap. No one wants to buy it.

Wow, that didn’t take long did it? Who knew imposing tariffs on almost every country in the world could miraculously and suddenly open long closed Merican factories (why did THAT happen in the first place?) got all their laid-off staff back and all retrained (did Donald do another Directive?) and get all their home grown raw materials and power sourced locally, virtually overnight. I didn’t. OK, I’ll buy. What ya got that we can’t get here?

You must be so proud of your supreme leader’s ability to do all those bigly successful deals. However, I’d feel a bit more inclined to buy more Merican stuff if it was better quality, and cheap enough to import over here, but I guess I’ll need to wait till next week for that.

Any chance we could buy some Merican eggs? We haven’t seen eggs for years. Oh no, we can’t, just remembered why.

Tell me something, when will your MAGA hats be manufactured in Merica?