Bring Manufacturing Back Home
Reshoring Manufacturing tracks the movement to bring production back to the United States — homeshoring, onshoring, backshoring, insourcing, and repatriating manufacturing.
Get the Reshoring Update →3-Part Article Series on Reshoring Manufacturing, by Harry Moser and Dr. Lisa Lang →
Originally published in Fastener Technology International Magazine — Velocity Manufacturing, Total Cost of Ownership Calculation, and Reshoring Manufacturing Can Increase Your Competitiveness.
Why Companies Reshore
- Reduce inventories and lead times 1
- Improve quality and reduce variability 2
- Reduce chaos and hassles in the supply chain 3
- Speed up innovation 4
- Reduce tariff and import-compliance exposure 5
- Most importantly, reduce total cost 6
A widely cited finding from a 2009 Archstone Consulting survey found that most manufacturers use rudimentary total-cost models that ignore as much as 20% of the real cost of offshoring, meaning many reshoring decisions look better once the full cost picture is accounted for. Larger, more recent surveys confirm the same pattern, though it is finally moving: 40% of OEMs now use Total Cost of Ownership when comparing domestic to offshore sourcing, up from 30% a year earlier. The 60% still not using it are comparing on an incomplete number. *
If your company runs a highly custom job shop or machine shop, Velocity Scheduling System can help you hit on-time delivery and cut lead times.
Get the Reshoring Update
Free monthly digest on reshoring manufacturing news.
Sources below are the Reshoring Initiative and Regions Recruiting annual USA Reshoring Survey. Figures are given for the year that actually reported them, with the survey population named, because OEMs and contract manufacturers answered separately and often differently. The 2026 sample was 249 respondents: 118 OEMs and 131 contract manufacturers. Where a number moved between years, both are shown rather than only the more flattering one.
- Improved speed to market (70% of OEM respondents) and better fulfillment and on-time delivery (65%) were the highest-rated positive operational impacts of reshoring in 2026, ahead of logistics savings (60%). 2026 Reshoring Survey Report, Reshoring Initiative & Regions Recruiting, p. 4 and Exhibit 4, p. 10. In 2025, 40–43% of OEMs said they would pay 10–20% more for parts delivered on a 1-week lead time versus 6 weeks; the report gives this as 43% on p. 9 and 40% on p. 37, and the 2026 survey did not repeat the question. 2025 Reshoring Survey Report, pp. 9, 37.
- Quality, rework, and warranty concerns were cited by 32% of contract manufacturers in 2026 as a reason their customers reshored, down from 61% in 2025. Tariffs and geopolitical risk (both 53%) displaced it as the leading cited reasons, though the report's own guidance is that quality and delivery are still what win the business once tariff exposure starts the conversation. 2026 Reshoring Survey Report, Exhibit 9, p. 18; 2025 Reshoring Survey Report, p. 33.
- 60% of contract manufacturers report that customers importing from the China and Taiwan region are at least discussing de-risking, though only 19% say those customers are actively transitioning away (22% are planning ahead, 19% informal discussion only, 39% have not raised it). 2026 Reshoring Survey Report, pp. 5, 27. This is a deliberately softer measure than the 2025 survey's direct framing, in which 77% of both OEMs and contract manufacturers said they or their customers were concerned about a Taiwan-related disruption. The report's own reading: concern is broad, concrete action is not.
- Locating production near engineering was cited by 15% of OEM respondents in 2026, down from 45% in 2025, as tariffs and geopolitical risk came to dominate the stated reasons. Delivery time and proximity to customers remains a top-three reason at 50%. 2026 Reshoring Survey Report, Exhibit 2, p. 8; 2025 Reshoring Survey Report, p. 14, where the same 45% figure is OEMs specifically (contract manufacturers were 22%).
- Among OEMs that reshored since January 2025, the top reasons cited were tariffs (65%), geopolitical risk (60%), and delivery time or proximity to customers (50%). Geopolitical risk has caught up with tariffs as a driver: it trails tariffs among OEMs, and among contract manufacturers the two are tied at 53%. 2026 Reshoring Survey Report, pp. 4, 8, and Exhibit 9, p. 18.
- In 190 documented cases comparing sourcing from China versus the U.S., the win rate for domestic production rose from 8% when compared on price alone to 32% when compared on full Total Cost of Ownership. This is Reshoring Initiative case-file data rather than survey responses, and the 2026 edition does not repeat the analysis. 2025 Reshoring Survey Report, p. 39.
- 40% of OEMs now use Total Cost of Ownership when comparing domestic to offshore sourcing, up from 30% a year earlier, described by the report as a full ten-point swing away from incomplete costing methods in a single year. The remaining 60% use Landed Cost (37%), FOB or Ex-Works pricing (12%), or another method (11%). 2026 Reshoring Survey Report, p. 4 and Exhibit 3, p. 9.