Maybe you should be? The characterization of workers both in the US and China was very troubling and the comments from the readers are fairly consistent. Again, if you want to explore the challenges of increasing manufacturing, get some experts.

The problem with the editorial isn’t that I think we can move all manufacturing back, it’s that the writer’s examples weren’t correct and that they were stereotyping and being insulting. I’ve long wanted Ars to cover more engineering, but this piece just wasn’t good.

And yes, we have several EDMs and many CNC mills and lathes. There’s even a local tech school training machinists, and we’re not in a large city. There’s a lot more out there than people realize.

I encourage you to reach out to experts in the field of automation and manufacturing. You might be surprised to find out what’s already happening in those areas in the US. The writer’s view, in my opinion, was jaded and pessimistic, especially on the worker aspect. Maybe find some differing views

Sure, there are plenty of tooling and mold manufacturers in the US. The company I work for makes them, in fact. The US made ones just don’t compete on price. His comments about the US not having the knowledge to implement automation are wrong, as well as the infrastructure not existing.

I’m an engineer that works in manufacturing and automation. The author’s understanding of the field doesn’t seem to be much better than their writing.