Meet customer demands

To meet consumer demand, companies increasingly want to make products closer to where their customers are and react to trends and ship faster. Additionally, there are shipping costs and import duties to contend with when a company manufactures the products that it intends to sell into the U.S. market overseas. Meanwhile, such variables as environmental issues, product-quality scandals, and incidents like the 2013 Bangladesh garment-factory collapse or this year’s West Coast port slowdown have made domestic production more appealing. Government incentives and a relatively skilled U.S. workforce are also among top factors.

Cost effectiveness

In fact, among the world’s top 10 export economies, the U.S. last year ranked No. 2 — behind only China — for cost competitiveness, according to the Boston Consulting Group, with real estate and natural gas and other energy prices tending to apply downward cost pressure in the U.S.

Patriotism

Patriotism and the…