[central_va]

Manufacturing has changed a great deal in the last 20 years with wide application of automation and the speed it will continue to change is only going to increase. It does open up new jobs in programing and maintaining the equipment but on the whole manufacturing jobs will continue to decrease even as production increases.

....which has nothing to do with offshoring and importing back to the USA duty free.

[Alberta's Child]

What does "offshoring" mean?

I'll go back to my previous example of tires and auto manufacturing.

Bridgestone is the largest tire manufacturer in the world. They have 15 plants in the U.S., but only about four of them produce new tires for cars (the rest produce tires for agricultural equipment and off-road vehicles, or produce retreaded tires for trucks). If Bridgestone closes a plant in Tennessee and opens a new one in Vietnam, did they "offshore" all of that manufacturing capacity?