> Some manufacturing/assembly has been moved to the US.
The amount of assembly work done in the US is absolutely miniscule. This type of work is never coming back to the US in any meaningful volume unless it can be done by robots.
> ...you should pay more for those products if you want to support "living wages".
The problem is that the average American earner cannot afford to pay what it would cost to produce consumer goods end-to-end in the US in a manner that would allow people engaged in low-skill labor to earn an American "living wage".
Americans cannot have it both ways: you cannot consume more material goods than any other group in the world and produce those goods domestically using workers earning an American living wage.
Most Americans truly don't understand the scale of their consumption. Countries in Western Europe are developed, high-income nations and many Americans couldn't fathom living a Western European lifestyle because even most Western Europeans don't consume like Americans.
The amount of assembly work done in the US is absolutely miniscule. This type of work is never coming back to the US in any meaningful volume unless it can be done by robots.
> ...you should pay more for those products if you want to support "living wages".
The problem is that the average American earner cannot afford to pay what it would cost to produce consumer goods end-to-end in the US in a manner that would allow people engaged in low-skill labor to earn an American "living wage".
Americans cannot have it both ways: you cannot consume more material goods than any other group in the world and produce those goods domestically using workers earning an American living wage.
Most Americans truly don't understand the scale of their consumption. Countries in Western Europe are developed, high-income nations and many Americans couldn't fathom living a Western European lifestyle because even most Western Europeans don't consume like Americans.