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Made (and Shipped) in the USA Trucking is key to success of “reshoring” trend


By Jennifer Barnett Reed Contributing Writer


It’s long been conventional wis-


dom that manufacturing in the United States is on an irreversible decline, done in by cheap overseas production costs that offset what companies have to pay to ship finished goods back across the ocean to U.S. buyers. The last couple of years, however,


have seen what some are calling an American manufacturing renaissance — boosted significantly by Walmart’s announcement in January 2013 that it would spend an additional $50 billion in 10 years on products made in the United States. And while it would take a crystal ball to foretell exactly what that means for the trucking industry, as one University of Arkansas expert put it, it’s hard to imagine the news being any- thing but good. If the so-called “reshoring” push


takes off, “there’s a good chance truck- ing will take off with it,” said Jim Crowell, director of the Supply Chain Management Research Center at the university’s Walton College of Business. The idea of a comeback for domestic


manufacturing began to form about four years ago, said Chris Neeley, executive vice president of Made in USA Works!, a Bentonville-based consulting firm that works to help Walmart suppliers reshore and manufacture domestically under the “Made in USA” label. That’s when experts at The Boston Consulting Group published a book called “The U.S. Manufacturing Renaissance,” which pre- dicted that U.S. companies would start moving production back from Asia to the United States.


ARKANSAS TRUCKING REPORT | Issue 4 2014


In its January 2013 pledge,


Walmart announced that it intended to spur U.S. manufacturing in two ways — by increasing the amount of products it buys that are currently made in the United States, and by helping to bring back manufacturing production in “high potential areas” including textiles, furniture and higher-end appli- ances. The additional $50 billion brings Walmart’s total spending on domestic products to $250 billion. The increase has accelerated the reshoring trend, Neeley said. “Not many companies can come


out and invest $250 billion in anything, let alone in consumer products,” said Neeley, who worked for Walmart until he joined Made in USA Works! a few months ago. “That’s gotten the atten- tion of everybody.” Walmart has now held two open


calls for U.S. companies that want to pitch their domestically made products to the company’s buyers. Several factors are driving compa-


nies to consider reshoring, Neeley said. Labor costs in China are going up by about 15–20 percent per year, and rising energy prices have made it much more expensive to transport goods from over- seas plants. “That costs a lot of money,” Neeley


said. “Companies could take out that cost and invest it in manufacturing here, and they can get products to mar- ket much faster if they’re made in the United States.” The availability of energy is also an


issue for some companies, Neeley said. Some areas of China ration energy — a problem domestic manufacturing plants


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