Nike needs to bring manufacturing jobs back to America

On one hand, Nike does manufacture airbags for their shoes at AirMI in Oregon. They were also hoping flyknit would get big because they could put machines in stores and you'd be able to custom order your colors and have it made right there in store.

But that hasn't panned out. The reality is that workers make far less in developing countries, which increases profits by reducing costs. And since Nike only cares about profits (because shareholders) they won't bring manufacturing back to the US unless it becomes cheaper than manufacturing overseas. But culturally, people living in the richest country in the world just arent willing to do that kind of labor for minimum wage and no bathroom breaks.

Shhhhhh! Don't give away the dirty secret of many "Proudly Built in the USA" companies.

Beaverton Factory Tour Guide - you're not even in the ballpark on the landed cost of a pair of Vaporfly. $10?! Nike wishes it were only $10.

Why did Nike and these other U.S. companies open up shop in China in the 80s-90s? (1) cheap labor; (2) a lot of cheap labor; (3) few labor regulations; (4) few environmental regulations; (5) favorable tax code.

These jobs are never coming back. The U.S. will never be able to offer these enticements. If Chinese govt. officials crack down too much on Phil Knight, he'll move some production to Vietnam or Indonesia. Repeat: jobs are not coming back here.

If we impose tariffs on Chinese imports, all that means is U.S. importers have to pay more to import those products, then they charge us more. It's a tax. Trump imposed severe tariffs on our soy bean EXPORTS to China. So China just drastically reduced their imports of U.S. soy beans. That left midwestern soy bean farmers with tons of rotted product. Trump then used more than $20 billion in emergency USDA payments to compensate those farmers for their soy bean losses. You always hear him say, "I got billions out of the Chinese!" Not quite!

It's an international economy since late 90s and there's no turning back.

Buy New Balance

It may cost $10 for the materials to manufacture a pair of Vaporflys, but add in the labor cost, the material for the box, the packaging into the box, the packing into a shipping crate, the shipping costs to send it from China to America, the shipping to a distribution center. Then you have to add in the marketing costs. While I have no direct knowledge of Nike's sales processes, I imagine they sell wholesale to retailers, so those retailers have to mark it up after adding in their costs (employees, marketing) to make a profit.

The original ask, to move manufacturing to America, while it might eliminate the 2 steps and costs in that formula, is taking the most significant part, the labor, and doubling it, at a minimum.

They should require all US kits to be made in the US 100%

I am tired of buying everything Chinese.

Even the Statue of Liberty souvenirs are made in China. So good luck with that. Sadly, people don't see that this is a national security issue.

How many runners would be willing to pay $50 to $100 more for shoes made in the US? I certainly would not. And since we have low unemployment, what alleged problem would be solved by manufacturing Nike shoes in the US?

biden just flew 300,000 plus "immigrants" to the states. that's a start.

It's a breath of fresh air to hear someone actually call Trump out for lying about economics. Every time he says "I charged tariffs to China, they paid us money, believe me", the Media calls him racist and whatnot but is careful to stop short of saying "tariffs aren't a tax you can charge to other countries, not a thing at all, he's literally just lying".

If you talk to independent voters, it's staggering how many people have no idea how basic economic principles like tariffs work, and how willingly they gobble up Trump's lies. If the Media and the Democrats countered Trump's lies about his performance at every step the same way they call out all his character flaws (which voters don't generally care about, and the Media knows this), there's zero chance the guy would still be relevant in politics. He has no meaningful skills outside of lying about his own accomplishments.

How many shoes does a worker make in a year? If 1000 that increases the cost by $13 a shoe. Not exactly making a $150 shoe $500. Yes, there are other costs but they would also not mean the price would rise by >3X.

Thought Donnie was going to make that happen?

Another thing that most people do not take into account is that the factories that produce the raw materials for the shoes are also located, almost exclusively, IN ASIA. "Supply Chain" was such a buzzword over the last 3.5 years for a reason; production of the footwear from raw materials to end product is done nearly exclusively in Asian countries. Moving assembly of the shoes to the US only moves a small % of the process to US shores, and then gets hit with the biggest cost increases thanks to labor costs rising dramatically (which I am 100% in favor of, BTW. People should be paid a living wage). The facilities that produce the raw materials, the supercritical PEBAX foams, the carbon plates, the carbon rubber outsoles, are all STILL IN ASIA! The raw materials are not in the US in abundance, because we set up the infrastructure to develop and produce them IN ASIA.

I have worked for a top 5 running footwear brand for nearly two decades and can tell you from multiple years of development that the toothpaste isn't going back in the tube. Global companies have invested in the production and development infrastructure in Asia. Logistically, Asia is in the center of the world. Shipping times from Asia to EMEA, LATAM, APAC are all shorter than shipping from US ports.

Again, as someone in development: the $10 landed cost made me laugh. There's some fairly basic and widely know arithmetic to footwear costs to MSRP, and there is no company on earth, even Nike, that would sell a $10 landed shoe at $275.

Why don’t they bring the jobs back to the United States and only operate decentralized in shtcoins? This is the libertarian Utopia.

Except that he didn’t, but you keep telling lies since you have no facts on your side.

It only cost $1 per shoe to make in China, or $2 a pair. It to be stupid to make shoes in the USA. The states, counties, cities would tax Nike to death to pay $200,000/yr plus overtime to fire and police, etc. China doesn't levy taxes on shoe manufacturers.

Bitcoin solves this.