getit55 wrote:
rojo wrote:
The last shoe I purchased actually cost $200. So aren't we already there?
Does anyone work at a shoe company? How much labor time is required to make a single shoe in minutes? I've always wanted to know that.
You're paying $200 for a "speciality shoe" (carbon plate/max cushion/etc) most likely. If Shoes were actually made in the USA, meaning assembled and the materials were sourced from here you would probably have to pay $200 for something like a Kinvara. Prices would significantly go up for the consumer. Your carbon plated shoes would probably double in price too.
I'm not saying more products shouldn't be made in the US, but it's not as simple as everyone thinks. Personally I don't want to pay that price point for my daily trainer every few months.
It goes far beyond labor costs. Sourcing is the big advantage to producing products in East Asia. You need textiles, foams, adhesives, leathers, plastic bits, metal parts, etc. and they are all produced at large scales in East Asia. The tariff hit would be enormous if you imported all of those components to the USA to do final assembly. Not enough people care about "Made in the USA" to justify the costs and retail price points.
Another huge cost is tooling. Making injection molds for midsoles is not cheap and getting them milled in China is a fraction of the cost of doing it domestically. I'll spare you a lecture about environmental issues but know that your running shoes are the product of a very dirty and polluting industry.
All of what is involved in producing footwear takes a massive amount of physical infrastructure. We are talking about a company like Nike or even Brooks having to spend tens of billions to replace what already exists in Asia. If some contracted vendor already has the factory capacity in place, how do you justify the costs of building redundant facilities in America? Wall Street would take an incredibly dim view of entertaining such "patriotism". When oil becomes scarce and transportation costs threaten margins, then manufacturing will return closer to home. Plants in the United States? Nope! Mexico and Central America will become the footwear and apparel production center for our market. Viva regional trade agreements!!!
Here's a fun little factoid: does your shoe say "Made in the USA" or "American Built"? There is a big legal difference. "Made" requires a huge amount of materials sourcing and labor to be done here. "Built" only requires final assembly in the USA. So, the uppers are sourced and stitched overseas, the midsoles are injection molded outside of the U.S., and some laborers merely glue the pair together here so that the company can slap a flag on it.