this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2026
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Press X to doubt this will occur in any meaningful way, or otherwise it will be coupled with an active further suppression of wages vs productivity (wage increases have already decoupled with productivity increases long ago).
America is controlled by moneyed interests even more than us, so I doubt whatever happens there with reshoring won't be mostly positive for the working class. As most Australians will agree, the USA is not a country to be emulated.
In our case, government intervention is necessary, because market forces (where profit is the only incentive) makes rebuilding our manufacturing base impossible. No company will invest it they can't make the highest profit possible.
The government is the reason why manufacturing isn’t feasible in Australia.
Interested for you to elaborate on why you think that is. Personally, I think it's because we're a high-income country and companies would prefer to do it in lower income countries so they can make more money.
Part of this had also come from globalisation and the removal of many tarrifs that once existed.
The tarrif question is tricky though, because in the short-term, it makes everything more expensive if they're just applied immediately all at once, and in the long-term, other countries will apply retaliatory tarrifs, making our exports less competitive.
I'm not claiming to have all the answers, but it seems clear that the "free market" isn't gonna solve this problem, some government intervention seems necessary (tarrifs, for example, are imposed by governments).
Investment into high tech manufacturing could also be an option, but again, it's sure as hell not going to come from the private sector who won't see immediate and excess profits from that endeavour.
Anyway, keen to hear why you think "government" is the reason we're no longer manufacturing much here.