A clear and concerted effort across government and industry is, for the first time in decades, aiming to make “Made in America” a reality. The movement is accelerating driven by reshoring of critical industries, evolving trade policies, and electrification. These shifts are unlocking under appreciated investment opportunities in sectors poised for long-term growth.
Key TakeawaysThe domestic content of US manufacturing purchases has a long way to recover creating a durable runway.
Big new investment announcements by companies like Apple and Eli Lilly are bolstering reshoring.
On January 20th, 2025, President Trump signed the Presidential Memorandum “America First Trade Policy” 1 clearly stating that its medium-term objective is to
drive reshoring.
“Therefore, I am establishing a robust and reinvigorated trade policy that promotes investment and productivity, enhances our Nation’s industrial and technological advantages, defends our economic and national security, and — above all — benefits American workers, manufacturers, farmers, ranchers, entrepreneurs, and businesses.” 2
Companies have been taking notice. The CEO of Eli Lilly, referring to Trump’s trade policies, stated:
"It's clear to everyone, including us here today, that the administration intends to use tariffs as a tool to drive the outcomes they're looking for to bring manufacturing capacity back to the U.S.”
Though difficult to tease out exactly, protectionism does have a long history of helping re-industrialization. This is especially true for new industries where capabilities have either atrophied or did not exist. Protection afforded by trade policy allowed industry to gain know how and become competitive when restrictions were lifted3. Given reshoring today is focused on critical industries, like semiconductors, the same could potentially happen again. Economists call this the “infant industry” argument for protectionism. Much of early American industry was built under trade protection and domestic industry promotion4. More recently, import quotas on Japanese cars in the 1980s can be credited with rebuilding US auto manufacturing and a large inflow of foreign investment, though at a cost to consumers in higher prices5.
Trade protectionism is often more potent when combined with other policies.
The current administration has proposed a range of policies to further incentivize domestic manufacturing such as tax cuts, de-regulation, and increased permitting, especially for energy infrastructure6.
The US Commerce department estimates7 that $3.7 trillion dollars of manufactured goods were purchased in the US in 2023. Just 52% of this total purchase volume was domestic content i.e. made in America. Domestic content in a purchase is defined, for example, as a US household buying a car (manufacturing purchase) that is assembled in Alabama (domestic content) but excluding the value of the imported tires and upholstery from Mexico (foreign content in domestic output). This number is down from 65% in 1997 – showing clearly the decline of US manufacturing and made in America. Encouragingly, 2023 was the first year domestic content ticked up.
The biggest growing category in the last 30 years has been imported final goods. Foreign content in domestic output has been stable. This suggests that tariffs and other trade policy are likely to hurt businesses less than consumers.
Large Announcements are Punctuating a Private Sector Led Reshoring Trend
Trump’s first few months have been punctuated by some very large investment announcements in reshoring of critical industries.
“This infrastructure will secure American leadership in AI, create hundreds of thousands of American jobs, and generate massive economic benefit for the entire world. This project will not only support the re-industrialization of the United States but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies.”
Apple announced $500bn of investment in US8 over the next four years expanding facilities across Arizona, Michigan, Iowa, North Carolina, and other states. They also plan a new advanced factory in Texas to produce servers that support Apple’s AI efforts. The company also plans to invest in training, opening an advanced manufacturing academy, “to train the next generation of U.S. manufacturers.” Together all these initiatives will lead to 20,000 new jobs.
“Three of the future U.S. sites announced today will focus on manufacturing active pharmaceutical ingredients (API), reshoring critical capabilities of small molecule chemical synthesis and further strengthening Lilly's supply chain.”
In total these sites will create 3,000 high skilled jobs. Lilly’s CEO, David Ricks, pointed to Trump’s tax cutting and business friendly policies as the driver of the firm’s continued investment in the US.
A big driver of reshoring are foreign firms localizing production in the US. ABB, for example, has invested $14 billion into America since 2010 across 40 facilities, allowing them to be 90-95% locally produced10. ABB is a leader in medium voltage transformers and other electrical and automation equipment, themselves products that are facilitating the powering of made in America.
ABB Across America
Reshoring is a trend that is here to stay. Kearny11 recently published their latest reshoring index covering 2023 which showed the largest jump in the history of this metric towards the US, after years of no real movement.
Kearny Reshoring Index Shows Largest Jump on Record
Announcements are important as an indicator of future projects. However, it is equally important to track what is happening on the ground. Here 2025 is shaping up to be the year mega project starts are set to inflect.
Mega Project Starts are Beginning to Inflect Materially Upward
Reshoring and electrification are intricately linked.
Reshoring is one of the broadest and most powerful long term drivers of power demand and electrification. US industrial power load has flatlined for two decades (-0.25% CAGR 2000-2022), as production was offshored and efficiency improved. Stagnation is a far cry from the +4% growth rate witnessed from 1950-2000. Today, booming construction of new manufacturing facilities will demand more power. This is especially true as many new facilities relate to critical industries and have high levels of automation, meaning higher power demand than legacy factories. As a result of this and other trends, power demand is forecast to grow by 50% by 2040 creating a near $7 trillion investment opportunity to add new capacity and upgrade existing grid infrastructure.
Reshoring is also a particularly potent power demand driver as it creates so called, point loads, step changes in power demand in certain areas. These changes can be potentially disruptive to grids and therefore require even more investment than would be necessary from simple population or socioeconomic power growth. The Electric Power Research Institute built a bottom up analysis of onshoring and found a total of 13,000 GWh of demand is set to be created. 40 of these projects are expected to draw more than 10 MW each.
We are entering a decade of “Powering Made in America”. A decade of rebuilding of US industry, rising domestic content in manufacturing and a renaissance of critical industries. These industries will demand power making electrification of America an intricately intertwined trend.