Reshoring

Reshoring is the practice of returning production and manufacturing operations to a company's home country from overseas locations. It is typically framed as a response to rising labor costs abroad, geopolitical risk, or supply chain disruption. But reshoring is more than a cost-adjustment strategy. It is a structural reconfiguration of the supply chain away from global efficiency and toward regional resilience. The deeper question is whether reshoring can achieve its security goals without sacrificing the economies of scale that made offshoring attractive. Friendshoring — shifting production to geopolitically aligned countries rather than truly domestic locations — is the compromise most firms actually pursue. It is not clear that this compromise solves the fragility problem; it merely relocates it.