It’s Only Common Sense: Stop Pretending Your Customers Are Loyal
Happy’s Tech Talk #44: Memories of the ‘Mystery Systems of the East’
GE Appliances Reshoring Again
June 30, 2025 | GE AppliancesEstimated reading time: 1 minute
On June 26, GE Appliances, a Haier Company, announced a $490 million investment to reshore production of washers and washer/dryers from China, creating 800 new full-time jobs in 2027. The Reshoring Initiative offered to highlight this announcement because of GE Appliance’s historic role launching, documenting and making credible U.S. reshoring.
The Reshoring initiative was founded in 2010. In 2012, despite my best efforts, reshoring was still a trickle that no one had heard of. Then I, and I believe hundreds of thousands of others, read Charles Fishman’s article “The Insourcing Boom” in the December 2012 issue of The Atlantic. In great detail, Charles described how GE Appliances reshored appliance production from China to Appliance Park, which employed “a tenth of the people in its heyday.” The article reviewed a broad range of benefits GE Appliances achieved by reshoring. Most memorable to me was the benefit of having manufacturing near engineering. The assembly team and engineering cooperated to simplify appliance design to reduce component cost and assembly time to make U.S. assembly competitive. Even though the Chinese manufacturing cost was still substantially lower, the U.S. total cost was lower due to inventory costs and delivery issues. For years, I quoted the article in my presentations. With this announcement and several earlier investments, Kevin Nolan, CEO GE Appliances, has walked his talk: “I’ve always said, this is just economics, people are going to realize that the savings they thought they had aren’t real, and it’s going to be better and cheaper to make them here.”
Congratulations to GE Appliances!
Over 2 million reshoring and foreign direct investment (FDI) jobs have been announced since 2010. I would be honored to add reshoring background to GE Appliances’ announcement.
Harry Moser, President, Reshoring Initiative
Share on:
Testimonial
"Advertising in PCB007 Magazine has been a great way to showcase our bare board testers to the right audience. The I-Connect007 team makes the process smooth and professional. We’re proud to be featured in such a trusted publication."
Klaus Koziol - atgSuggested Items
I-Connect007 Editor’s Choice: Five Must-Reads for the Week
10/24/2025 | Andy Shaughnessy, I-Connect007This week, we have quite a bit of international content in this week’s list of must-reads. Nothing happens in a vacuum, including electronics manufacturing and design, and this has been quite an eventful year. How many of us are now tariff experts? I’m certainly not, but that hasn’t stopped me from opining about the situation.
Highlights from the IMAPS Onshoring Advanced Packaging Workshop in Washington, D.C.
09/30/2025 | Marcy LaRont, I-Connect007IMAPS and the Global Electronics Association co-hosted the Onshoring Advanced Packaging and Assembly Workshop in Washington, D.C., in early September. Government leaders, including those from the Department of Defense, attended and were directly involved in organizing the content of the sessions. Jim Will, director of the U.S. Partnership for Assured Electronics, speaks about his role in the event.
I-Connect007 Editor’s Choice: Five Must-Reads for the Week
08/15/2025 | Marcy LaRont, I-Connect007In our industry, my top reads include Prashant Patel’s overview and argument for reshoring, which I found to be a great general overview and breakdown. In further support of the onshoring/reshoring message, I’m highlighting Nolan Johnson’s interview on the survey and report by the Reshoring Initiative. Check out my interview with USPAE’s Jim Will on the state of the flat panel display (FPD) industry and the risks associated with it for U.S. defense and critical infrastructure products.
Survey Says Reshoring is a TCO Equation
08/13/2025 | Nolan Johnson, SMT007 MagazineHarry Moser, founder of the Reshoring Initiative, and Kathy Nunnally of Regions Recruiting partnered to survey contract manufacturers and OEMs earlier this year, querying them about their offshoring beliefs and practices. They found that while offshoring, tariffs, trade balances, and the like, are important to a company’s bottom line, there’s a larger and more extensive issue: workforce. In this interview, they detail the results of that survey and what they believe can and should be done to fix this long-standing issue.
Facing the Future: Challenges and Opportunities in Reshoring PCB Manufacturing
08/12/2025 | Prashant Patel -- Column: Facing the FutureFor decades, offshore manufacturing dominated the global electronics industry. The pursuit of cost efficiency, scalability, and access to vast labor markets made countries like China, Taiwan, and Vietnam attractive destinations for printed circuit board (PCB) production. But a seismic shift is underway, from geopolitical instability and supply chain disruptions to rising labor costs and national security concerns.