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One of Donald Trump’s biggest goals as president is to increase domestic manufacturing and reshore supply chains so that the most in-demand technologies in the world can be 100 percent made in the United States. By executive order last December, he launched his “Genesis Mission,” an ambitious plan seeking to leverage US dominance in AI to maintain or seize an edge in advanced robotics, biotechnology, semiconductors, and nuclear technologies. According to Trump, that plan works best with self-sustaining supply chains. Not even neighboring countries or longtime allies should be relied upon to manufacture a single component of any US product in his ideal world. The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) has long warned that Trump’s reshoring goals are not grounded in reality, but only recently has America’s largest technology trade association attempted to estimate what it would cost businesses and consumers to follow through on Trump’s plan. “It is no longer enough to say that reshoring is difficult,” the CTA acknowledged. “The practical questions are what it would cost, product by product, what it would physically require, and who would pay for it.” In new research shared with members this week, the CTA warned that reaching full US production of 10 categories of products most commonly found in US homes by 2031 “would require between $185 and $230 billion in capital expenditure, 555,000 to 668,000 additional full-time employees, and 19.1-19.5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year.” While the costs are eye-popping, the labor demand might be the bigger problem, requiring more than double the “existing US computer and electronics manufacturing workforce,” the CTA said. Additionally, the energy demand required to reshore all supply chains at once would clash with huge energy needs of AI data centers over the same time period.
document fetched 2026-10-08 02:56 · canonical https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/10/trade-group-crunches-numbers-on-trumps-impossible-push-for-100-us-made-tech