The share of contract manufacturers quoting reshoring work doubled to 32% this year, yet U.S. imports of manufactured goods still rose 4.6% in 2025. The missing piece is the domestic supplier base, and plants that want to bring work home will have to help build it.
By one measure, reshoring has never looked healthier. Contract manufacturers report that customers are asking about domestic production in numbers they have not seen before, and a growing share of original equipment manufacturers say they have already moved work back. By another measure, very little has changed. The United States imported more manufactured goods last year than the year before, and the components that go into domestically assembled products are still overwhelmingly made somewhere else. The distance between those two pictures is the domestic supplier base, and closing it is now an operations problem as much as a policy one.
The 2026 USA Reshoring Survey, run by the Reshoring Initiative and executive search firm Regions Recruiting, polled 249 manufacturers: 118 OEMs and 131 contract manufacturers. Among OEMs, 36% had reshored or were actively engaged in additional reshoring, up from 29% in 2025, and 63% planned U.S. capital expenditure in 2026 or 2027. Among contract manufacturers, 32% were quoting reshoring projects, double the 16% recorded a year earlier, and 79% said at least some customers had discussed reshoring with them in the previous year.
The drivers have shifted toward risk. Some 53% of contract manufacturers said geopolitical risk is a reason their customers want domestic supply, up from 24% in 2025. Yet the same survey shows how much of that interest remains at the talking stage: 60% said customers importing from China or Taiwan were at least discussing de-risking, but only 19% reported active transitions. And 57% of OEMs named policy uncertainty as their primary challenge, well ahead of any other. “Manufacturers can adjust to known costs and opportunities. What is much harder to manage is a moving target,” said Harry Moser, founder and president of the Reshoring Initiative.
The trade data agrees that conviction is lagging. Kearney's 2026 Reshoring Index improved from -115 to -91 but remained negative, Assembly Magazine reported. U.S. imports of manufactured goods rose 4.6% even as direct imports from China fell sharply, because other Asian low-cost countries picked up more than China lost. “We're seeing a lot of hedging, but not a lot of committing,” said Patrick Van den Bossche, a partner at Kearney.
The most useful line in the Kearney commentary is about components, not finished goods. Van den Bossche observed that the parts “are still coming from China,” and that the United States lacks a deep upstream supplier ecosystem. A final assembly line can be re-tooled relatively quickly. A qualified base of domestic casting, machining, electronics and moulding suppliers takes much longer, and every reshored product line depends on it.
That gap shows up in the economics. In the Reshoring Initiative survey, 94% of contract manufacturers said price is the primary reason they lose orders to imports. Domestic suppliers are being asked to quote against offshore prices before they have the volume, automation or workforce to match them, and buyers who compare piece prices alone will keep sending the work abroad. The survey found OEM use of total cost of ownership comparisons rose from 30% to 40%, which means a majority still do not count freight, duties, inventory carrying costs and delivery risk when they decide where to buy.
Where companies have made the move, the benefits are operational. Among OEMs reporting impacts, 70% cited improved speed to market, 65% better fulfilment or on-time delivery and 60% logistics savings. Those are exactly the gains a plant loses when a domestic final assembly line still waits on an ocean shipment for its components.
Even suppliers that win the work need people to run it. Two-thirds of respondents (66%) rated hiring technicians such as welders, machinists and electrical or chemical technicians as very difficult or at crisis levels, and 60% said the same of maintenance and repair technicians. SupplyChainBrain's report on the survey notes that 64% of contract manufacturers said deportations are hampering recruiting, and that manufacturers ranked labour supply well above tariff and tax relief as an incentive to reshore.
Automation is the obvious answer and only a partial one. The same report notes that automation is often proposed as a fix for labour shortages but still requires skilled people to install and maintain it. Manufacturers are responding through trade and vocational schools (61%), internal upskilling or reskilling (58%) and community colleges (51%). Kathy Nunnally Anemogiannis of Regions Recruiting added that the shortage reaches beyond the shop floor: “Everyone's rightly focused on the skilled trades gap, and we're seeing it just as sharply in leadership.”
Reshoring decisions are made in boardrooms, but they succeed or fail in purchasing departments and on plant floors. The leaders who move first can shape a supplier base that is still forming, rather than competing for it once it is scarce.
The surveys point in one direction: manufacturers want shorter, safer supply chains and are increasingly prepared to pay for them. What they cannot buy quickly is a domestic supply base deep enough to support them. Plants that start building those supplier relationships now, while interest is still running ahead of commitment, will be the ones ready to act when the policy picture finally settles.
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