A factory 140 miles from the Texas border is now assembling components for Tesla, BMW, and Samsung. Three years ago, that same work was done in Shenzhen. The workers who lost those jobs in China are not getting them back. The question is whether the workers in Ohio, Michigan, and Arizona are going to get anything at all, or whether this is simply a geographic shuffle that benefits shareholders and consultants while leaving everyone else reading headlines and feeling vaguely optimistic about nothing.
That is nearshoring. And it is not just a business trend. It is a structural realignment of where products get made, and it is happening faster than most Americans realize.
I dug into the actual research so you do not have to. Here is what I found.
The Shift Nobody Explained to You
Nearshoring is the practice of moving manufacturing and production closer to home. For American companies, that has primarily meant relocating operations from Asia to Mexico, with secondary activity building up in Central America and the Caribbean. The pandemic did not start this trend. It just made it impossible to hide. When ports in Shanghai shut down and container ships sat idle off the California coast in 2021, executives who had spent two decades celebrating lean just-in-time supply chains suddenly had nothing to deliver.
Carlos Mendez is one person who felt that transition directly. The plant manager of a Monterrey electronics facility told Reuters in 2023 that his factory had doubled its floor staff in 18 months, adding 400 jobs to meet contracts that had previously been fulfilled entirely out of Guangdong province. His name is not in the press release. It rarely is. But the jobs are real, the wages are real, and the shift is permanent.
Did You Know: According to a 2024 Boston Consulting Group report, 62% of U.S. manufacturing executives said they planned to move at least some production out of Asia within the next three years, with Mexico and the United States itself listed as the top two destinations.
The numbers behind this are significant. The Dallas Federal Reserve reported in 2023 that Mexican exports to the United States hit a record $475 billion, surpassing China as America’s top trading partner for the first time since 2002. That is not a blip. That is a realignment.
Side A: The Optimist Case
Supporters of nearshoring make a compelling argument. Shorter supply chains mean lower shipping costs, faster delivery times, and less exposure to geopolitical disruption. When a factory is in Monterrey rather than Shenzhen, a tariff war with Beijing does not crater your production schedule.
There is also the USMCA angle. The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which replaced NAFTA in 2020, created preferential trade terms that reward companies for sourcing materials and labor within North America. Manufacturers who comply can move goods across the border with significantly reduced friction. That is a real incentive, and companies are responding to it.
For American consumers, the optimist case says this means more stable prices, more reliable product availability, and eventually a domestic manufacturing base that is less vulnerable to the kind of disruptions that left hospital workers without masks in 2020.
Are you in a border logistics corridor right now, or are you three states away from the nearest facility benefiting from this shift? That question matters more than most people realize, and we will come back to it.
Side B: The Skeptic’s File
Here is the part the press release skips.
Most of the nearshoring activity that makes headlines is happening in Mexico, not the United States. When BMW expands its production footprint in North America by building a plant in San Luis Potosi, that is not a Michigan job. When Samsung sets up a display manufacturing operation near Monterrey, that is not a Texas paycheck.
The Economic Policy Institute published an analysis in 2023 estimating that for every manufacturing job created in Mexico through nearshoring agreements, the United States sees a net gain of roughly 0.3 domestic manufacturing positions. That ratio is getting better over time, but it is not the story the headlines tell.
Ask yourself why the companies announcing these moves do not advertise that part. Think of it this way. A logistics corridor that runs through Mexico and terminates at a U.S. distribution hub creates American warehouse jobs, American trucking jobs, and American retail jobs. That is real. But it is not the same as bringing back the assembly line.
Warning: If a company announces a “North American nearshoring initiative,” read the fine print before assuming it translates to U.S. factory employment. SEC filings under Item 1 of Form 10-K will tell you exactly where headcount is being added. The headline will not.
My Position: What This Actually Means for You
I have read the BCG report, the Dallas Fed data, the EPI analysis, and a stack of 10-K filings. Here is my honest read.
Nearshoring is genuinely good news for North American economic resilience. It reduces single-point-of-failure risk in global supply chains, and that has real downstream benefits for American consumers in the form of price stability on goods that used to be vulnerable to shipping disruptions.
But the distribution of gains is extremely uneven, and that unevenness is not accidental. The communities benefiting most are border metro areas, logistics hubs, and states with significant USMCA-compliant industrial infrastructure. If you live in a manufacturing-heavy state that is not plugged into this corridor, the headline numbers are not your numbers.
Reality Check: A 2024 Reshoring Initiative report found that while U.S. reshoring and foreign direct investment announcements hit a record 287,000 jobs in 2023, approximately 61% of those positions were concentrated in just six states: Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, and Indiana. If your state is not on that list, the macro trend may be passing you by at the local level.
So when a politician tells you nearshoring is going to revitalize American manufacturing across the board, ask them which zip codes they are actually talking about. When a fund manager says nearshoring exposure is good for your portfolio, ask whether the companies in that fund are adding U.S. headcount or Mexican headcount. The difference matters.
The real story behind the headlines is this. Nearshoring is real, it is durable, and by Q4 2026, it will have reshaped the industrial map of North America in ways most Americans will not notice until they start noticing. Getting ahead of it is not complicated. It just requires paying attention to the right details.
Your Next 3 Steps
The shift is already underway. Here is how to make sure it is working for you rather than around you.
Step 1: Log into your retirement account portal today and search the name of your largest industrial or manufacturing ETF. Pull up the fund’s most recent holdings disclosure, then cross-reference the top 10 companies against their latest 10-K filings on SEC EDGAR (edgar.sec.gov is free and requires no account). Search each filing for the term “USMCA.” Any company disclosing active USMCA compliance investment and North American headcount growth is better positioned for 2026 margin stability than one that is not. This takes about 20 minutes and the information is sitting there waiting for you.
Step 2: Go to the Reshoring Initiative’s free data tracker at reshorenow.org and type in your state. The site compiles announced manufacturing investments by location and sector. If your state has significant activity, identify the counties involved. If you work in real estate, logistics, skilled trades, or local government, you now have a 12-month lead on where economic density is likely to build. If your state shows minimal activity, that is also useful information.
Step 3: The next time a major retailer, automaker, or electronics brand in your investment portfolio makes a supply chain announcement, do not read the press release. Go directly to the SEC 8-K filing, which companies are required to submit within four business days of a material business event. Search the document for “headcount,” “facility,” and “Mexico” or “United States.” You will know within five minutes whether the jobs being created are crossing the border or staying north of it. That distinction is worth knowing before the market prices it in.
