Reindustrialization isn’t buying a $320 made in the USA sweater that can be bought for less than $10 in multiple other countries. It’s not about getting a billion dollar valuation on your startup that has never built a real product that has a multi-million dollar contract from a government that spent 2 trillion more than it took in this year. It’s not about looking cool** and it’s not about getting asset-price rich on mystery money. Reindustrialization is about 4 things. Until we have those 4, it ain’t going to happen. Let me tell you a short story. We had a supplier in China with a coal boiler. The coal boiler belched dark soot into the air. One day the government came in and said “you can’t use your coal boiler anymore. Replace it with a natural gas one; the coal is dirtying up the air.” The factory would have to shut down for months. No money for the boss. No work for the employees. And no orders for me. “How long will the orders be delayed?” “They won’t.” “And how will you do that?” “Don’t worry about it.” The orders shipped on time. How? The factory switched to working nights. The black smoke from the coal boiler couldn’t be seen in the dark night sky. At the same time they installed a new natural gas boiler during the day. By the way, this boiler was bigger than two semi trailer trucks side by side, literally it is beyond most people’s comprehension. And that’s the point. Reindustrialization is beyond peoples’ comprehension in America. 1. You need to have a government that does the right thing 2. You need to have factory ownership that is hungry for business 3. You need to have workers who are willing to make big sacrifices 4. And then everyone around them needs to be able tolerate the black smoke from the coal boiler We don’t have any of these things today. Will that change? Maybe, but overpriced sweaters and billion dollar valuations on vaporware is not how we’re going to get there.