I think its a bit like a game of hot potato, where the final manufacturing location will basically end up being a global power house for the next couple centuries.

Which at the moment looks to be china, despite textiles trying to move to lower cost countries, the magnetic force of ongoing factory automation in china might pull them back. The US deindustrilized to early for any of these really to come back without some seriously focused "billionaire" class investors putting their money first (aka Musk).

How much can we learn from each other? I work at a factory making things, we have locations around the world because our final products don't fit in a shipping container so local factories out compete global ones. That means that we have manufacturing experts scattered all over the world. We buy parts from all over and share knowledge. (expect China, we are careful what gets shared with China)

Spending on external training is $83bln [1]. Internal training program spend is an order of magnitude higher. Let alone salaries.

That is a lot of spending that could be transitioned to robotics if humans become too costly.

1: https://trainingmag.com/trgmag-article/2019-training-industr...