American Reindustrialization Won't Stick Without Major Deregulation

We've become so accustomed to overregulation we don't even talk about it anymore

Image by Grok

In my many visits with manufacturers all over the country, I always make it a point to ask my hosts what’s eating their lunch. I get lots of different answers, including high and growing costs for raw materials and energy, labor cost and availability, liability-related paperwork and insurance costs, and so on.

You know what I almost never hear as a direct answer, though?

Regulations.

Yet every single one of those problems above that my friends around the nation mention to me is caused at least in part (and usually in a large part) by regulations.

Hyper-regulation has become an unseen albotross around the necks of U.S. producers, and we’ve sadly become so used to it being a fact of life that we don’t even talk about it anymore.

Indeed, in an exchange on X last week, one manufacturer stated that the high input costs for American-made raw materials, which are multiples higher than what our competitors internationally must pay, are simply something U.S. producers must pay to “support our way of life.”

That has to change if we’re serious about reshoring production and reindustrializing America.