Manufacturing guide
Manufacturing reshoring means bringing production back to the US; nearshoring moves it closer, usually to Mexico or Canada. For sellers, each returning line is a cluster of purchases in a rough order: space, equipment and automation, quality, systems, safety and training.
Book a demoLast updated October 5, 2026
The short answer
Manufacturing reshoring is real but slower than the headlines: Kearney's 2026 index still showed net offshoring in 2025. With spare capacity in existing US plants, much returning work can land as a new cell or shift, not a new building. Each returning line buys in waves, from automation to quality systems and ERP. Clean looks for those plants while vendor decisions are still open.
Manufacturing reshoring means bringing production that had moved overseas back to the United States, either into a company's own plant or through its suppliers. The supplier path is common: an OEM moves a part from an overseas source to a US contract manufacturer or job shop, and the buying happens at that shop.
Nearshoring moves production closer without bringing it home, usually to Mexico or Canada. Kearney found US imports from Mexico rose 8% in 2025, yet more than half of the executives it surveyed in March 2026 said tariff policy had made nearshoring less attractive.
For a seller, the label matters less than the result. A US site has to make something new, and it needs space, equipment, people, a customer's approval and systems to do it.
Reshoring and related terms, from the point of view of a company that sells to US plants
| Term | Where production goes | What it means for sellers to US plants |
|---|---|---|
| Reshoring | Back to the US from overseas | A US plant adds a line, a shift or a site, and buys for it |
| Onshoring | Often a synonym for reshoring; some reserve it for foreign-owned companies building US plants | A new US plant choosing its systems and vendors from scratch |
| Nearshoring | Closer to the US, usually Mexico or Canada | Most of the new buying happens at the foreign site |
Tariffs are the loudest force and the least stable. On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court held 6 to 3 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not authorize the President to impose tariffs. A K&L Gates summary published that day noted the administration had already begun applying other tariffs under different trade laws. Check the current rate before you quote one to a buyer.
Plants plan around the uncertainty more than any single rate. Kearney's read of 2025 is that companies favored reversible moves, and that cost pressures have to ease before they make irreversible US manufacturing bets. As one CEO in its survey put it: "we just need the goal posts to stop moving."
Tax is the quieter force, and it has dates. Section 168(n), created by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, lets a manufacturer elect to write off 100% of qualifying production space in a US building the year it goes into service, if construction starts after January 19, 2025 and before January 1, 2029, and the space is in service before January 1, 2031 (per a March 2026 BDO summary; not tax advice). A construction-start deadline is the kind of outside date that moves a capex decision.
Some, but less than the headlines suggest. Kearney's 2026 Reshoring Index improved from minus 115 to minus 86, which still means net offshoring in 2025: imports of manufactured goods from 14 Asian low-cost countries and regions grew faster than US manufacturing output. Direct imports from mainland China fell by almost a third, about $135 billion, but the other 13 countries in the index gained about $194 billion.
Kearney's survey shows companies hedging: 75% of respondents moved sourcing from China to other low-cost countries, while only 20% looked at relying more on US production. Confidence fell: 18% of CEOs were very confident of an acceptable return on reshoring or nearshoring, down from 47% a year earlier.
The number that matters most for a seller: as of February 2026, US manufacturing capacity utilization was still 3.1 percentage points below its long-run average, and Kearney argues production could ramp relatively quickly on that unused capacity. Our read: a lot of returning work needs no new building. It shows up as a new cell, a second shift or a line in an empty bay, with no ribbon cutting.
It starts with the sourcing decision: the customer compares total landed cost, picks a US source and qualifies it. Then space, inside an existing plant or at a new site. Equipment gets specified next, often with automation built in because the crew for a manual line isn't there.
The customer's quality requirements follow: first article inspection, part approval (PPAP on automotive work) and often a certification scope change under ISO 9001, AS9100, IATF 16949 or ISO 13485. Then systems, since the ERP needs new part numbers, routings and costs. Safety programs get updated, hiring and training run underneath everything, and the line ramps toward rate.
For a contract manufacturer, reshored work typically arrives as a new customer program, with the customer's part approvals, labeling rules and delivery terms due before the first production shipment. Once parts ship, the customer's supplier scorecard starts counting.
Whether the line lands in an existing building or a new one, the project buys in waves, and a vendor who shows up in month 14 is selling into a different project than one who showed up in month 2.
Stages overlap, and a small shop may skip some. Find your category in the last column; its stage tells you when to show up.
A few categories run on their own clock: quality systems get bought against the customer's approval date. ERP is the hardest decision to change mid-project, so ERP sellers want in before the new part numbers exist. MES and scheduling tends to arrive once two lines compete for the same people and machines. Quoting software matters early, because a shop chasing reshored parts is quoting unfamiliar work against overseas prices. EHS software sellers get new hazards to assess and train for.
Reshoring stage, what the plant buys, and which sellers it opens a window for (typical pattern, varies by plant)
| Reshoring stage | What the plant buys | Seller categories |
|---|---|---|
| Sourcing decision | Total-cost analysis, supplier qualification, trade advice | Procurement software, trade compliance, consultants |
| Floor space or new site | Building work or lease, power upgrades, racking, insurance | Construction and real estate, energy management, insurers |
| Equipment | Machine tools, presses, molding, tooling, programming software | Equipment makers, tooling, CAM software |
| Automation | Machine tending, welding and palletizing cells, conveyors, vision inspection | Robotics and automation, integrators, vision AI |
| Customer approval | QMS, document control, calibration, first article and PPAP tools, traceability, customer-required cybersecurity (CMMC on some defense work) | QMS and inspection software, metrology, CMMC providers |
| Systems | ERP changes or replacement, MES and scheduling, quoting for the new work | ERP, MES, quoting software |
| Safety | Hazard assessments, safety training, incident tracking | EHS software, safety consultants |
| Workforce | Recruiting, training, work instructions | Staffing, training, connected-worker tools |
| Ramp to rate | OEE tracking, maintenance plans, spare parts, downtime analysis | Machine monitoring, CMMS, industrial AI |
A line that ran with a big crew overseas often can't be staffed the same way here. US manufacturing had about 522,000 job openings in August 2026 (preliminary), down from 576,000 in July, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In Kearney's survey, 55% of respondents named line-worker availability as a challenge, and up to 61% reported shortages of machinists, technicians, maintenance specialists and similar roles. Nine in ten (91%) were raising wages, and 87% said they still need to invest significantly in training.
So on many returning lines, automation goes into the original layout instead of getting bolted on later: machine tending, welding and palletizing cells, vision inspection. That pulls other purchases forward. A plant short on maintenance technicians has reason to want maintenance software and machine monitoring early, and one short on trainers needs work instructions that don't live in a veteran's head. For robotics and automation sellers, reshoring is one of the few times the cell is part of the plan rather than a retrofit.
People search for lists of companies reshoring to the US, and we deliberately don't publish one. A list is built from announcements, and by the time a project is announced, the site is usually picked and the big vendors are often chosen.
Announcements also point at the wrong building. When an OEM says it is bringing a product home, the press release names the OEM. The machining, molding and assembly often land at suppliers the release never mentions: a contract manufacturer wins a part that used to come from overseas, adds a cell and a shift, and tells nobody but its customer. That supplier is the one buying fixtures, inspection gear and a quoting tool, and it rarely shows up on a reshoring list.
Lists still have their uses. Our comparison of manufacturing prospect lists and buying moments covers what they're good for, and spotting new factories and plant expansions early covers the run-up to an announcement.
Clean's research groups a plant's life into 14 buying moments. Reshoring sits inside one of them, supply chain change. At the plant making the returning part, look for it alongside other moments: a new customer program, new equipment investment, a capacity expansion or new site, a first hire in a function new to the plant (say, a first dedicated quality manager), and sometimes a certification push.
Any one of those alone is weak: a sourcing change is often just a supplier swap, and new equipment is often a replacement. Clean's research turned up a pattern in some of its most telling accounts: two or more related changes hitting the same plant in quick succession, which can mean a project is under way, not a one-off purchase. For a returning line, that is the shape to look for. So every plant in Clean gets a dated timeline with a temporal graph network running over it: what happened first, and how long the next change took to follow, carries weight a lone event can't.
Because one change proves so little here, breadth matters. The catalogue in Clean's database runs past 4,000 early signs across the 14 moments, and Clean has mapped more than 140 typical chains in which one change at a plant tends to set off the next. The work is done plant by plant. It weeds out look-alikes, whether contractors, repair and service shops or one-person operations, and every reason to reach out it hands over is dated and backed by evidence, lists the rival readings that could also fit, and names what would show it to be wrong. Anything Clean can't verify stays flagged as unknown.
Open with the stage, not the trend. A plant manager doesn't care that reshoring is up. They care that the new cell has to pass first article inspection before the customer's date, or that second shift starts before the maintenance planner is hired. Name the machine, the operation or the approval date.
Talk payback. Bigger purchases on a returning line go through a formal capital request, so help your champion fill in the capital expenditure request with a payback in months. How plants buy covers who signs at each size.
Check that the project is still live. In Kearney's survey, 57% of CEOs expected to significantly rework their reshoring or nearshoring strategy or go back to the drawing board, so expect some projects to stall between decision and install.
Among the teams Clean already works with are companies selling into US plants. Over September 2026, Clean researched more than 500 sellers of software, AI and automation to US manufacturers. Book a demo and we'll pull together, on the call, a live plant list for what you sell, each plant with the dated reason behind it. How Clean works explains the method.
Reshoring brings production that had moved overseas back to the United States, into a company's own plant or a US contract manufacturer. Nearshoring moves it closer without bringing it home, usually to Mexico or Canada. For companies that sell to US plants, reshoring is the one that creates buying on US soil.
Some, but less than headlines suggest. Kearney's 2026 Reshoring Index improved in 2025 but stayed negative, so imports from 14 Asian low-cost countries and regions still outgrew US manufacturing output. Only 15% of the companies it surveyed planned to bring more volume back, unchanged from a year earlier.
Announcements tend to name large OEMs and foreign-owned companies building US plants. A lot of the buying happens at quieter companies: contract manufacturers and job shops that win parts that used to come from overseas and add a cell or a shift to make them, often without any announcement.
Space and equipment come first, with automation often specified alongside because skilled labor is scarce. Customer approval follows: quality systems, first article inspection or PPAP, and sometimes a cybersecurity assessment the customer requires. ERP, MES, safety and training come next, and machine monitoring and maintenance software often land as the line ramps up.
Clean's research puts the typical span at roughly 9 to 18 months when an existing plant expands, and roughly 18 to 36 for a new plant. Reshored work can take either path. Treat these as research estimates, not measured averages. Purchases arrive in waves across that span, so the right time to call depends on what you sell.
Look for combinations of changes at one plant, not announcements. A sourcing change followed within months by a new customer program, an investment in new equipment or a first hire in a new function says more than any single event. Clean researches plants site by site, so a seller can often reach one while vendor decisions are still open.
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