Rosemary Coates is the Executive Director of the Reshoring Institute, a Non-Profit collaboration with nine universities across the U.S. She is also the President of Blue Silk Consulting, a Global Supply Chain consultancy. She is an Amazon.com Best Selling author with 5 global supply chain books including: “The Reshoring Guidebook” and “42 Rules for Sourcing and Manufacturing in China” She has been a management consultant for 25 years, helping over 80 global supply chain clients. She serves on the Board of Directors of Kinetic River and the University of San Diego Supply Chain Management Institute. And teaches Global Supply Chain Strategy at UC Berkeley.
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Rosemary Coates is the Executive Director of the Reshoring Institute, a Non-Profit collaboration with nine universities across the U.S. She is also the President of Blue Silk Consulting, a Global Supply Chain consultancy. She is an Amazon.com Best Selling author with 5 global supply chain books including: “The Reshoring Guidebook” and “42 Rules for Sourcing and Manufacturing in China” She has been a management consultant for 25 years, helping over 80 global supply chain clients. She serves on the Board of Directors of Kinetic River and the University of San Diego Supply Chain Management Institute. And teaches Global Supply Chain Strategy at UC Berkeley.
Discover more details here.
Some of the highlights of the episode:
Follow us on:
Instagram: http://bit.ly/2Wba8v7
Twitter: http://bit.ly/2WeulzX
Linkedin: http://bit.ly/2w9YSQX
Facebook: http://bit.ly/2HtryLd
Hello everybody. And welcome to the leaders in supply chain podcast. I am your host managing director of ELCA global. It's my great pleasure to have with us today. Rosemarie coats, who is the executive director of the reshoring Institute and president of silk consulting, a global supply chain consulting company. She's um, as well, an Amazon bestselling author with five global supply chain hooks, including the reassuring book and 42 rules for sourcing and manufacturing in China. She has been a management consultant for 25 years, has worked with more than 80 global supply chain clients serves on the board of directors of kinetic river and the university of San Diego supply chain management Institute, as well as teachers at the globe at the teacher supply global displacement strategy at UC Berkeley. So Rosemary, great pleasure. And thanks for making the time to join us today.
Speaker 2:Yes. Thank you. I'm delighted to be here with you.
Speaker 1:Super. So I wanted to, I wanted to start because it's a, it's a topic. I think decoupling reshoring moving manufacturing is a big topic on a lot of people's agenda on a lot of supply chain executives and executives in general. Really. So I wanted to start first with a question on what's the current status of decoupling is change happening now. Right? We can have a lot of discussions. Is it going to happen in six months, 12 months, 18 months longer plans, how is it going?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you know, we've been doing both offshoring and reassuring for a while now, six or seven years at the reshoring Institute. And I have a long history and background in offshoring to China. I helped lots of companies moved there and set up their operations there. And I think we've seen kind of a slow tide of bringing some or thinking about a lot of executives thinking about bringing some manufacturing back to the U S and decoupling from China and sort of over time, we saw some interest there, but the global pandemic really, really kicked it into high gear. And so now we see an awful lot of companies are coming to us and asking for assistance as well as designing a new global strategy. So yeah, there's some decoupling, you know, there were a few things over time that in the U S the tax rates were extremely high on manufacturing. So in 2017, Congress passed a lot to reduce the tax rate on manufacturing. And that helped a little bit, although, you know, there was an expectation, a lot of manufacturing would come back because of that. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. Reducing the tax rate didn't cause big investment in manufacturing, as we expected, it just lowered the tax rate for manufacturers. And then the tariffs, of course, you know, starting the trade war has been a huge burden on manufacturing in the U S um, so some Americans don't quite understand the of it, but essentially an import tax or a tariff like that is an additional burden on anybody who's doing importing, which translates into most American manufacturers import either products or at least part, some assemblies and so forth. And that burden was born by them. And, you know, a lot of manufacturers try to pass it on to customers, but a lot of them just absorb the additional cost. And so that has been a difficult pathway for most manufacturers in the U S but the pandemic whole man, you know, it just caused manufacturers to sit up and take notice and understand where they have so many risks and liabilities and not enough inventory and manufacturing the wrong things for the marketplace. And it just created all kinds of rethinking and strategy. So now we're seeing a pretty significant wave in companies considering decoupling or designing a different kind of global strategy. So maybe it's a China plus one, or bring some parts back to the U S or just thinking about regional manufacturing. There's all, there's all kinds of pathways, I think. But clearly a change is in the wind for sure.
Speaker 1:And I was talking just yesterday with one of our, one of our clients who runs a big transportation international transportation company in the region in APEC. And he was saying that in retrospect, right? I mean, actually he was quite shocked that a lot of companies, you know, had three providers somewhere in a small town a little bit, well, not so small maintaining proportions in China. And they never thought that, well, there's the risk that if something happens, what do we do? So in the, now the China plus one or something to that extent is, is in the books where a lot of companies, if they didn't have one, I wanted to ask specifically, how do you see things in five years down the line, right. It's a question that we received before we recorded this, because specifically how much of China for China is made in China? How much is exported from China to other markets? U S of course, how much is a us for us? How, how, how do you see these dynamics playing out?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So as you introduce me, you know, I run the reshoring Institute and, and we're a nonprofit organization that helps companies think about their global manufacturing strategy. And that it's sort of misnamed because it isn't just about bringing manufacturing back to the U S it's really about designing a global strategy. And I think, you know, companies are taking that step at this point, but, you know, in the manufacturing world, nothing happens overnight. It takes a while. So when you ask, what do I see five years from now, or 10 years from now, or 20 years from now, I see that there's an evolution going on in manufacturing. So it used to be, you know, my would talk about the lowest cost they could get. Could I help them move to China, find sources there, because there was a general perception, it was lower costs today. Those same executives are saying, how do we mitigate risk? Which is a different question. So, you know, it may mean that some operations are more expensive. It may mean that they're moving to different regions. So there's that pathway. But then I think there's also a higher level of recognition amongst executives about their global marketplace. So, you know, executives now are finding that there are a lot of their customers are in Asia. Asia is where growth is happening, right? It's, it's not happening that much in the U S or Europe, or they're playing other traditional countries where we looked at growth markets, but it's all over Asia. So doesn't it make sense to at least keep part of your manufacturing in Asia. Now what country in Asia is another question. So I re I really see these executives who in the password very focused on cost and cost alone. Now thinking more strategically and taking into consideration other variables in the equation to where to manufacture in the world.
Speaker 1:Hmm. So on this topic, and we were also getting a question from Felix that sits in, sits in Mexico, where do you see this? I mean, where do you see this? It's I guess you can call them lower costs. Let's, let's use the word lower costs of manufacturing locations that might thrive off the bus, you know, uh, conflicts and trade Wars and all of this, you know, is it Southeast Asia? Is it Mexico? Is it, is the Europe Northern Africa? I don't know. What's what's, uh, you know, it obviously can be a few of them.
Speaker 2:Well, it's interesting you ask that, cause we've just finished at the reshoring Institute, we have two goals. So one is to, um, help companies bring manufacturing back or consider their international or global manufacturing strategy. And the other goal is that we teach graduate student interns about manufacturing. So these graduate students that are very smart and very ambitious and very energetic are put to work, doing different projects. One of the projects that we just finished and we haven't published the results yet, but then we had one of our interns work on a comparison of labor costs in about, I think, 12 countries around the world. So 20 categories of labor costs compared country by country, really interesting study. And what you find is that, you know, there are places like in central Mexico where labor costs are comparable to the costs in China, right? And there are also a very low cost environments like Bangladesh, for example, where you might want to locate manufacturing that has high labor content or high labor, how you touch content. So when you have a lot of labor that can swing the economics one way or another, where you have more advanced manufacturing, more automation, more robotics, more, three D printing, then that shifts the equation, maybe the other way, and potentially evaluating whether or not you could actually operate in the United States by extracting that labor. So, you know, when you think about it, I mean, there's lots of different complex ideas here. If you're going to bring back manufacturing to the U S for example, it's not going to mean that all of the jobs that left and went to China over the past 25 years are all going to come back. That's, that's not what number one, not what we want to come back, and it's not, what's likely to come back. So what we really want to develop is advanced manufacturing, advanced skills for manufacturing environment and leave the low, skilled, low cost labor jobs in a low cost country. So for example, if you are a tee shirt manufacturer, and, you know, you're making tee shirts for 50 cents a piece, that's not the kind of, that's not the kind of manufacturing that the U S wants to attract now, because it doesn't pay a living wage in America. And if it doesn't pay a living wage, then the government has to supplement the wages with economic policy. So, you know, what we want to do is shed that lower level, um, lower, skilled labor to developing countries where it makes a difference for them to, to put people to work at, at low costs like that. And what we want to attract to the more developed countries is the more skilled, more advanced labor. So we want people to learn how to run the machine tools, right, or run the computers, or run the robots, or be able to repair the three D printer. So those are higher level skills, right? So you, you have to, you know, this is where I think people miss the boat is they don't think about the whole ecosystem around the world. It's not just one country or one manufacturing sector or one microcosm. Now, you know, we live and operate in a global environment and you have to really consider, you know, all the aspects of it to really, you have to think about these bigger, bigger ideas and how the economics push push results around the world.
Speaker 1:And to this point, and also this discussion relatively recently. And then if you talk about high tech or manufacturing, I dunno, laptops, for example, electronics, it's a pretty complex ecosystem that was built over time. You have, from the manufacturing plant, let's say it's probably the easiest that they get from wherever it is, China, Saudi stage, or whatever Japan put it somewhere else. But the whole ecosystem around that plant from, you know, the logistics, the rows, the ports, the trade and regulations and government support skills is not that easy to, you know, tell to operate the plant is not that easy to translate them. There's been whole ecosystems that have been created. So how do you see, and at the same time you have the trade war, right? So then, you know, there's different terrorists that have come into play and, and, and all of that, how this playing out on the, on the longterm, cause this is not at all easy to just overnight pack your bags and go
Speaker 2:Well, you know, so the pandemic really cause manufacturers and the population, particularly in the U S and I'm sure it was true most in most of the world to consider you aware they had shortages and where they couldn't meet demand. So let me give you a couple of examples. So both laptops and disinfected wipes, so a lifestyle or a Clorox wipe that you use to kill germs on surfaces. Those are two products that were in very short supply, and of course we know PPE and respirators and all of that. And that sort of got straightened out, I think in general, fairly quickly within a month or two, but laptops are still in very short supply and disinfectant wipes. I live in Silicon Valley and I cannot get disinfected wives, sort of my pet peeve these days, because very simple product it's in a plastic bottle, right? And it's like paper towels inside in a, in a Clorox solution, very simple, very easy to manufacture. And yet we cannot meet the demand after nine months. It's just so frustrating to me because you know, our supply chain people should be good enough to get those things out in the marketplace fast, but they haven't been able to. Now, when you look at computers, laptops in particular, they are also in very short supply. And that's because, you know, all our students are working from home. All of us are working from home and there's a very high demand, especially for low end laptops for students. And they're in very short supply as well. But when you think about the complexity of a laptop, right? So you've got engineered products, you've got electronics in it. You've got, you're going to need rare earth elements for wiring, and you need circuitry. And I mean, this is complicated. This is while laptop and used to seem like it's pretty easy. The supply chain is quite complicated. And so what's happened is that supply chains have developed all around those manufacturers. Like you were saying, the whole ecosystem for manufacturing, a laptop, maybe located in one geography in order to support, you know, Lenovo or one of the big brands Samsung. And it's not so easy to just pick up that manufacturing and move it to another location. So you think about that versus the Clorox wipes. So you should be able to manufacture anywhere, right? I mean, in any location, all over the world and supply easily produce supply to meet the demand, and we're not been able to do that. So I think, you know, when I take a step back and think about this, it's frustrating to me that we don't have better supply chain people out there to quite honestly, I mean, I think, you know, supply chain professionals need to think about how well they perform during this. Um, you know, it's, it's time people set up and took notice and understood. They need to be more thoughtful, think more strategically, look for risk avoidance opportunities, um, plan for mitigation of risk and other things, other events that are going to happen, you know, right now in America, we're in California, we're dealing with these horrible wildfires, as I'm sure you've seen on the news. And in the Gulf coast, in the Southern States, we're in the midst of having a terrible hurricane. That's flooding all kinds of things. When these kinds of disasters happen, obviously there's shortages of all kinds of stuff all over the place. And it behooves supply chain people to think about this as a potential risk and what products do their companies produce and what should they have on hand and what can they expect to, you know, we know there are fires and hurricanes every year, so we ought to be prepared for that, right? So, you know, supply chain people got to develop on and think strategically at a higher level, instead of traditionally, we've been really focused on execution. Now it's time to think about strategy.
Speaker 1:Oh, indeed could not agree more. And I think there are a lot of very good professionals and supply chain executives that have stepped up to the challenge. And also the company is now a, if anything, COVID-19 has definitely helped elevate the important role and, you know, as broken up boards in general and CEOs of, Oh, you know, supply chain is critical and mission critical to our business. Otherwise we might just go bust because we can't deliver to our clients. We, I saw a statistic and I wanted to run it by you. We will also see some questions coming in. You know, there were, I think there was like 30 or 35% of super high percentage of companies. I'm not going to call the research company name, but it's a repeatable one. But to me it makes no sense saying that 30 to 35% are already moving out of China. And I'm like, gosh, in the middle of COVID-19, you're going to do that because there's one you have COVID-19 right. Then two, it's not that easy to go. Right. So I guess my question is where are some of the hurdles to do that? Right. Cause I know that you specifically researched on that and you wrote extensively on that. So I'd like to touch upon that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, this is a area that a lot of people overlook. So for example, when we are helping our client to think through the possibility of reassuring, we always turn around and say, let's take a look at where your operations are. Are they in China? And if so, do you have a factory there? And you employ people there. So that's the first place to start, because as you may know, in China, most workers are on an employment contract. And so if they've signed, as let's say, you hire somebody, you know, last month and they're on a two year employment contract, and then you decide to shut down your operations. You have to pay to the end of that contract. Right. And not a lot, a lot of executives don't think about that. Or, you know, they're like, Oh, there's costs involved. So, you know, that's one big hurdle. Another hurdle is getting a permit to leave. So as you know, you may know, it's not that easy to move out of China. If the Chinese government doesn't want you to leave. So you have to get a permit to leave or close down your operations there. Um, and you know, depending on what the Chinese government thinks about that, or how, if they're worried about transferring the capability or the IP to China or keeping it there, then it may be very hard to get a permit now. Sure. I mean, you can get on an airplane and, you know, close the doors and turn out, you know, turn off the lights and get on an airplane and go home. But if you do that and you violate a Chinese law or a regulation, you may never be allowed to come back. And as we talked about before, with the growth, enormous growth rate in Asia, you shouldn't shut that door, right. I mean, you know, you may want to come back at some point in the future. So that's, you know, another thing that's not, not taken into consideration. Then, then the other, the other thing that I I've had some tough conversations with CFOs about, and that the machine tools, tools, and dyes and mold, things that you have either shipped to China and you have some contract that says you own this stuff, or they were made for you in China. So this happens a lot too with molds, is there much cheaper to be made in China? And so they're made in China, but you've paid for it. And so you think you own it right or wrong. G you know, even if you have it in your contracts really, really hard to get that stuff out of China, it's really hard to export it. And so you may have to just write off all that investment. And here's the other problem is if you have, I have outsourced the development of a mold or some kind of tool or something to a company in China, they own the blueprints, not you. Right. So, you know, it's a complicated situation and may be very expensive as a result. So that's another, another issue. And, you know, I could go on and on about leaving China, but, you know, you know, I would say the thing that I would want people to take away is just to just understand that it's not going to be as easy as you think, and you probably need help to extract yourself from another country. You need to be careful about it.
Speaker 1:[inaudible] and tell us maybe some case studies, cause I know that you work the cross and you have a lot of, um, examples. And I know we joked a little bit about the biggest fans and, and so on. And then you were G and you work with some of the global brands as well. So maybe give us one or two or three examples that you've helped in recent times, what worked, what didn't work, what was challenged?
Speaker 2:Sure. So let's take a water logic. That's a most recent case study. We have a huge website where we publish all of our research, all of our case studies that we develop all of our white papers, everything's there and you can download all this stuff for free. So I would encourage people to go to the website, which is resharing institute.org. But what our logic is is if you look at our case study page, it's the first one that pops up. They are UK based company. They make water purification equipment like a fill station. So like you fill up your water bottle at the airport, you know, with a fill station or in the break room, they make that purification equipment. And they have a advanced technology that muses ultraviolet light to purify the water at the point of dispensing. So most water purification purifies further back in the process or in the pipe. And they purify purify at the point of dispensing, which makes the water much, much cleaner, much better. So, um, you know, it's really breakthrough kind of technology. So, um, they are headquartered in the UK and they've done very well across Europe. They're well known and have extensive operations in Europe. Uh, and they were, I have been manufacturing in China. They have a very large factory in Northern China and they had sales offices all across the U S and the sales were growing rapidly in the U S so it became a very popular item and, you know, pure water, bottled water filtered water is very, very popular in the U S so they came to us. And even though they had an extensive sales operations across the U S they didn't have any manufacturing sites. So we help them over about a year to not only find the, the best location for them, but also to look at labor, labor costs, tax incentives, government sent incentives at the state and local levels. So U S is different. You know, other countries, they're the main government or the, what we would call the federal government provides incentives, but in the U S it's almost all local, it's all local incentives, the state incentive. So the set up is different. That means you have to look for 50 different States and, you know, all these local environments and are much more complicated. So we did that. We also help them, um, find suppliers in the U S like we were talking about before your ecosystem has to come with you. So they were essentially sourcing everything from Chinese supplier. So we had to find suppliers in the U S that could make some of their parts, and we helped them establish a new manufacturing site near the Dallas Fort worth airport, which is a huge international airport in the middle of the U S. So that was a, that was a big success story. And they did set up manufacturing, consolidated all their sales offices, and they're doing very well very well. Another, uh, I'll tell you about a failure. How's that? So, yeah, we have some of those too, and we didn't work on this one, but, but I can tell you about it. So Otis elevator, they make elevators, and there are only a few elevator companies in the world. And Otis was one of the big ones. They were manufacturing in Mexico and decided to set up a manufacturing operations in South Carolina. So the Southern part of the U S and so they found a location in a little town called Florence, South Carolina, where they had a pretty high unemployment rate. They had a low labor costs. They had incentives, you know, everything looked great. And so they built a new factory and it was automated and had a lot of new equipment in it. And they sort of opened the doors and there were no workers. So even though they had a high unemployment rate, they didn't have workers with the right skills they needed. You know, we were talking before about advanced manufacturing and the skill skillful jobs, um, that require different kinds of training. Well, they, they, they just weren't there. And they had this company Otis had not prepared very well. They hadn't tried to find training facilities, so people could be trained to work in the factory. They just hadn't done that homework. And the other thing that they did is decided to implement SAP software at the same time. So when I find out, I know those of you who know SAP now, you know, that was, that's like, wow, really? I worked for SAP for five years and, you know, it's great software, but it's, it's complicated and it's not easy to install and to teach people how to use it. So they tried to do that at the same time as they were opening a new factory, which is this insane. So, you know, they stumbled along for over a year, they lost$60 million. I think the CEO was fired. They were written about extensively in the wall street journal about this as being a failure of reassuring. So they'd tried it, but they didn't plan very well for it. And that's, you know, that's the danger. If you know, the company's going to try to move their manufacturing somewhere else or bring it back to the U S it's hard work, right? It's a big project and it's hard work and you can't, you don't just snap your fingers and make it happen. It really takes effort.
Speaker 1:Hmm. And I would want to ask you, and we have one side of the business that is executive search, and we get a lot of requests in recent times. Okay. Digital skills in a, you know, industry 4.0 automation, robotics. Okay. You get as the people. Well, there's not a hell of a lot of them because one, these are fairly, I mean, okay, it's been talked along, but for the last three, four years, this initiatives have been present, but in let's talk reality and pragmatism pragmatically, there's not a norm. And there's a lot of gaps in the market for that. Then I think there's another reality check that you mentioned that yes, you bring back the jobs wherever it says, Rockies Western Europe, or I'll bring back manufacturing, let's call it non jobs manufacturing, right. In most in Europe or in U S or in this ICO markets, but the jobs are not the same, you know, when they left us, maybe you were working on the, I don't know, on the line now, you know, you come back now you need to have robotics or automation skills. So let's talk a little about what new skills, even if you do reassure in this, you know, more expensive markets or developed markets, what new skills will they need.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so, you know, that's a really excellent point. I think, you know, my grandfather was a metal worker. They made drinking fountains at a company called HASI Taylor and Warren, Ohio, and the rust belt of the U S and Northern U S. And I can remember, he'd come home from work. And he was dirty and smelly, and, you know, his hands were dirty, his fingernails, and it was kind of gross. You know, that was my perception of manufacturing, you know, he was in manufacturing. And, you know, I think about that sometimes, because fast forward to today, that is not at all what manufacturing looks like anymore. Right? I mean, I live here in Silicon Valley and if you go to a manufacturing site here, you have to get in a bunny suit, you know, complete electrostatic suit and, you know, head gear, sometimes respirators. If, you know, if there is a, if they're worried about the, the air particles when developing wafers or something like that, and, you know, by and large, most manufacturing. And I think this is true around the world. Most manufacturing involves computers of some kind or another. So you might be running a machine tool, but you have to program that machine tool. Or you may be running a robot that is, you know, welding on the line, but you have to know how to fix that robot if it breaks, or it does the wrong thing, or, you know, run the three D printer or something like that. So, yeah, I mean, exactly the have changed. And I think, you know, education has to change along with it. In some cases, it's not a jobs problem, it's an education and skills problem that we need to address and, you know, move up the sophistication level in the manufacturing environment. You know, if you've got kids and I know you do, you know, encouraging them to focus on STEM education, I think is very good. So science and technology and mathematics, this is important because those are where we're leaning towards most more of those kinds of skills in a manufacturing environment, then other kinds of soft skills. So it's good to learn the arts and, and to learn, um, communications and, you know, uh, music and other things too. But if you plan to be in an industrial environment in your life, whether you're the CEO or, you know, senior executive in supply chain, or you're a worker, you, you need to know mathematics, you know, OD you have to think that there's actually a lot of geometry in mathematics. You're dealing with planes and aid goals and, you know, calculations on a, on a production line. So it's surprising how much math you actually re really need to know in order to even operate on most production lights.
Speaker 1:And this, this kind of brings us to the failure case study that you mentioned that a lot of people kind of fail to plan for that talent piece. Okay, great. You moved, but you know, do you actually have the people to do the work? Do you have them train? Do they have the skills? Do they know how to do it? Because yeah, that is not always there. We've, we've done a lot of work. So for example, Vietnam, and I actually want to pick your brains on this one. Vietnam has grown tremendously, even now from a GDP GDP perspective. They're also like defying gravity. They're still growing. And there's been a huge shift of manufacturing into Vietnam from China, obviously maintaining proportions because when you have a hundred million or so in Vietnam, and you have one point something billion in China, you know, it's not possible to go. But I think that that's one way to kind of avoid some of the trade tariffs and all of that. But the situation now in Vietnam is that you can't find blue collar workers anymore. You know, they need to get them from Cambodia. Literally don't have workforce anymore for how much has changed and has influxed into the country. Now my question,
Speaker 2:No, I was just going to say, I worked with athletic shoe manufacturer a couple of years ago that had factories all across China. I went and visited all their factories in China and Vietnam and yeah, you're right. I mean, Vietnam only has 90 or a hundred million people and they're sort of full, you know, they're all, they're busy and there isn't any factory capability or not much left. And the other thing that we found was even though the labor cost is lower in Vietnam, the productivity rate was lower. Right. So, and I don't, the company was working with, I don't think they knew that. And so we, you know, I pointed out to them, I'm going to, if you're looking at comparing costs, the costs in China while labor was maybe 20 or 30% more, the productivity was much higher and the quality was better. So if you are balancing that out with what you're capable of doing in Vietnam, it turned out that it wasn't, it actually wasn't cheaper in Vietnam, it was more expensive. You can't just make broad assumptions about what is, or what is it all companies and industries are different. And you have to look at them one by one, right? So you can, there's some trends out there, but you know, by and large, every company is individual. And you have to think about it as an individual.
Speaker 1:And I want to ask a final question, Rosemarie, and I get asked to you because you're, you know, you're not working for a big corporation or MNC, so you, yeah. You can address such an elephant in the room and you're sitting in the U S I don't want to get very political, but the question goes like this, depending on your election, that is coming up and the results of that elections, do you see much shift into the, I mean, let's say that if you change the administration, do you see a shift in which this decoupling will be slower, or the retort will be a little bit softer and it will slow down a little bit, or you see the direction in the same way in which okay. This has happened is just, you know, different administrations won't change much.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You know, I don't, I don't think it's any secret that Donald Trump is a transactional kind of guy. I mean, he thinks about dollars and cents, and doesn't really have context when it comes to policy and global economic development. He doesn't really have that understanding. So I think if we do have a regime change, we have a new president, president Biden. I think we'll see a softening of the rhetoric and not so much trying to pick fights, but instead, you know, reigniting of the good relationships that we have around the world and together, you know, putting America back in sync with Europe and together addressing some of the issues within China. So, you know, it's not that, you know, in my opinion, we shouldn't be fighting with China. I mean, there are some things technologies that we should be cooperating, right. We should develop together for the good of humanity. You know, there are certain things that, you know, we shouldn't be competing or fighting with over. We need to be more cooperative. But on the other hand, you know, we know that China has some issues as well, and those need to be addressed. And I like to say, we need more diplomacy and less lunacy. So that's maybe a little political, but yeah. I mean, you know, each, we try to be a political at the reshoring Institute too, but you know, when bottom bottom line is, there's so much politics and economics involved with any decision that's made with leadership, that it's important. We have a voice and keep guiding our leaders
Speaker 1:In what's needed in global manufacturing or the reservoir on that note. I want to thank you a lot for all the insights. We've had some incredible feedback also on the comments you'll see after this is finished and lots of people that they enjoyed the conversation very much. And thanks for keeping it practical, you know, with pluses, with minus has been failures with successes. And I think you gave them a very good overview of and reality check, because I can tell you for sure, where I sit as a, I mean, also we are consulting, but maybe from a leadership or human capital perspective, a lot of people think it's easy to do, you know, to do things and to, to move around, or maybe not as complicated as it is actually, maybe it's not easy, but they think it's not as complex and they should really re adjust their mental frames. So thank you very much. And really it was a great sharing session.
Speaker 3:Sure. Thank you, Randy.
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