Last year Jeff Immelt, the boss of General Electric, declared that outsourcing was “mostly outdated as a business model”. GE’s venerable Appliance Park in Louisville, Kentucky, is opening a string of new assembly lines to build refrigerators, water heaters and washing machines, bringing home jobs from China and Mexico. President Barack Obama has trumpeted this wave of “insourcing”, while Hal Sirkin of the Boston Consulting Group foretells a US “manufacturing renaissance”. Even as the news from Washington reeks of heedless brinkmanship, the news from the people who actually make stuff sounds refreshingly hopeful.
通用電氣(General Electric)首席執行官杰夫?伊梅爾特(Jeff Immelt)去年曾指出，外包“作為一種商業模式已基本過時”。通用電氣位于肯塔基州路易斯維爾市(Louisville)的Appliance Park歷史悠久，該園區即將新增數條生產電冰箱、熱水器以及洗衣機的裝配流水線，將以往外包至中國以及墨西哥等地的工作崗位回遷到美國本土。美國總統巴拉克?奧巴馬(Barack Obama)對于這輪“回遷潮”大加贊賞，波士頓咨詢集團(Boston Consulting Group)的哈爾?西爾金(Hal Sirkin)則預言美國將迎來“制造業復興”。即便來自華盛頓的消息充滿了不加節制的政治冒險氣息，這條來自產品實際生產者的新聞也足以振奮人心。