Reshoring could help shield US supply chains from trade wars and wider geopolitical tensions, all while lowering greenhouse gas emissions, but it may take decades to put systems into place, panellists said at PEI Group’s NEXUS 2026 summit in Orlando last week.
In the meantime, the move to rekindle manufacturing in the US offers ample opportunities for private investors, particularly for venture capital firms, according to Milo Werner, a general partner at technology venture capital firm DCVC.
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“We’re not going to reindustrialise the United States using old technology. We’re going to reindustrialise using new, advanced technologies,” Werner said.
Even if older industries, such as shipbuilding, re-emerge in the US, “all sorts of cool technologies” are being implemented, including automation and other innovations, she said.
“What we’re seeing is that we are in a massive transition from a centralised supply chain to a decentralised supply chain,” she said later in the panel. “I think you’re going to see an immense transformation happen in the next three to five years.”
Alex Sutton, head of research for investment firm Gordon Brothers, acknowledged that US manufacturing could grow significantly in the next five years, but he doubted that it would return to the same levels as the 1970s.
But for Rainy Guo, head of investment at private investment firm Aeterna Capital, even as advances in automation technology encourage reshoring, the US does not have the infrastructure to handle a sharp increase in manufacturing in the near term.
“It’s going to take decades for us to build a new supply-chain system. It’s going to take us decades for a new automation system,” Guo said.
Moreover, as Guo pointed out, globalisation is not dead. Rather, it is evolving “in a strategic direction that makes sense to companies”, she said.
Private markets investors, in turn, are reshaping their portfolios as manufacturing and energy infrastructure come to forefront after years of being viewed as “very unsexy” investments, Guo said.
“I think 2026 will be a year when we see a shift of focus to hard assets,” she said, mentioning battery storage as one example.
Sustainability and tariffs
Global supply chains today involve massive carbon emissions at every stop along the route. Minerals are mined in Australia, sent to Asia for manufacturing and then shipped to be sold in the US, according to Danielle Joseph, head of Closed Loop Ventures, the growth equity business of circular economy investment firm Closed Loop Partners.
But instead of digging for minerals in Australia, Closed Loop is using scrap metals in the US for local manufacturing, reducing its environmental footprint by as much as 90 percent in some cases, Jospeh said.
“That fits the national security priority, the reshoring priority and our sustainability priorities,” she said.
It was the covid-19 pandemic that pushed many companies to prioritise their supply chains and make sure they received the materials that they needed. These days trade tariffs and geopolitical risks, including war, are providing continued impetus to the reshoring trend.
The second administration of US President Donald Trump has applied tariffs “abruptly and at times unevenly”, and it is likely to engage in “more back and forth” in 2026, Sutton said.
Faced with uncertain trade policies, companies may choose to move production to the US, rather than enter into “this ping-pong tournament of tariffs”, Werner said.
Joesph cautioned against making investment decisions based on policy assumptions. Instead, she advised private investors for look for investments that could survive for decades, regardless of what direction US trade policy takes in the years ahead.
DCVC for example, has invested in an apparel company that uses 3D weaving technology to make trousers, thereby reducing waste and shortening the supply chain, according to Werner.
Circularity and national security
Covid-19, tariffs and war are all important parts of the reshoring story, but rising demand from energy transition projects, AI and infrastructure, to name but a few, is also leading the drive in the US, according to Joseph.
In addition, the US government has placed increased emphasis on critical raw minerals for semiconductors under the guise of national security during Trump’s second term, keeping some of the policies of his predecessor, Joe Biden, and reversing others, Sutton said.
This is where circularity comes in, according to Guo. Critical mineral deposits are often located abroad, but circularity allows companies to have access to those minerals for a longer period of time, “which is so important to us, to the US and to China as well”, she said.
For Joseph, the US is still catching up to China when it comes to critical minerals. US companies also lag behind their Chinese counterparts when it comes to reclycling materials, rather than importing new ones.
“That’s a really exciting opportunity,” she said of the investment prospects in the circularity. “I am hopeful that the US this year starts to follow in that same trend.”
