In our last column, we discussed how “total cost of ownership” (TCO) could reveal the hidden costs of offshoring and quantify the real profit and loss impact of reshoring or offshoring.

In our last column, we identified national policies that will help bring manufacturing back from offshore, thereby improving the country’s economy, employment and budget deficit.

Our government could do a lot more to level the playing field for manufacturing. While the Reshoring Initiative does not support individual candidates, we do recommend policies that will bring manufacturing back from offshore, and we try to document candidate positions on these issues.

My first column talked about why manufacturing matters most for our country. This month, I want to discuss how chasing cheap prices is not only hollowing out domestic manufacturing but, in many cases, it’s making the companies that offshore less profitable. For decades, consultants and MBAs have told companies to focus on their core competencies—mostly R&D, finance and marketing—and outsource manufacturing offshore. Now, companies are discovering that strategy was often wrong.

It is too little and too late to keep writing “manufacturing matters.” Everything else in the economy is secondary to manufacturing, mining and farming. Only these activities build wealth.