Question

Could you answer to me these 4 questions (below)?

For years, it has been cheaper to manufacture many products overseas (China and other countries) than in the United States. Labor is still less expensive overseas than in the United States, but the cost difference has been decreasing.

General Electric (GE) has brought back its refrigerator production to the United States from overseas and has announced plans to produce a new top load washer in the United States as well.

ln recent years. Google's Motorola announced that it would be assembling its Moto X smartphone in Fort Worth, Texas, making it the first smartphone assembled smartphone assembled in the United States. Lenovo also recently opened a new ThinkPad manufacturing facility in North Carolina.

For these companies, it is likely that the capital budgeting proposals for the U.S. manufacturing sites did not meet the companies' standard capital budgeting criteria. Yet the companies are still opting to manufacture some products in the United States, where it is, for the time being, more expensive than other locations.

Questions

1. What would qualitative factors likely have been considered when GE, Google, and Lenovo made their decisions to invest in U.S. manufacturing facilities? ln other words, why would GE, Google, and Lenovo decide to manufacture products in the United States when all of these companies have well-established facilities and supply chains in China?

2. What challenges will these companies likely face in manufacturing products in U.S- plants?

3. What stakeholders are impacted, either positively or negatively, by the decision tomanufacture in the United States? How are these stakeholders impacted?

4. What ethical issues potentially arise from not producing in the lowest cost location?

Answer 1