At Home & Abroad
Further, BCG claimed that American manufacturing is excelling compared to other countries. Said the organization:
The overall manufacturing-cost structures of Mexico and the U.S. have significantly improved relative to nearly all other leading exporters across the globe. The key reasons were stable wage growth, sustained productivity gains, steady exchange rates, and a big energy-cost advantage that is largely driven by the 50 percent fall in natural-gas prices since large-scale production of U.S. shale gas began in 2005. Mexico now has lower average manufacturing costs than China. Overall costs in the U.S., meanwhile, are 10 to 25 percent lower than those of the world's 10 leading goods-exporting nations other than China.
China is not the only foreign manufacturer whose cost competitiveness is shrinking. BCG stated that two of China's three peers in the famous "BRIC" grouping (an acronym for the rising-star economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China), Brazil and Russia, also are weakening. The reasons given for their decline are similar to what China is facing: wage increases, higher energy costs, and low productivity growth. In fact, BCG cited Brazil as now one of the most expensive countries to manufacture in worldwide.