The assembly decisions already happened. Component sourcing is the lagging half.
In the 2025 Reshoring Survey (Reshoring Initiative and Regions Recruiting, 500+ respondents), 66% of reshoring work landing at contract shops came from OEMs already assembling in the U.S. and pulling component sourcing back behind it. Fifty-nine percent of those shops have reshored, are reshoring, or are quoting it now.
Grid equipment, aerospace, defense, medical and data-center power hardware are drawing on the same machining and forming capacity, and that overlap is why the tier holds up when any one of them softens. Site advisory firm GLS lists precision-machined parts, castings and forgings among the primary aerospace supplier bottlenecks (July 2026).
Two qualifiers. The steepest China tariff layers are suspended only through November 10, 2026. And manufacturing capacity utilization sits at 75.7%. Demand is running ahead of the capacity built to serve it.
What OEMs said they were buying (2025 Reshoring Survey):
- Manufacturing near engineering: 45%
- Lower freight and duty: 45%
- Geopolitical risk: 38%
- Share willing to pay a 10–20% premium for five weeks faster delivery: 40%
Capital is moving ahead of employment
- Precision manufacturing M&A: 61 deals, +19.6% YoY through Q1 2026 (Capstone Partners, May 2026)
- ESCO Technologies year-end backlog: $1.1B, +70.7% YoY
- Standex projects roughly half of 2026 fast-growth sales from data centers, electrification and grid modernization
Expiring with the tariff suspension: 178 Section 301 exclusions, alongside the reciprocal rates.