An article I saw in the local paper about hair dryers and a blog article from local curmudgeon on the high cost of shipping furniture both suggest the same thing: we may be very near the point (or already at the point) where making everything in China and shipping 7,000 to 10,000 miles is no longer economical.
The note about hair dryers was in response to a question to the paper about the availability of U.S. made ones. The reply indicated a firm had just moved its manufacturing facilities back to the U.S. in part because of high shipping costs. The manufacture of furniture is even more interesting, since the wood for that furniture often comes from U.S. forests. So we ship the raw materials 10,000 miles, then ship the finished product another 10,000 miles.
But the global economy is not going away; it is simply going to shift resources around to find the lowest cost of production. It may be that the U.S. will be able to compete again. Communities with broadband will have a leg up, because manufacturing firms are not going to place factories in places where they can't receive orders 24/7 reliably. Global businesses want redundant telecom providers, redundant cable routes in and out of the community, and redundant electric power feeds (from more than one substation). It's an easy checklist for communities:
How many of these can your community check off?