Manufacturing specifically, cheaper overseas is the basic answer but I think there’s one more in additional. The west, particularly former colonial powers and their beneficiaries, which is most of Europe, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc - socially all treat manual labor that isn’t at least art-adjacent with a level of dissaproval and it seems worse the younger you go.

Like it’s not enough to work to live. You’re work also has to be an aesthetic choice. So you can have very exploitative industries like the various art/entertainment industries and regardless of how bad they are, any job where you can say you work in like film or fashion is a social plus. You can be broke working in a restaurant and for a fashion brand. You can work for those and be really abrasive, abusive, a destructive addict but as long as you’re in the socially acceptable professions, you’re socially adjacent to champagne socialist/wealthy liberals/whatever. Like you can in the same sentence complain about gentrification and cultural appropriation while living in a gentrified neighborhood and teaching yoga and selling healthy versions of ethnic foods and be socially preferable to a factory worker or plumber that’s a great person. City reputation, it’s the Paris and Portland hip social scene special

You can be an incredible person but if you’re dating profile says Amazon Warehouse or GE Appliances assembler, plumber, etc - that’s going to be rougher. And I think it’s worse the younger you go where people really want to be entertainers/influencers. It’s too socially looked down on to be a laborer. Too much is made about the values of a person from their occupation. The vast majority of people in social work organizations I’ve met got the job because they needed a job rather than a desire to help others. Same with nursing. They may have a higher likelihood of having humanist opinions but it’s definitely not certain and I’d say from my experience of those I’ve met, most of everyone treats it as work and nothing more. It’s not their identify and not representative of their beliefs. So manual laborers are diverse in all regards but get judged as if manual laborers equals chauvinist or bad with money or something. There’s not a clear path forward in the current generations to building a competitive manufacturing employee base. Attitudes are already well engrained and there’s little effort for future generations to remove the stigma from non-art/adjacent fields. It’s only a discussion like most social maladys people have identified the past decade

Well, a solution are immigrants. Immigrants are fine working labor as long as they can support themselves and their family. Immigrants are more keen to the belief of sacrificial generations. One generation suffers so their children can live well. Immigrants deal with racism, bullying of their children for being different, violence in poorer neighborhoods they can afford, live wherever work is built rather than the cities that are most trendy. Immigrants are the backbone of western society and culture. Culture because without the immigrants and their immediate children, all these artist/influencers would have to do the labor jobs that keep infrastructure and production going

The stuff about chasing out high ability foreign researchers. Same there. Science and engineering are social negative occupations. Only good for stable family life but not nightlife and adventure. That’s not true. Science and engineering is a diverse workforce in all regards but stereotypes have become socially acceptable. Prejudice is socially acceptable as long as you don’t say something overtly racist or something. Just call it preference or just being cautious or mental health. So the science and engineering fields are filled with immigrants and the immediate children of immigrants. Sacrifice social points for potential economic stability. We’re coming to a point where science and engineering is becoming far more competitive to keep up internationally and job requirements harder. Not guaranteed work anymore and social negative. For ones born in the west, may not be worth the risk to do worse socially and possibly crash out from the science/engineering world. Decline in interest towards science/engineering

A solution is immigration. Both children of immigrants and immigrant scientist/engineers are cornerstones of modern western science and engineering. But blanket anti-immigration is the hot thing currently. People don’t want to compete in quality with immigrants but want the wealth from quality that immigrants bring to the table in international trade competition. The reality I believe is that without immigrants, the quality of new products in the west tanks and western products become outdated. I’ve seen and heard opinions like, “anyone with family in China should not be able to get a security clearance.” Going as far as anyone with family in Asia is a security threat. People like that are basic veteran infantry mindset and/or have never worked in science and technology in the west. Anti-immigration would be a major detriment to every western military along with the countries manufacturing base