Companies from appliance makers to car-parts suppliers have lined up to offer a quiet caution to US president-elect Donald Trump as he considers pulling his country from trade deals: most lost manufacturing jobs are not coming back, but higher costs for consumers could. Consider the sneaker industry, one of the first to move to Asia because of the sharply lower cost of production in China and Vietnam. Nike and its smaller, privately held rival New Balance Shoes split over the question of whether the US should back the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. But if Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress nix that trade deal as expected, both companies and the analysts who track them agree Asia is poised to keep its dominance as the industry's manufacturing hub. Companies such as Nike have invested too much in those lower-wage economies to consider moving factories, even if tariffs rise and push up costs for US consumers, analysts say. Any new hiring in the US will be years down the ...
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