Hitting where it hurts. Just like cheaper goods from foreign lands caused the spurge in globalisation and global warming, it seems that the rising costs due to transportation will finally be the death knell of it. And it is about time too.

A couple of days ago I had gone to Ikea and bought some candles. I came home and saw that those candles were actually made in Poland. For some reason I didn’t check it out in the store else I would not have bought it. Thinking about it, it just makes no sense at all to me. Why can’t they be made locally over here? Why do candles have to be put on a monstrous ship and transported across the atlantic. The candles cost $2.99. I cannot believe that the candles could not be manufactured here for about the same price. Why spend so much on transporting something that could so easily be made locally.

I could understand buying something from remote lands if there is no chance of it being produced locally. Think spices from India and the old silk route. But now with the technological advances, it is quite possible to produce most of our consumption needs locally. Buy local should be the new mantra.

No one will wake up though unless it hurts their purse strings. And that is exactly what seems to be in the offing. As this article points out, globalisation is reversible.

From the article:

Offshore momentum slows

Higher shipping costs are casting a chill on what had seemed an unstoppable trend toward the offshoring of U.S. jobs and production. In an April survey of nearly 1,000 companies by RSM McGladrey, the number planning to move offshore fell by 20% from a year earlier.

A follow-up report that the Minneapolis-based consultants released on July 31 showed that businesses are increasingly focused on their transportation costs. In a survey of 357 small and midsize businesses, 52% said they expect “dramatic increases” in their freight costs, vs. 20% that identified transport charges as a worry three months earlier.

“Where things are being made is going to change,” says McGladrey executive Tom Murphy. There already are tentative signs that well-established patterns are in flux. Through July 19, U.S. railroads had carried 5 million shipping containers, down 3.4% compared with the same period last year.

In May, Swedish furniture maker Ikea announced plans for a 930,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Danville, Va. The company decided to open its first U.S. production facility in part because the cost of shipping its Expedit bookshelves, Lack coffee tables and Besta entertainment centers exceeded the cost of making them, says spokesman Joseph Roth.

Some hope for the buy local proponents I guess.