This has been a slippery slope for the last 15-20 years, actually. If you look at the history of Acer & Asus, for example, you'll see that they both (Asus was actually started by a few ex-Acer engineers) as component suppliers to larger, western OEMs and contract manufacturers. As they got a foothold there, they expanded their offerings to include more complex manufacturing (motherboards, graphics cards, etc), which they parlayed into a lucrative ODM/JDM business, and then eventually launched their own consumer brands to compete directly with their former customers. It took a decade+ to get from point A-->B, but by the time they finished the transformation it was too late for the slow western behemoths to do anything about it.
And that, as they say, is the rest of the story [of how the global supply chain got Asia-heavy, causing eventual movement of manufacturing & logistics to the region, too]. It hasn't just been labor costs -- not at all; it's that unless there are extenuating circumstances (e.g. Brazilian import tariffs) there is almost always more savings to be had via supply chain refinement than via direct labor cost reduction.
And that, as they say, is the rest of the story [of how the global supply chain got Asia-heavy, causing eventual movement of manufacturing & logistics to the region, too]. It hasn't just been labor costs -- not at all; it's that unless there are extenuating circumstances (e.g. Brazilian import tariffs) there is almost always more savings to be had via supply chain refinement than via direct labor cost reduction.