Don’t look now, but TVs may again be made in U.S.

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Lotus International in Canton, Mich. on Monday, Jan. 16, 2012. Televisions will start to be made at this site in March. (AP Photo/Detroit Free Press, Patricia Beck)

Updated: February 23, 2012 8:14AM

DETROIT — A small Minnesota electronics company aims to bring TV manufacturing back to the U.S., hiring 100 workers at a plant in Canton, Mich.

Element Electronics, which sells TVs made in China to big-box stores like Wal-Mart and Target, has teamed up with a Michigan company, Lotus International, to produce low-priced flat-screen TVs that are 46 inches and larger.

The first large TVs could start rolling off an assembly line in March. The company plans to hire workers and set up a call center to handle customer questions.

Michael O’Shaughnessy, Element’s president and owner, pledges that its Michigan-made TVs will not cost consumers any more than if the sets were produced in China.

“We are doing this to set an example,” said O’Shaughnessy. “This is the right thing to do.”

Sony closed its last U.S. TV plant in 2010. Vizio is American-owned but outsources its production outside the country.

Bringing back TV manufacturing is part of a growing business trend called reshoring. With soaring costs for Chinese labor and shipping, many companies are rethinking whether it still makes sense to make their products overseas.

If Element Electronics succeeds in making flat-screen televisions in Michigan, it will become the only American-owned TV manufacturer producing in the U.S., something the country has lacked since Zenith Electronics became a subsidiary of LG Electronics 17 years ago.

But it’s a big if.

For decades, TV production has been migrating outside of the U.S., first to Mexico and then to Asia. Like makers of other electronic products, textiles and shoes, TV manufacturers gravitated toward cheap labor, necessary to compete against growing global competition.

But O’Shaughnessy, who spent 15 years working for home appliance maker Frigidaire, said the costs for making TVs in China and then shipping them to America have been rising in recent years and are expected to increase further. But the economics only work for TVs that are 46 inches and bigger.

Last fall, the Boston Consulting Group, a global management consulting firm, predicted that in the next five years more companies will shift manufacturing work back to the U.S. or choose to locate new production in the U.S. because of China’s shrinking cost advantage.

It noted that Chinese wages are rising at a rate of 15 percent to 20 percent a year.

Gannett News Service