Why 'bringing jobs back' won't - and can't - mean more hiring of workers

Paris

DONALD Trump has been crowing as companies including Ford renounce plans to move factories to Mexico. But the main beneficiaries of this shift back to the US aren't saying much by way of celebration - industrial robots don't tend to speak.

While globalisation's detractors blame countries such as China and Mexico for stealing the factory jobs of the West, experts point to less obvious culprits which are harder to scapegoat and to overcome in an interconnected economy with complex supply chains.