Thanks to rising fuel prices and wage inflation in China, it's actually more expensive to manufacture and ship electronics across the Pacific for the American market than it would be to produce them domestically, according to a report from The McKinsey Quarterly. But iPhone assembly plants won't be coming to a depressed rust-belt community near you, because it's cheaper still to produce those electronics in a Mexican maquiladora. Though I hear prison labor is a real bargain, and there's no shortage of that here in the states. [Broadstuff]