07-13-2015, 04:32 AM
Any assembly that would be cost effective here would need to be small, light, and expensive items like specialized medical equipment. I have a friend who is an engineer with a company that makes that sort of thing in Portland, Oregon. The catheters he works with are 1/20th the size of human hairs, the clean room technology could be set up anywhere and you don't have to compete with a bunch of low bid off shore sweat shops in other countries. The FDA does not make it easy to import medical equipment.
None of the technical people at his company are from the Portland area, the tax climate for businesses isn't much better in Oregon than Hawaii, and the cost of living in PDX is not low, especially housing. But the owner of the company wanted to live there, so that is where he opened his production facility, then he recruited talent from all over the world to work there. The same thing could happen in Hawaii, if someone like that wanted to live here enough to move here and bring jobs like that with them. Hawaii doesn't do a very good job of looking for opportunities like that, and the anti-science vibe coming from the whole TMT debate won't help either.
None of the technical people at his company are from the Portland area, the tax climate for businesses isn't much better in Oregon than Hawaii, and the cost of living in PDX is not low, especially housing. But the owner of the company wanted to live there, so that is where he opened his production facility, then he recruited talent from all over the world to work there. The same thing could happen in Hawaii, if someone like that wanted to live here enough to move here and bring jobs like that with them. Hawaii doesn't do a very good job of looking for opportunities like that, and the anti-science vibe coming from the whole TMT debate won't help either.