Here's one of the most generic electronic components - a 1K resistor.[1] These sell for about US$0.0015 each. DigiKey has a list of many suppliers.
There are a few old-line US resistor makers in there, including Bourns and Ohmite. They're price competitive with Chinese companies. But when you look up their engineering job locations, none are in the US or UK.[2] Plants are in Mexico, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Hungary.
To get prices down, engineers have to be very familiar with what goes on in manufacturing. If you separate engineering from manufacturing, you get overpriced designs.
Not that many people who went to a good engineering school in a first-world country today want to spend their lives inside a big factory in a low-wage country. But that's what it takes to make stuff.
[1] https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/chip-resistor-sur...
Most information is not digital or hardly digitizable.
I don't completely agree with the article's classification of ARM as a hardware company. ARM produces VHDL and resells licenses, but does not produce any chips. It's closer to a software company than a TSMC.
The difference between someone designing a part in cad and someone designing the tool paths for the machine that makes the part in cam is night and day.
Engineering seems to be returning as domestic manufacturing increases thanks to foreign auto companies setting up shop across the state, replacing what the US companies left behind.
Some gladly would if paid handsomely by the local standards, that is, adequately by the US standards.
The bigger problem is raising children away from your native culture.
For example, consumer electronics, industrial machines and robotics, telecom and medical devices.