Manufacturing Reshoring Announcements Rarely Cite Energy Prices. How Big Is the Price Gap?

Exhibit 3.1 lists 29 factors and the number of times each was cited in reshoring and foreign direct investment cases. The report's database is compiled from published articles, company announcements, government sources and submitted case studies (Methodology, page 32). It recorded 1,509 cases in 2025 (Exhibit 1.3, page 7).

The energy row ranked 23rd in 2025. Its 2026 count is zero. The 2026 column is annualized from first-half data, so a zero implies no citation was recorded from January to June 2026.

The exhibit does not say that manufacturers think energy is unimportant. It counts what companies said in public. The report makes the same distinction: its survey results “indicate that public announcements do not always reveal the strategic considerations that shape manufacturing investment decisions” (page 16), and it notes that companies may cite tariffs out of “a desire to align with the administration's policy priorities” (page 15).

The report also names energy when it explains where investment is coming from. It says the rise in announced jobs from Western Europe “likely reflects continued geopolitical uncertainty, high energy costs in parts of Europe, tariffs, and the growing attractiveness of locating production closer to the U.S. consumer market” (page 20). Announced jobs from the United Kingdom are 17,370 in the annualized 2026 column against 1,800 in 2025 (Exhibits 4.3 and 4.2, pages 20 and 19).

The 15% figure used below is the report's, not a statement of any tariff in force. Its words: “Tariffs of 15% are often enough to offset the manufacturing cost difference vs. other developed countries.” (page 15)

On the size of that difference: “Europe’s manufacturing cost is about 10 to 15% lower than U.S. cost, on average. China’s and low-wage Asia’s costs are typically 25 to 40% below U.S. cost.” (page 20)

So the report puts Europe's average manufacturing cost below the US figure even with Europe's energy prices. It does not break that cost into parts, and we cannot tell how much energy is already inside it. The energy gaps below should not be added to or subtracted from the report's 10 to 15%.

TTF is quoted in euros per megawatt-hour and Henry Hub in dollars per million British thermal units. In one unit: €90.96/MWh × 1.1021 USD per EUR ÷ 3.412142 MMBtu per MWh = $29.38/MMBtu. Henry Hub was $3.23/MMBtu. All three values are OilPriceAPI quotes from Nov 14, 2026 (codes DUTCH_TTF_EUR, EUR_USD and NATURAL_GAS_USD), taken within an hour of each other, not at the same moment.

NATURAL_GAS_USD is the NYMEX Henry Hub front-month future (the December 2026 contract on that date), not a physical spot price. The conversion is worked through in converting TTF from €/MWh to $/MMBtu. Whether the wholesale gap explains European factory investment in the United States is checked in TTF vs Henry Hub and European factories. Current values are on the Dutch TTF and Henry Hub pages.

The gap has not been this wide for long. In weekly averages it was $6.05/MMBtu in the week of Nov 17, 2025, as low as $4.53/MMBtu in the week of Dec 1, 2025, and as high as $29.76/MMBtu in the week of Oct 26, 2026.

A factory does not pay the hub price. The official delivered price statistics run months behind, and the latest period both EIA and Eurostat cover is January to June 2026.

United States: EIA's monthly industrial natural gas price for January to June 2026 was 7.20, 8.43, 5.27, 4.80, 4.19, 4.36 dollars per thousand cubic feet. The simple average is $5.71 per thousand cubic feet ÷ 1.037 = $5.50/MMBtu, using EIA's 2025 average heat content of 1.037 MMBtu per thousand cubic feet.

European Union: Eurostat's price for non-household gas users in band I5 (1,000,000 to 3,999,999 GJ a year), first half of 2026, excluding VAT and other recoverable taxes, was €12.9905/GJ × 1.1666 USD per EUR × 1.0551 GJ per MMBtu = $15.99/MMBtu. The exchange rate is the average of the ECB's daily reference rates from Jan 2 to Jun 30, 2026.

That is a delivered gap of $10.48/MMBtu for a large industrial user in the first half of 2026. The hub gap over the same months averaged $11.40/MMBtu (weekly averages, weeks starting Jan 5, 2026 to Jun 22, 2026: TTF $14.59, Henry Hub $3.19). The two measures agree on the first half. The widening since July 2026 is in the hub data only, because delivered prices for the second half have not been published.

The two statistics are not built the same way. EIA's is an average across all industrial customers. Eurostat reports by consumption band: $17.62/MMBtu in band I4 (100,000 to 999,999 GJ) and $14.55 in band I6 (4,000,000 GJ or more), converted the same way. EIA's 2026 values are preliminary.

US industrial customers paid 9.29, 8.94, 8.56, 8.60, 8.68, 9.16 cents/kWh in January to June 2026, a simple average of 8.87 cents/kWh (EIA Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.3, preliminary). The August 2026 figure was 9.64 cents.

Eurostat's headline EU figure for non-household customers, band IC, was €0.1800/kWh in the first half of 2026 excluding VAT and other recoverable taxes. At 1.1666 USD per EUR that is 21.00 cents/kWh, or 2.37 times the US average. The ratio falls as consumption rises.

The comparison is approximate. EIA divides revenue by sales across every industrial customer. Eurostat surveys prices by band and this series leaves out VAT and recoverable levies. Gas and electricity also should not be blended into one “energy” number: TTF was 9.1 times Henry Hub on Nov 14, 2026, the electricity ratio is between 1.5 and 2.4, and a plant's exposure depends on which of the two it buys.

These are arithmetic on the prices above, not estimates for any real plant. Each one states its assumption.

A. Ammonia. Assumption: about 33 MMBtu of natural gas per ton of ammonia, the figure in a 2007 USDA Economic Research Service report (“Approximately 33 million British thermal units (mm Btu) of natural gas are needed to produce 1 ton of ammonia”). Newer plants may use less. At the Nov 14, 2026 hub quotes, 33 MMBtu × $3.23 = $106.59 of gas per ton at Henry Hub and 33 MMBtu × $29.38 = $969.52 at TTF, a difference of $862.93 per ton. USGS estimates the 2025 average Gulf Coast ammonia price at $450 per short ton; 15% of that is $67.50. The gas difference is 12.8 times the tariff. At the first-half delivered gap it is $345.99 per ton, 5.1 times.

B. A plant burning one million MMBtu a year. Assumption: 1,000,000 MMBtu of gas a year, bought at the prices shown. The hub gap on Nov 14, 2026 is worth $26.15 million a year. A 15% tariff equals that on $174 million of goods. At the first-half delivered gap the figures are $10.48 million a year and $70 million of goods. A plant selling more than that for each million MMBtu it burns gets less from the gas gap than from the tariff.

C. A plant that mainly buys electricity. Assumption: electricity is a stated share of the US plant's cost, and the same plant in the EU would pay the band IC ratio of 2.37. The extra cost is the share × (2.37 − 1). At a 5% share that is 6.8% of cost. It reaches 15% only when electricity is 11.0% of cost. We have no sourced figure for a typical electricity share, so the table shows a range.

The examples change with three inputs: how much gas or electricity a unit of product uses, which price the plant actually pays, and the date. A model that uses a single spot spread will move as much as the chart above did. Using a history of both hubs, and the delivered price series for the plant's size band, shows the range instead.

Weekly and daily history for TTF, Henry Hub and EUR/USD is available through the Dutch TTF price API. You can get a free API key to pull the same three codes, and pricing lists the plans that include longer history.