China

There are a lot of jobs dependent on trade with China (our company was affected by the Huawei ban, for example), and the fantasy that you can just cut-over to US manufacturing without huge transition job losses is unrealistic.

And if the US wants to get serious about the use of trade sanctions against human rights violations, there are a lot of places closer to home that it could look at. Not to mention the laws against boycotting a certain country for its human rights violations.

There's also the fantasy of assuming that China's next move after the trade sanctions would be a de-escalation. There's a lot of escalation opportunities for them. Like Taiwan.

(Let's be clear, this is not an apology for the human rights violations by China, which are very real especially in Xinjiang; what I am asking for is the same to be applied consistently and not driven by straightforward nationalism)

>> There are a lot of jobs dependent on trade with China (our company was affected by the Huawei ban, for example), and the fantasy that you can just cut-over to US manufacturing without huge transition job losses is unrealistic.

Completely agree. I very much empathize with the author and this issue is the only one where I feel some sort of connection with the current POTUS, but the engineering-at-scale capacities in the United States pale in comparison to China for a variety of reasons - some due to a cheaper labor force and more "flexible" labor laws, and some simply due to culture.

We do not have this capacity now and it is dubious that we can build it quickly without serious governmental subsidies and efforts not seen since World War 2. I'm personally good with the change, but it will cost billions if not trillions of dollars in lost productivity and marginal costs over the next decade or two, and this is not something to handwave away.

There are a hundred million+ factory workers in China producing products at massive scale for the world. Scaling up enough equipment, robots, and skilled workers in America to do even a fraction of that work is going to be a huge undertaking.

What you are missing about the Chinese Communist Party is that it is an existential threat to freedom globally.

We were very worried about the USSR for the same reason. But there was an iron curtain, and you had to actually be invaded to lose your freedom.

Now, the CCP seems able to curtail worldwide freedom through its trade policy, which is a weird thing nobody expected.

and people don't realise that china becomes manufacturing powerhouse not because of low costs. there're are many places in southeast asian alone which are much more cheaper in every aspect. What china has and other places dont have is, highly efficient logistics, very pragmatic kpi driven and arguably more efficient and definitely more business friendly local government policy makers and administration, end to end supply chain for almost every industry, well educated, very disciplined and hardworking workforce, and a unique culture that promotes perseverance, resilience, discipline and self improvement