How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

Americans need to get over their view of “Asia” as being about making shoes. When I was working in engineering in the early aughts, we mocked the Chinese as being able only to copy American technology. Today, China is competitive with or ahead of America in key technology areas, including nuclear power, AI, EVs, and batteries.

We need to anticipate a future where China is equal to America on a per capita basis, but four times bigger. Is that a world where “Designed by Apple in California, Made in China” still makes sense? What will be America’s competitive edge in that scenario?

What seems most likely to me in the future is that the US will find itself in the same position the UK is in now. Dominating finance and services won’t mean anything when both the IP and the physical products are being produced somewhere else.

Be careful extrapolating based on China's current population and demographics. Too much of our armchair assessments of China's velocity is based on their meteoric rise on the backs of a historically large working-age population—a population that is now rapidly aging out of the workforce with nothing to replace it thanks to the one child policy. The US's demographics aren't stellar, but they're a lot better off than most of the developed world.

It remains to be seen how different 2010's China—with 90% of the population being under 60—is from 2050's China—with only 69% of the population being under 60.

https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2050/