"Let's move production to China and keep R&D here" is a pipe dream.
Name me one piece of a commercial airliner that you are allowed to source from China. I'll wait.
So when you consider what we're currently making, Apple Computers in a massive factory with suicide nets over the windows is a race to the bottom. Nobody wants to compete with Chinese manufacturing on their home turf of cheap Wal-Mart goods. We'll be living in dog cages too if we do that. We want to make airplanes and spaceships and meaningful technology.
Not sure what the analogy with planes is all about, it's exactly the thing they are both manufactured and designed in the same country.
Building iPhones doesn't pay China's bills (they're citizenry is impoverished) so why would we want to compete with them for jobs to build iPhones? Let them keep doing it! We keep building spaceships and airplanes.
The analogy is.... We're currently building high-tech, high value items where the engineering matters. The manufacturing matters. China buys airplanes from the USA because no commercial airport (including the ones in China) would allow a Chinese-made plane to land there.
Our country isn't held afloat by manufacturing jobs at Apple, or Samsung, or Fisher Price, or Vtech, or Daewoo. It's held together by General Dynamics. General Electric. Boeing. Rolls-Royce. Airbus. Big spenders who contractually must source the highest possible quality out of a domestic supply chain irrespective of price. These are $30-50/hr jobs that put food on America's table.
Making iPhones is a $10/hr job with marginal quality. Throw a handful of iPhones and see what sticks. We're competing with China for jobs they're willing to do for $2/hr jobs. For what?
This is a ridiculous assertion to make when there are indeed Chinese planes landing at Chinese airports.
It's true that the majority of airplanes Chinese airlines currently operate are manufactured outside of China, but this is not the reason.
Boeing have opened a plant there which seems to do interiors now, and it moving into other areas in the future.
Rudder parts are made at a separate facility in a different. These are for the 787 and 737. The link claims there are 9,000 Boeing’s flying with Chinese made parts.
http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2016-09/10/content_...
https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/am...
https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/qz.com/1497137/boeings-china-...