If they removed US access to Chinese supply chains, it'd be a pretty big deal for the US... that might even start a war.
"Cutting off all US supply chain in China" is on the table, but definitely way down the list of what China wants to do. The US decoupling from their economy isn't their big winning play, it's a nightmare scenario for them. If it was a big winning play right now for them, they'd already have done it.
Exactly. It's one thing for China cut off the supply of microchips to the United States. The U.S. would have to make a massive investment in building new supply chains domestically and with other countries.
It's another thing if the United States cuts China off from $6 billion in soybeans each year. China's population will start to starve long before a microchip shortage really hurts the U.S.
I don't really understand why people think most large nations can't feed their own people. China can easily do so, albeit with some changes to their diet. China is the top producers in the world of many crops: wheat, rice, potatoes, grapes, apples, tomatoes, watermelons, hogs, sheep, etc. and #2 or #3 in many others: corn, bananas, beef, chicken, milk, etc. Sure they import a huge amount of food as well. But so does the USA.
It's not a question of switching to Brazil. China was already buying from Brazil. But Brazil doesn't have the capacity to make up for a cut-off of American supplies.
Further, soybeans are seasonal. The reason that China buys from both the U.S. and Brazil is because they have harvests at opposite times of the year. Even if Brazil managed to magically ramp up to fill 100% of China's need in each Brazilian growing season, what is it going to do the other six months of the year?
This literally already happened as another poster said...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-05/china-ask...
Trump wants a trade agreement with the EU for soy and beef in exchange for not imposing tariffs on cars. It probably won't happen, as the EU is too slow to act and most likely won't accept hormone treated beef.
Also China depends on US for IC (and airplane engines).
What good are values as a nation if we're willing to trade them for profits and cheap goods from China?
It's perfectly fine to redirect all US->China manufacturing into other nations such as Vietnam. Not only is that great for helping other nations develop (many of which are regional competitors of China, so it's further ideal that those nations become stronger vis-a-vis China), it reduces China's position of strength.
And yet you promote Tesla, cozying up to the CCP and telling us that "China is the future" so that he can build some cheaper cars and get around tariffs? Whatever helps "the mission"?
https://www.wraltechwire.com/2019/09/02/teslas-elon-musk-i-r...
It would be a particularly perverse deployment of "whataboutism" if one argues that honoring our values over profit is not something we should do now, because whatabout the fact up until quite recently we weren't?
You don't even have to go until "quite recently," we can demonstratively saying we're--today, tomorrow, and for the foreseeable future-- aiding the yemeni genocide. "Whataboutism," is a complete spook that, oddly enough, details conversations because OP is likely not pointing out that we should ignore our values, but rather that the USA has no values to honor in the first place.
To be the advocate for devil, US salary is too high and regulation/labour too tight, protests too many.
In other words, not 'business friendly'.
The US is the most business friendly developed nation ever to exist. It is a corporate welfare state built upon the exploitation of the laborers.
Trump's a dealmaker, he's shown himself to be less than utterly stupid in regards to foreign policy. But building a coalition against China might be more than he can handle.
It would also effectively damn China to being a permanent outsider with respect to manufacturing for the next several decades.
As far as I can tell, this hurts China more than it hurts the US (though clearly it hurts the US). It is just a matter of who's going to backdown first. Who calls the bluff? Who is more risk adverse?
Outside of Twitter 'building complex machines for a fee != colonisation'.
[And don't stuff up the maintenance of your infrastructure to the point you don't have electricity for 18 hours. It wasn't like that when it was commissioned.]
Then you won't need to take deals on onerous conditions. The Swiss don't.
And that's the problem - the Chinese are offering them and people/countries are taking them, in large numbers. That statement also applies to home loans, yet the 2008 crisis. A nice platitude isn't going to prevent people from falling into China's lap.
The US was in a much better position when they ceased to be the industrial center of the world. Then again, we’ve never seen a nation like China.
It's not a great place to make something that needs to last.
It's an even worse place to make something that needs to meet quality standards, since you spend as much or more on QA than you saved by moving manufacturing to China.
Especially have just buttered up Airbus with 300 A320 orders in March. And even more so if I was convinced the C919 will certify in 2021.
There also aren't many places to sell aircraft by the hundreds.
Arguing the other way is that you have suppliers for, say in electronics, literally everything in places like Guangdong. So that's a disincentive to move.
Look at oil. The US was the first country to pump oil at scale. but over time it invested in other countries to develop their oil fields (few countries have the capital to bootstrap their own fields) and extracted strong pricing concessions through joint ownership of the fields and the processing facilities (The Prize, Daniel Yergin).
Eventually, it was just cheaper to buy oil from other countries while sitting on our own reserves (which will be worth more in the future if supplies start to dwindle).
However, eventually the oil market got complicated with multiple new players and the US rediscovered how profitable oil exports could be. When we wanted to, we had the capital and the expertise and the will to exploit US oil again (I am explicitly leaving all environmental concerns, short and long, out of this argument, although they are important both for oil and chip production).
once the US was an oil exporter again it forced all other players to adjust their game. It gave the US a lot more global negotiating power, it gave US more domestic supplies, it provided lots of very high paying jobs to oil workers (again, ignoring environmental externalities here).
Let's say china makes it hard for people to buy chips made in china. And the US decides in response to take all the free capital and tax incentives it has and turn large swaths of unused land into fabs and manufactories for high tech equipment. Remember, like oil, chips are something the US invented and it has a very deep bench when it comes to fab tech.
And China is terrified of this. They know we intentionally outsourced fab production for environmental and cost reasons and they know we can bring it back. They are already seeing how some large consumer electronics companies can pick up major components of their production pipelines and move them to other countries.
personally I think it would probably be a net negative for the US because (like oil) fabs have massive environmental externalities and we happily exported those problems to other countries. but it's an entirely plausible scenario that would just take a bit of changes from the current situation.