U.S. orders closure of Chinese consulate in Houston, angering Beijing

If you don't consider this to be "leverage," then perhaps you can suggest another name.

China doesn't need any one country's corporations in order to survive. Even if what you're saying had been true 20 years ago, I think it's incorrect to believe that China has no leverage over corporations that do business in their massive manufacturing sector today.

China doesn't even need the West to be involved in HK, and they have acted to that effect. HK has become a much smaller contributor to their economy than it was when Britain ceded HK to China, in relative terms.

If Apple's assembly campuses in China shut down tomorrow, Apple will be unable to manufacture iPhones, but China would be able to absorb some of the redirected demand in the form of handsets from Oppo, Vivo, Huawei, Xiaomi, etc. Samsung would pick up a lot too.

If Boeing (which contrary to your zero-leverage thesis was strong-armed into opening a finishing plant in China) shuts down sales to Asia Pacific tomorrow, China will be able to take up demand in the form of aircraft sold by Comac. Even if not, a moratorium on Boeing purchases in China would tilt the Airbus-Boeing duopoly toward Airbus.

Apple generated $260B in revenue last year, and Boeing generated $77B. China's GDP was $27T (PPP). See the difference? Our companies need them, but they don't need our companies.

Even if the manufacturing sector were to disappear tomorrow, China would be a huge consumer market. Their buying power is a form of leverage. When you make them the world's factory on top of their substantial consumer activity, that gives them immense power to shape the economic behavior of foreign governments and corporations.

Why do you think that Apple acquiesces to China's government despite claiming to be pro-democracy and pro-privacy back in the States? It's not because China lacks leverage, that's for sure.

The first step to disempowering China is to accept reality; American consumption of Chinese goods has basically subsidized the growth of that country. Once we have accepted the problem, we can take steps to solve it.

Ultimately cost of labor alone isn't going to be the deciding factor, and when I say "plenty of cheap labor in Latin America" I'm not suggesting that we can save money in the short term by moving our factories there. I'm suggesting an affordable alternative, geographically closer to home, in a set of countries that (when compared to China) are smaller, more defensible, and culturally more similar to us. We have seen evidence that China's manufacturing sector includes slave labor. You can't compete with slave labor! This is why the "it's just business, save a penny where you can" mentality totally misses the point.

We have to spend some money to get out of this mess. For a major corporation, this would mean spending less on buybacks in order to build new manufacturing facilities elsewhere. For our government, this would mean coordinating with our companies and foreign ally governments to manage a concerted effort at creating new manufacturing ecosystems in mutually-agreed-upon regions that offer logistical and tax advantages.

With respect to your point about efficient, short and well integrated supply chains: large corporations have to be the first movers. They are the only ones who can begin to cultivate the seedlings of regional manufacturing ecosystems developed around the production of a particular type of product.

There are large negative externalities to cross-pacific shipping, and these externalities have to be considered when we answer the question, "how much money do we save by getting our stuff from China?". One such externality is the cost of US-taxpayer-subsidized shipping from China.

Another is that both sides suffer from invasive species that affect billions of dollars of revenue in tangential industries. The spotted lanternfly was introduced to Berks County, Pennsylvania, in a shipment of stone from China a few years ago. It now threatens billions of dollars of economic productivity from the hardwood, fruit, hops, and wine industries in that state alone. This is but one example of a greater phenomenon. If you source closer to home, some of the invasive species risk gets mitigated.

If the shredder shreds with 1mm particles, it will be pretty much impossible to piece it together and it will depend on how each page mixes with other particles. Even if the particle size is 100mm, if you throw those pieces in a pile of 500 tons of paper, and shuffle it sufficiently, then it will be impossible to piece together the original source.