And this is all enabled by globalization and global trade. Globalization fundamentally provides arbitrage for two things. Labor costs, and environmental regulation.
Because there were a lot of poor desperate countries that would build your stuff for near slave labor conditions.
In particular, China of course. But China has now passed through its phase of poor desperation. It is now an urbanized economy. So of a lot of other poor desperate countries aren't quite as poor desperate.
Globalization is fundamentally enabled by the US Navy and US military supremacy guaranteeing shipping trade on the oceans.
This has not been the historical Norm. It's actually historical anomaly caused by the power vacuum of world war II, and secondarily by the fact that the Cold war was between the US and maritime power and Russia, who are effectively landlocked.
Some scholars term China as a continental power, especially cuz of their history of invasion like the Mongols, but unlike Russia, China has a very large coastline with a lot of ports that aren't locked in by Arctic ice.
They are a hybrid Continental and a maritime power, and based on their shipbuilding, their ambitions are to become a maritime power.
This combined with American lack of enthusiasm for maintaining this global order, likely means that globalization will come to an end.
And that means onshoring production back from China.
We'll see if this actually happens, but that is the trend long-term.
And that involves a huge amount of switching costs, which essentially is going to be inflation.
I'm certainly not going to sit here and say that Trump's economic policies are correct. Of course, the proper way to handle a transition of reonshoring our production from our previous 50 years of globalization would be gradual and controlled.
Not a bunch of stupid chaotic tariff policies.
But essentially what Trump is doing is in line with everything I've described.