[Zhang Fei]

Why??? They sell a lot of manufactured to the USA. If oil gets too expensive for them they will simply increase the price of the goods they sell us.

In a world with just two countries, that would work. In reality, they compete with every other country in the world for low end assembly work. Chinese real estate has always been expensive compared to its competitors. Recently, wage inflation has made Chinese labor expensive as well. They can't just raise prices. We open plants there and buy from them because they're cheap. When costs go up or they raise prices, we'll get our stuff elsewhere. You may or may not recall that we used to see a lot of stuff that said Made in Taiwan, Korea, et al during the 80's and the 90's. China is just the latest cheap labor destination.

[NRG1973]

In a world with just two countries, that would work. In reality, they compete with every other country in the world for low end assembly work. Chinese real estate has always been expensive compared to its competitors. Recently, wage inflation has made Chinese labor expensive as well. They can't just raise prices. We open plants there and buy from them because they're cheap. When costs go up or they raise prices, we'll get our stuff elsewhere. You may or may not recall that we used to see a lot of stuff that said Made in Taiwan, Korea, et al during the 80's and the 90's. China is just the latest cheap labor destination. When oil prices are stable, its easy to move manufacturing from country A to country B. But oil prices are so high that it becomes difficult to justify building a new plant somewhere else. Then, there's the whole issue of supply chain. Right now, China has the ability to produce the steel, aluminum, copper, etc that manufacturer's need. I'm not sure that another country can build those industries from scratch.