It’s hard to avoid doing business with the Chinese.
Our manufacturers have sold out...
China is flat nasty. I pity their neighboring countries. They will be bullied mercilessly in the future. China does not care about international law. The want everything their way. The USA would be wise to support manufacturing here, even if it requires long term protection for US companies. Depending on China for anything is not acceptable.
It’s impossible to avoid doing business with the Chinese - at least right now. Likewise, China cannot afford to stop selling to us. Our nations are locked in a semi-permanent embrace that would take many years to disentangle.
Our manufacturers were driven out by progressive policies more than they were attracted to China by lower costs. No attempt is being made to mitigate the job-killing effects of these policies. They remain firmly in place, enriching union bosses and Democratic campaign coffers and impoverishing everyone else.
Now in many fields, the art is lost - there are barely any Americans left who even know how to do the work. We are suffering a huge shortage of skilled labor. We have a lot of Millennials who are fully qualified to be Social Media Influencers, but have no hope of successfully operating a lathe - and no interest in learning.
China is not an especially cheap place to manufacture right now, as wages have risen sharply, but domestic industry usually offers only expensive and lower-quality alternatives. To put it bluntly - work not done in China could possibly be done in the USA, but it won't be done by Americans. The GOPe realized this a long time ago, but rather than doing the hard work of training or re-training American citizens they have simply opened the borders as a shortcut.
When you see your "Made in the USA" garments being assembled in a Los Angeles sweatshop at sewing machines manned by middle-aged, Mexican Mafia-looking men of dubious legal-status and hear the Middle Eastern factory owner on the phone swearing in Farsi at his brother-in-law in Guangzhou who can't get the fabric shipped out of China on time, you will begin to understand the magnitude of the problem. It's American manufacturing, all right, and carefully protected by the existing tariff structures - but without a single US citizen involved.
Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and other Asian nations could eventually emerge as viable competitors to China, but they are much smaller and it will take time for them to ramp up their infrastructure and offer goods at the same quality and quantity levels China does.
No matter how high the tariffs get, the USA will still be buying Chinese goods. They will just cost a little more. Some of the cheapest items at WalMart may be sourced immediately from other countries - but the more complex and expensive items are going to remain Chinese for some time to come. Any renaissance in American manufacturing is going to take years to happen - and simply can't happen at all with the current collection of Democrats and GOPe occupying our legislatures.