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Well, yes and no. China being by far and away the beneficiary of such trade policy, with their currency pegged to the US Dollar, it's not quite as simple as that, otherwise Fed “printing” would have led to a yuan that was stronger by comparison. Due to the peg it didn't. While the end result might look the same, the reality was and is more akin to domestic wage suppression that has kept broader inflation in check, although we have seen something along those lines in hard assets, goods and services that are not dependent upon those wages that are being suppressed. We've also seen it in consumables with inelastic demand. Pretty Machiavellian. Hard-boiled communists would be proud of making the bourgeoisie scream in such a manner.

...their currency pegged to the US Dollar, it's not quite as simple as that, otherwise Fed “printing” would have led to a yuan that was stronger by comparison.

Somehow that doesn't make sense. The Yuan/$ exchange rate's market driven and varies. Are you talking about the Hong Kong $ which is pegged?

Well, yes and no.

Obviously, but I was in a hurry and it got you to do a nice job of penning the summary. I just wish the posters here would set aside their obsession with labor costs for an understanding of the costs of regulation in that 'overhead' component here in the US. IMO, it's a bigger reason for driving production offshore (deliberately and with the same beneficiaries) than is the cost of labor.

As to the yuan, that was pegged as a way for the Chinese elites to accumulate cash at the expense of savers. With a labor pool the size of theirs, they could get away with it, for at least a decade or two. The consequence was the need to both appease labor and to find a way to use the cash to consolidate power and transform historic urban squalor into a secure police state. For a long time they parked excess young people in the military, but that's just as much a long term threat as it is a way to maintain power. Hence Agenda21 instacities, mass transportation, etc. Now all they have to do is to fill them. They will, and at gunpoint if necessary.

It's happening here too obviously, but the trend will be to squeeze the burbs back into 'safe zones' within urban hell. At that point, whether China or the US, the 'gun to the head' will be the threat to simply cut the electrical power.