What matters is relative damage to each economy and how easily the trade partner can be replaced with an alternative. When you include all the intermediate inputs it turns out China is the main source of these goods for about 95% of all American industrial sectors https://edconway.substack.com/p/globalisation-is-a-far-far-bigger
The US is completely and utterly dependent on exports from China, meanwhile majority of China’s economy is insulated from the US. In case of a trade war, the damage to US would be much more significant than the other way around. Furthermore, as Russia showed, it’s possible to redirect trade away from the west. China is now actively learning from Russian experience.
On the other hand, reshoring production is a much more difficult task than shifting exports to a different market. The US doesn’t have a coherent plan for achieving that, and it will take many years to implement even if there was one. It requires training out an educated workforce, building factories, securing supply chains, and so on. This is a decades long project.
What matters is relative damage to each economy and how easily the trade partner can be replaced with an alternative. When you include all the intermediate inputs it turns out China is the main source of these goods for about 95% of all American industrial sectors https://edconway.substack.com/p/globalisation-is-a-far-far-bigger
The US is completely and utterly dependent on exports from China, meanwhile majority of China’s economy is insulated from the US. In case of a trade war, the damage to US would be much more significant than the other way around. Furthermore, as Russia showed, it’s possible to redirect trade away from the west. China is now actively learning from Russian experience.
On the other hand, reshoring production is a much more difficult task than shifting exports to a different market. The US doesn’t have a coherent plan for achieving that, and it will take many years to implement even if there was one. It requires training out an educated workforce, building factories, securing supply chains, and so on. This is a decades long project.