It's misinformation to say the US is in a weak position. It's not. It's just gone on to do other things. When we talk about these trade deficits do we include streaming services, television shows, films, games and whatever else?
> (including bringing them domestically where it makes sense)
It doesn't, that's the point. Would you rather have factories with workers below the minimum wage or industries like the NBA?
China made that choice in the late 1970s and early 1980s and has progressed ever since and is now powerful enough to be able to stand up to the United States.
You have a warped view of what manufacturing is and how it can be built upon that is closer to children's cartoons than reality.
So you're saying that China has grew out of manufacturing because a lot of it is moving out of China. In the same way the US has also moved out of manufacturing ages ago.
> is now powerful enough to be able to stand up to the United States
How do you conclude that the ONLY thing China did is manufacturing?
> You have a warped view of what manufacturing is
No, it goes to show you know very little about the world. It's not all just manufacturing. That's definitely not all that China does. If it was you wouldn't have to ban Huawei and Tiktok.
Do you know how many games come from China now? A lot of US and EU game studios are at least partly owned by Chinese companies e.g. Tencent.
China's Manufacturing Production [1] and Industrial Production has increased year-on-year for the past 10 years, excluding abnormal events such as Covid, so where are you getting your data? If you meant to say that they are transitioning to a higher level of manufacturing, instead of the sweatshops they were associated with in the 90s, this is true. But it was the low-level manufacturing that allowed them to build up both the capital and the skill necessary to advance further and further.
Hell, you've got a naval empire (the United States) that is currently unable to come even close to the Chinese ship-building capabilities - their output dwarfs the US by 232x [2]. It's not something that happened overnight and it's certainly not something that was strategically planned out 30 years ago - it is a slow process that started with low-level outsourcing and allowed China to grow into the behemoth it is today.
Sooner or later the US was going to have to deal with this fact and it seems like that time has come. Whether or not there's a plan, whether or not it will even work - I have no clue, you have no clue and neither does anyone on this forum.
Also, to counter another point you made - "When we talk about these trade deficits do we include streaming services, television shows, films, games and whatever else?" - you can't fight a war with an economy based on streaming services, TV shows and games.
[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/china/manufacturing-production
[2] https://www.americanmanufacturing.org/blog/chinas-shipbuildi...
Is this how we came up with the "magical" tariffs formula? Look at some data, interpret it in a random way and off we go?
You don't say that [1] shows the average growth was 6.56% in China vs 9.28% in Vietnam [3] vs 10.33% in Bangladesh. So then relatively, it's not exactly "growing" is it?
If China was still explicitly growing manufacturing the numbers would be much higher. Is it actually focused on manufacturing or are there other triggers? E.g. US banned Huawei, so they had to go back home and manufacture. E.g. US is banning AI and other exports so China has to make their own. I'd say US is increasing China's manufacturing rather than China!
[3] https://tradingeconomics.com/vietnam/manufacturing-productio...
[4] https://tradingeconomics.com/bangladesh/manufacturing-produc...
[5] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/manufactu...
> Hell, you've got a naval empire (the United States) that is currently unable to come even close to the Chinese ship-building capabilities > Sooner or later the US was going to have to deal with this fact
Why? Does the UK need to deal with this "fact" too then? The US has a naval empire that the UK is no where close to in capabilities. Based on your logic, the EU would have to band together to revive the British empire and deal with the US?
I wouldn't want this. The US wouldn't want this either. So what fact is the issue?
