To anyone who thinks “we moved manufacturing to China, so someone should be able to replicate that playbook“, the Chinese government is one step ahead. They kno

To anyone who thinks “we moved manufacturing to China, so someone should be able to replicate that playbook“, the Chinese government is one step ahead. They know that being the world’s sole manufacturing base is an incredible economic and geopolitical advantage and won’t give that up. Allowing any country to do a China on them will only weaken their economies of scale. And how do they do this? Requiring export licenses for manufacturing machines. Apple wanted to diversify their iPhone manufacturing to India. The machines needed to manufacture iPhones and themselves made only in China. And China placed export restrictions on them to slow down or stop that process. Ditto on the expertise to run those plants. That expertise used to be distributed. It’s mostly Chinese now, and the government exerts a more direct influence on the experts to prevent the knowledge from being spread around. In any case the idea of being able to trust a foreign country as place where stuff can be manufactured has been harmed by both China and Trump. China has demonstrated how such leverage can be abused and Trump has broken the taboo against tariffs. So there’s going to be even less support for creating an alternative to China, which ironically strengthens China. Lastly, even if you got the machines and the know-how and set up a plant in another country, you’re still buying most of your components and raw materials from China. And China has gotten incredibly good at sanctioning specific industries in specific countries. Ask American arms manufacturers that need permanent magnets.