The uncomfortable reality here is that the Chinese are simply better than us at most things. But simply surrendering all of our core industries is not a viable

The uncomfortable reality here is that the Chinese are simply better than us at most things. But simply surrendering all of our core industries is not a viable plan for any country. This puts the US in a difficult position. We are loosing the trade war, but if you recall during Covid we were also unable to secure a lot of basic medical supplies because of this dependence on a non-aligned foreign power. So unless you assume that the CCP are suddenly outstandingly altruistic then you could reasonably prefer losing a trade war to being rendered a vassal state. There might be better ways to avoid this fate, but given the magnitude of China’s advantages right now I am not sure that these are going to be much better. There will be a lot of pain from these tariffs, but doing nothing is also going to cause a lot of pain.