3 ms·
> "Here" and "not here" is a complete set. > Globalisation's great right up until your manufacturing base decides they don't like you, or you them. Your manuf
by eru 2mo ago
> "Here" and "not here" is a complete set.
> Globalisation's great right up until your manufacturing base decides they don't like you, or you them.
Your manufacturing base might be in China. You might be in Bulgaria. And when China doesn't like you, you ask someone else.
- ben_w 2mo agoRight now for too many critical components there often isn't an alternative to China, and even when it exists it can be at too small a scale. This is basically why China won the trade was vs. Trump's tariffs. People are also increasingly uncertain how the next geopolitical Great Game will play out, so even if for each economic input there was a good alternative to China today, in the same way that the post-WW2 world had to pick sides between USA and USSR, we wouldn't know which source was safe vs. which was about to get itself integrated into China so deeply that their nation follows and enforced all sanctions China creates.
- eru 2mo agoI'm not sure the post-WW2 had to pick sides. There were plenty of non-aligned states, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Aligned_Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Aligned_Movement for one example, but there were plenty of others. Picking sides (and swapping sides) was often useful to get patronage and to play the sides against each other, but it wasn't necessary.