I'm curious why you think China will decline or be eliminated, I always thought that China was a reliable as a production/trading partner and that they planned for decades ahead with programs like Belt and Road Initiative unlike western politics that only looks as far as the next election. Very open to correction on this though, thinking about it not sure what formed my opinion on this.

Over what timescale? Is the presumption that China, the country of one child policy, will do nothing about the problem?

But that's the current dollar-based system. Like the gold-based system before it, today countries as a whole have to have long-term balanced trade, as measured in dollars. That's what a great many countries demanded to keep the system fair. If need be, some temporary imbalances can be forgiven by the world bank, but not much.

Outlawing or taxing imports (=tarriffs) of course helps with this.

However, if you look at economic history this always slowly lead to problems that only got resolved by fresh loans (that's what the move to dollar effectively did), hyperinflation or wars.

Tariff introduced by congress? Sure. Tariffs introduced by fiat? No.

The fact that a president can create them out of thin air means they can be removed just as easily. I'm not anti-tariff or anti-re-homing-production (where it makes sense) but the _way_ it was done is my problem. Additionally there was no ramp, it was 0->100 immediately. A bill passed by congress to slowly ratchet up tariffs or similar over a period of time would have a much larger impact IMHO. It would give companies the ability to plan instead of just react. The tariffs were enacted in a timespan that made it impossible to move production local before they went into effect. Additionally, tariffs being applied unequally is terrible, it just means whoever has the biggest bribes (solid gold plaque holders anyone?) or can pretend they are moving manufacturing back to the US gets an advantage.

The amount of power held in the executive branch is unacceptable. Just look at how they raided/repurposed the CHIPS act money to force Intel (which I have no real love for) to sell a stake to the government.

Authoritarian governments are bad for business.

The American electorate seems quite happy to elect people who will sabotage the US economy, so that isn't any reassurance that it won't happen. Tariffs are currently going up and down based on a single man's whims.

Why would when when they can just bribe the current government to be exempt?

If tariffs were planned, steady increase on a long term we might see a good effect. Like tariffs were used before this trump admin.

Did you get that quote from Patrick McGee's book "Apple in China"?

Wiki says: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_in_China

    > In the book, McGee says that, under the leadership of Tim Cook, Apple invested $275 billion in China between 2016 and 2021, to manufacture its products in the country (including building factories and supply chains in China, as well as training Chinese workers). McGee compares this to the Marshall Plan, as this is in excess of other corporate spending and, in real terms, was about twice the monetary value of the Marshall Plan.

You fail to understand that Apple investing in China is in their best interest - and then returned back to millions of shareholders. If investing in the USA would be a better ROI, there would be no need for any measures like this to force companies somewhere.

People in favour of tariffs make it seem like the best and wealthiest economy in the world is in a bad shape, and it is completely opposite, while failing to address the inequality issue with the wealth distribution.

Then all this 3x amount would have had no ROI, China would have outdid the US comparatively.

I distinctly remember Apple having produced a video showing off an automated assembly line for PCB production for the original Mac. It's not like they didn't try it.

Probably not much. The US doesn’t have the capacity for high volume manufacturing. We cost too much.

Easy to imagine - phones would be 1.5x more expensive than they are now, from get go. The cheap electronics (and goods in large part) have been hallmark of "quality of life in USA" for decades; I still get iPhone and Lenovo laptops 40% cheaper than family members living in Europe.

However, it seems that Americans are so tired of growing prices that they are getting used to paying them. Just yesterday there was an article that summarized oil price drop 40% from when the war cooled down, but prize at the pump went down only 12%. The big oil explains this that people will buy gas anyways, so why lowering the price? I think we will see the same happening with electronics - Apple breaking news on $500B factory spending in USA is mostly because they believe Apple owners will keep buying Apple regardless of the price. They may be right... will see.

>Apple invested 3x the Marshall Plan into China.

Apple invested 3x that because they got 30x in return from the savings versus US manufacturing.

>Imagine if they'd spent that on the US instead.

Then iPhones would either have to be 10x more exsolve to keep the same profit margins or Apple would be broke trying to compete with Chinese made goods using US manufacturing.