Tech sector sees long term effectiveness of 2018 Trump Tariffs as companies have diversified and unlikely to go back to China regardless of Biden administration
From the article:
“ODM Wistron will stick to its established policy of diversifying production risks and increasing non-China production even though the new US administration could be friendlier to China, according to the firm’s vice chairman Robert Huang.
Up to two-thirds of China-sourced shipments of consumer products to the US have been subject to punitive tariff rates imposed by the Trump administration starting March 2018, driving major Taiwan ODMs Quanta Computer, Compal Electronics, Wistron and Inventec to set up production lines in Taiwan and Southeast Asia on their own or at the request of clients, with Wistron logging wider diversity of production bases than most other peers, according to industry sources.
Huang said Wistron has diverse production bases, operating manufacturing facilities in India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and China in Asia alone.
Huang said Wistron will move forward in the direction of boosting its non-China production ratio to 50% within two years as recently revealed by its chairman Simon Lin.
Huang said even if the new US government adjusts its China policy, supply chain players will not immediately make major changes in their production deployment although they may rethink about it.
For manufacturers, diversifying production capacities to more places beyond China will remain a sure direction ahead as they should avoid all possible risks, Huang said, adding manufacturers should also take changes in industrial and market trends into consideration in order to have greater flexibility in their decision making.”
US tariffs drive drop in Chinese imports (thats the point ):
China still claims to be the “winner” in the Tariff war, and yet they cry nonstop about the tariffs on Global Times, CGTN, Xinhua, China Daily, etc … seems they got hurt really (much worse than they are letting on) bad by the tariffs, much worse than the US. Albeit the US was inevitably going to hurt because it exposed the reliance on China - now hopefully the trade war was a nice “I told you so” from Trump (and now Bipartisan gov) to the world and they won’t fall back into the same egregious reliance on Red China’s capabilities.
If China was actually “winning” the trade war why would they threaten the US that they can defeat them in a real war? Interesting right?
And, if China keeps up its incredibly aggressive behavior of the past year, this thread might morph over the next few years into an actual US-China War thread…will see.
" * ‘Everything is to be lost’ in the event of a military conflict between the world’s two largest economies, and casualties would be a certainty, warns Lee Hsien Loong
Even if Washington and Beijing cannot learn to trust each other fully, they must learn to cooperate on areas such as climate change and health, he says"
My 2 cents, China should stop invading others’ space in the South ‘China’ Sea. Heck, we should rename the South ‘China’ Sea.
China has fallen up to 40% short on its agreement to buy American goods. So far, US President Joe Biden has not pulled back on the tough trade messaging to Beijing of his predecessor.
President Biden has insisted that existing tariffs will be kept in place for now as he looks to boost the US economy, which was hit hard early in the coronavirus pandemic but is now recovering.
The focus on the laboratory theory in recent days multiplied calls in Washington for the US to make China pay a price for the pandemic, even before the full extent of its origins are known, adding more toxicity to a geopolitical joust that may spark a new Cold War.
US is using Wuhan Lab investigation as leverage for keeping existing Tariffs – Bravo to Trump to putting them in place, and bravo to Biden for keeping them active, at least for now. Bipartisanship coalescing around China-COVID-TradeWar.
Also sharing this underreported news from 2020 - There were 170 new CCP Official’s/Diplomats/Ambassadors/Spokespersons Twitter accounts in 2019…what were they preparing for so suddenly?..
Placing it in Trade War thread because CCP uses their Diplomat’s Twitter accounts to promote covid conspiracies - and for those of us who see Covid as a retaliation for the trade war, it’s hard to separate the two.
A little more than a year ago, China had almost no diplomatic presence on Twitter. A handful of accounts, many representing far-flung diplomatic outposts, operated without apparent coordination or direction from Beijing. Today, the work of Chinese diplomats on Twitter looks very different: More than 170 of them bicker with Western powers, promote conspiracies about the coronavirus, and troll Americans on issues of race. The quadrupling in the past year and a half of China’s diplomatic presence on a site blocked within China suggests that turning to Western platforms to influence the information environment beyond China’s borders is no longer an afterthought but a priority.
The call was more of a polite gesture before going to war, instead of a sign of bilateral relations turning positive, said veteran China watcher Johnny Lau.
Clemson University economics associate professor Kevin Tsui said the talks were not surprising, as it was expected that the Biden administration would change the policy of the previous administration, and seek consensus with allies in the fight against China.
Counter to most tech companies of the past 4 years, Apple recently shifted away from Taiwanese suppliers, instead increasing its number of Chinese suppliers:
China’s Global Times says “China must prepare for Nuclear War with the US”
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