But are you ready to pay double for those products that will be pulled out? Most people wont be able to afford it.
There will always be a period of pain for that transition but why not use this as an opportunity since we are already suffering. I don't disagree with you that absolute prices will rise, but what about wage increases? Somebody working minimum wage might then be making 15-20 dollars an hour in one of those new plants. Also we tend to forget the hidden costs. Sure we pay less for inexpensive good but what about recalls when they find lead in the toys or that they substitute lesser quality materials that jeopardize safety? It's hard to put a dollar figure on the collateral damage it causes.
There will be diversification of cheap crap. No doubt. The Chinese know it too and their manufacturing is getting a lot more sophisticated. Are Lenovo computers going to be made in Bangladesh? Albania? I bet by dollar value the biggest proportion of export production of China is not Dollarama crap anymore.
At the same time though there will be a huge push back to manufacturing lots of goods domestically. Maybe the new world order will be a back to local movement
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They did heed the writing on the wall, and they got more sophisticated but they're starting to get expensive. Flipping a switch in the middle of a humming economy to bring it back, stupid. Economic crash (which by what I see is inevitable at this point), use that opportunity to build factories to get people back to work. The Germans did this masterfully...until it went a little too far.
Anyway, I'm starting to hear murmurs among certain Americans that there's a push for domestic made goods. I don't know if it will last, a fair bit of the 330M have gotten quite lazy with their creature comforts and are quick to forget thanks to their crap diets, but there's something there and Trump, love him or hate him, is the guy to bring it back if there are grassroots calls for it.
I understand it doesn't make sense to do everything domestically (like bananas in Minnesota) but why should China be the go to source for more advanced manufacturing?
If anything let's hope we move past the cheap crap mentality and return to craftsmanship and durability state of mind. People have been fooled into thinking it's better to have a $10 shirt that wont last a year or two vs paying $50 shirt that will last you 20 years. What's more is that even if they pay $50 now, in this day and age they're probably still getting that $10 shirt and are paying a $40 premium for whatever logo is stamped on it.