The long hard road to decoupling
from China

A certain big box chain from Arkansas is going to be in a bind if we quit buying Chinese made goods and foodstuffs. Made in Japan used to denote shoddy goods, now it's China, except their goods are more than shoddy, they're dangerous!

Chinese proverb: Five year journey begin with single step.

If we do nothing else, we must bring back the manufacture of all pharmaceutical and medical products to the US. We need the jobs and I, for one, do not want "cheap" medicines. I want quality, and I'm willing to pay more for it if necessary.

I will be looking to see where items are made before I purchase anything.

Regardless, if America was already de-coupled economically from China, the virus still would have spread. But, the obvious lesson learned is that we need to repatriate certain manufacturing interests such as the manufacture of medicines. However, a very glaring downside - we have shown Russia, China, and other rogue nations how easy it is to freeze the American society in total fear and for a long period of time. Putie and Xi are taking notes.

"Is this kind of globalization compatible with liberty and democratic governance?" Well, consider what American business was like when it started ramping up over 100 years ago. The concept of a "good corporate citizen" did not exist. Things were too hardscrabble then to allow for that. Business in this country has evolved considerably. Plus, it evolved in a free society. China, in a business evolution sense, is very young. They are scrambling to take advantage at all costs. This leads to some nasty practices. Plus they are operating as part of a totalitarian society that emphasizes the worst of business. What we have seen is that when things go bad, China is not structured to support society at large but instead to maintain control. The rest of the world is paying a price for that. The question is, should we continue to pay such a price for China's business and governmental immaturity? The clear answer seems to be NO, especially in the most critical areas of our society. If there are extra costs for us to be secure as a nation, we will either have to bear those costs or innovate so that we can do things more affordable. The perfect example is in energy in which we became vulnerable in the 70s and 50 years later have energy independence and even supremacy. This is how we need to treat all critical components in society, especially ones, like medical supplies, most critical and subject to serious short term disruptions. Reliable is more important in some things than cheap. Not being prepared and independant has cost the economy trillions of dollars. Cheap Chinese products are no longer so cheap.

Same here, #4 and I have seen at least a hundred posts saying the same thing. It’s a start. I also saw where Japan has set aside some 2 billion yen to help Japanese companies move back to Japan. Let’s hope it’s the start of a worldwide movement.

Like they said in The Godfather: "Difficult, not impossible."

I was watching this morning a show called Wild Singapore about it's native wildlife. Fascinating - they even have a native pangolin but only about 100 remain in the wild. The victim of poaching. Anyway, a commercial break has the World Wildlife Fund asking for donations to help them protect Africa's elephants. I had to laugh that they would send you a little stuff elephant if you donated. Stuffed elephants made in China - the greatest threat to animals all over the world: ivory, pangolin scales for "traditional medicines, etc.

This prints out to six pages single-spaced. Nothing in it tells me why all of the hand sanitizer sold is made or packaged in China. My son and his wife have made a batch of hand sanitizer for the family. Whew. No thanks to the felony brothers in Chattanooga, TN.

Clearly President Trump for many years, before he was even elected, has advocated returning as much prior US manufacturing capabilities as possible back to the USA, which would result in a huge increase in US manufacturing jobs, thus restoring those jobs to American workers, that were lost to China and other low wage countries through globalization. That’s a big reason why the globalist investor class that has been garnering huge profits from sending all that US manufacturing and American jobs abroad has been resisting the political outsider Trump, along with the DC UniParty politicians that they buy off, ever since Trump was elected. In contrast to Trump, the presumptive Democrat nominee for President, Joseph Biden a career DC liberal Democrat lawyer-politician and a decades old member of the DC political in-sider UniParty, who has been a longtime advocate of globalization, while on the campaign trail has been claiming that China is in no way a legitimate competitor to the viability of the US economy or a threat to the USA. His message has essentially been, kick Trump out of office so that the DC UniParty and the globalist investor class can get back in business. Looks like you will get to support one of those political philosophies when you vote in November.

Avoiding chinese products "like the plague" has renewed meaning.

Here's how to make the road less hard. Tell each of these American companies they must return all manufacturing back to the U.S. within a year or so, or every product they try to sell in the U.S. will come with a 100% tariff on it.

I'm with #4 and #7. Buy American.

Walmart, Target, all those Dollar Stores...Boom! Poor dears. Now they are going to have to sell American.