Comment by ap99
17 hours ago
It's about leverage, which you mentioned.
If you have no leverage during a negotiation and your counterpart has can say 'no' without having to give up anything then you're screwed.
America doesn't have to be the best manufacturers, but we do need to have the ability to say, "fuck it we'll build it ourselves" when the other side of the table says something we don't like.
And anyone living in the fantasy utopia where the whole world agrees on everything and there's peace all the time... read more history.
But you don't have to build it yourself.
If China wants to play hardball then Vietnam can make the goods. This is the great system we had until Trump decided he'd piss off every country. We had a very much you vs the world when doing diplomacy as USA but now it's just you vs USA which is a much weaker position.
There won't always be a Vietnam or an India.
Chinas been around for a few thousand years, what's something they can do that nobody else has been able to replicate?
There's always a Vietnam.
Even now with all the talk about "rare earth minerals". They're not rare, everybody has them, its just nobody else wants to pollute their rivers mining and refining them when China is willing to.