RE: Blinken practices Liberal Appeasement: "Do not support Taiwan's Independence".
June 20, 2023 at 8:14 pm
(This post was last modified: June 20, 2023 at 8:31 pm by Anomalocaris.)
China’s place in the pentagon’s parts supply chain is a much smaller problem because in the scheme of military spending, squandering money by buying costly alternatives from inefficient domestic or friendly suppliers is not a big deal, especially when weighed against the political gain.
China’s place in the supply chain of capital goods - tools and equipment used to make other stuff - is a vastly bigger problem. It is almost impossible to find manufacturing equipment for most finished commercial goods that doesn’t have critical Chinese part content . So if the US wish to stop buying finished commercial goods form the Chinese and start to either make it ourselves or buy it from friendlier sources at anything close to competitive prices, the wish can only be fulfilled if the Chinese agree to sell the parts for the manufacturing equipment used to make the finished goods to the manufacturer we wish to buy the finished goods from.
Partial decoupling is not impossible, but it will be very difficult, complete decoupling is nearly impossible and efforts at it will be much more costly to the relative economic position of the U.S. in the world than commonly recognized.
Basically, China today represent perhaps 40-50% of the entire world’s competitive advanced manufacturing capability. One could not cut that out of one’s supply chain without paying a huge overall economic efficiency penalty.
China’s place in the supply chain of capital goods - tools and equipment used to make other stuff - is a vastly bigger problem. It is almost impossible to find manufacturing equipment for most finished commercial goods that doesn’t have critical Chinese part content . So if the US wish to stop buying finished commercial goods form the Chinese and start to either make it ourselves or buy it from friendlier sources at anything close to competitive prices, the wish can only be fulfilled if the Chinese agree to sell the parts for the manufacturing equipment used to make the finished goods to the manufacturer we wish to buy the finished goods from.
Partial decoupling is not impossible, but it will be very difficult, complete decoupling is nearly impossible and efforts at it will be much more costly to the relative economic position of the U.S. in the world than commonly recognized.
Basically, China today represent perhaps 40-50% of the entire world’s competitive advanced manufacturing capability. One could not cut that out of one’s supply chain without paying a huge overall economic efficiency penalty.
