kalm wrote: ↑Tue Apr 29, 2025 9:34 am
An important read.
Some people believe that the tariff disruptions will settle down as more negotiations happen and greater thought is given to how to structure them to work in a sensible way. However, I am now hearing from a large and growing number of people who are having to deal with these issues that it is already too late. For example, many exporters to the United States and importers from other countries that trade with the U.S. are saying they have to greatly reduce their dealings with the United States, recognizing that whatever happens with tariffs, these problems won't go away, and that radically reduced interdependencies with the U.S. is a reality that has to be planned for. Most obviously, American producers and investors in China, Chinese producers and investors in China that deal with Americans, American producers and investors in the United States that deal with Chinese, and Chinese producers and investors in United States that deal with Americans must now go about making alternative plans, regardless of what the next round of trade negotiations are like. While this need to minimize U.S. - China interdependence and worry about conflict is now broadly recognized, this view is now becoming more commonly believed by most people in most countries who are dealing with most issues related to trade relations, capital markets relations, geopolitical relations, and military relations with the United States.
Didn't read the whole thing in the link, so just what you posted. As regards US and China, the disengagement between the US and China has been going on for the past decade. Maybe this speeds it up, we'll see. But most American businesses have long been looking elsewhere rather than relying on China. Lot of businesses keep the most trade secret work out of China because of the high rate of corporate espionage, and on the low cost side of things China was already being beat by other, emerging low cost producers (such as Vietnam). There's always going to be trade between the two, hard to avoid it, but it's not like the heydays of the 90's and early '00's when anything and everything was trying to be sourced out of China.
As to the rest of the world, obviously time will tell as well. Even as you've said before with your insistence on demanding bigger concessions for countries to access our markets (i.e. tariffs), the US is too big of a market not to interact with. Trump is odious, but 10 years from now will seem like a lifetime in terms of business cycles.
