[rstuart4133]

> China's ascent is going to happen.

That sounds like denial. The Asian ascent has already happened. Most of the stuff we used to make in the west is made there now: clothes, cars, steel, computer boards, plastics, hand tools, solar panels, batteries - pretty much all manufactured household goods that aren't food are made overseas now.

They have been churning out Engineers and PhD's for decades now. There was a time when we had far more than them, which is why they best they could do is cheap replica's of stuff we made. But now solar panels, WeChat payment systems, 5G equipment - these are all designed in China. They don't depend on us for technological innovation any more, or at least no more than we depend on them.

I don't know what Trump thinks "bring back chip manufacturing" involves - maybe he just believes you just follow some simple recipe and build a few foot ball sized manufacturing sheds. You don't build a technological powerhouse from one man or one company making a manufacturing decision. In reality most people here will know what it will does require. You have to build an education system that churns out highly educated people that then compete like crazy to build better and better manufacturing plants. Pretty much like the US does with software now - which goes some way to explaining why leads the world on that front.