[chongli]

Sure we can. It may hurt a lot at first but we'll get over it. Think about how hard it was to rebuild after WW2. This would be nowhere near that difficult since none of the west is a bombed-out ruin today and all of the west is made up of advanced economies with highly educated populations. Furthermore, there are developing countries (such as Vietnam) that are going full-steam-ahead with ramping up production, especially in heavy industry.

The ones who can't afford to be without China's manufacturing are big tech companies like Apple. Perhaps they will take a huge hit but it's hard to imagine them going out of business. I remember the Apple of the mid 90's and how close they came to going out of business. Now, with the enormous cash hoard and other capital they've accumulated, I can easily imagine them surviving for many years even if they were cut off completely from all their manufacturing in China.

[paxys]

The sole reason USA leapfrogged the rest of the developed world economically after WW2 was because they didn't have to rebuild everything from scratch.

Cutting off all reliance on China would be economic suicide for any individual nation unless every one mutually agrees on it. Best of luck getting that to happen.

[lmilcin]

> The sole reason USA leapfrogged the rest of the developed world economically after WW2 was because they didn't have to rebuild everything from scratch.

Nah, you need to read/watch Secret History of Silicon Valley to understand this is false. https://steveblank.com/secret-history/

Obviously, not having to rebuild your country helps. But thinking this is the only or even main reason is very shortsighted, IMO.

[mountainb]

It's possible, but the US and much of the western world would have to tolerate a decade or so of severely diminished standard of living when judged by consumption standards. The country as a whole would also have to work a lot harder and for more years.

In the past I would have said "there's no way that we would tolerate that," but for the last two years we have seen substantially diminished standard of living already due to [redacted], the monetary response to [redacted], and the policy response to [redacted], but now that we've seen that it is conceivable that the US would go a more austere route now. I also have seen now that no one in our leadership believes in anything or has any principles, so radical shifts really are possible.

With Vietnam, a lot of its recent development is related to expansion of Chinese foreign direct investment with substantial percentage increases every year in recent years. A lot of the notions about Vietnamese hostility to China and Chinese business is out of date and becoming more out of date.

There's virtually no US industry that is not heavily dependent on Chinese industry for refined materials, intermediate goods, and consumer goods. A lot of substitution could conceivably happen at higher prices, but really the way that we get out of it is defaulting on the government's medical obligations to the boomers and rededicating the money that was slated to giving them their to-the-grave care to industrial redevelopment.

[bredren]

The endgame is robotic replacement for skilled labor.

The pandemic has forced technology companies to push harder on communication products and development of virtual places.

Severely diminished trade with China would require an acceleration in manufacturing technology on a scale that could only be borne out of necessity.

Recognizing that robotics technology is orders of magnitude more challenging than an improved Zoom interface, It won’t come easy. But the demand will be there and so would be the creativity to overcome the challenges.

[mountainb]

Sure that will be a lot of it. Robots also require lots and lots of both skilled and unskilled labor to maintain. Christopher Mims has a great pop business book out this year about the state of automation in logistics and industry. One of the emphases he makes is which things are being automated now and what types of jobs for people that automation creates at multiple skill levels and social classes.

I think when it comes to articulating this to the public and to the government, I would never say "robots are replacing all skilled labor," because that would predispose the legislator or the staffers supporting the legislator to think about what they could do to quash it.

[bredren]

> because that would predispose the legislator or the staffers supporting the legislator to think about what they could do to quash it.

Fwiw, I see only a downward trend in the effectiveness of governments larger than cities to contain or regulate technology. What is possible is changing too fast.

[seanmcdirmid]

> A lot of the notions about Vietnamese hostility to China and Chinese business is out of date and becoming more out of date.

Note that the last major riot against China in Vietnam was way back in 2014. As long as China doesn't do anything aggressive in the SCS, the Vietnamese should come to like China again, however the chances of the former happening are very slim.

[croes]

You forget the resources the west gets from China, partly China is not only the main source but the only source. The economy nowadays is much more fragile than back then, the price increase alone would be destructive enough, especially for low-income earners.