[poopypoopington]

Honestly did you even read the article? "Yes, there are cases of Southeast Asian nations slapping their labels on Chinese goods and then sending them to America to allow Chinese manufacturers to get around tariffs. But look at the graph of U.S. import shares above, and you’ll see that if 7% of imports from Asia ex-China are due to re-exporting, that would only shave 1.7 percentage points off of Asia ex-China’s share — only a fraction of the 4 percentage point increase in U.S. imports from that region since 2019." It refutes this point like 2 minutes in.

[A_D_E_P_T]

The article does nothing to refute the case, because Noah Smith has engaged in a little bit of sleight of hand in that section you quoted.

The 7% number is from 2018 data (!) -- yet Noah is talking about "since 2019." And, looking at the graph again, the major shift occurs in 2019.

So Noah's "7%" (again, from 2018, largely before the "decoupling") is totally irrelevant, and he handwaves away the possibility that China has since done an increasing amount of exporting to SE Asia for re-export to the USA.