[modernpink]

Exactly, the West can bring to bear its might on Vietnam if they step out of line, especially since they themselves are not much fans of the Chinese and will be more than happy to work with the West.

For Western consumers and companies we have learnt the lesson that if we want to keep the flow of cheap products, we need to diversify the pool of labour we draw upon and to keep them dependent instead of building them up to be competitors in the supply of products as well as competitors as consumers of those products.

The crucial moment in the China strategy was in 2008 when we should have started on/friend shoring rather than leaving it until now. Instead with the West facing economic calamity at the time, we wanted the economically easy solution of letting China continue its integration into the global supply chain.

[astrange]

This is a typical case where cynical answers are wrong. The good thing about Chinese manufacturing isn't that it's cheap - it hasn't been cheap for a while now. It's that they're really good at it.

Nothing's as expensive as a product that doesn't work.