Apple and most other US corporations were finally seduced by an open, cheap labor, no tariff China market, which leveraged jobs and P&E from the USA to China. The political-miltary implications (and dangers) of this one-sided myopic economic quick-profit quest was lost upon the overall strategic analysis of both corporate and governmental entities in the USA. There's an old saying in systems managemnt which dictates that in one's actions, 'one can never do just one thing, as tghere are fall-out effects from any decision upon other environmental elements'. This was a lesson not learned by many high-minded and eleite educated leadrs, who saw their small world in cylindrical, myoptic terms only, the result being the trade-war show down with China. This confrontation needed to happen in order for the USA to protect its intellectual capital and this confrontation should have taken place in the 1990s, not 2018-19, yet no one in the West or Washington wanted to 'rock the boat'. Yet neither China nor the cheap labour market of the Far East are invunerable either, given current technological technological trends, this area has one or two generations at the most to switch from cheap labour to other non-labour intensive production and services before fine-scale automation render their human labor obsolete.
What is triggering all this for Trump is the knowledge that China is the world's #2 economy but catching up to the U.S. quickly and most economists predict it will soon become the #1 economy and the U.S. will be #2. That's accepted fact. It is not conjecture.
Lol...predictions by economists are not accepted facts.
Good points and quite a few people have always contended that 'economics' is not a true science or even worthy of the Swedish Bank prize (the faux Nobel Prize). China has an authorative central system that can drive its economy to a precise aimed goal, yet one thing no Central Planning government has yet proved capable is yjay of combing Central State Planning with the talents of the maverick, imaginative thinker. The proponderance of most Internet developments has come from the driven imagination and zeal of the individual, not the traditional established Fortune 500 and most certaintly not that of the state! The state or central authority cannot bear the surrender of power or control to the unknown force and consequences of the individual.
In life, the only sure way to get a good deal is to be able to walk away from a negotiation. If you aren't willing to walk away, from, say, buying a new car, the salesman will just hold you there until you meet his price. Ronald Reagan literally walked out of nuclear arms reduction talks with Gorbachev in Reykjavik, and guess what, Gorbachev came back begging to restart the meeting under Reagan's terms. Reagan got the deal ONLY because he was willing to walk away. Even Reagan didn't know if he would get the deal or not. But he was willing to walk away and that got him the deal. Reagan's strategy WORKED. Walking works.
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