But the people who built those production lines are still in china (and a few other places). In a case of a wider trade war with china, where are the people who built eg. foxconn? Are there enough US apple employees with skills to recreate production in US?
High end custom stuff, sure... but at the end of the day, you need cheap shoes for millions of people to wear every day, and not a lot of those are made in US.
I live in a small eu country and here, the chinese (hisense) bought one of our companies, just to be able to do the final assembly stage of electronics, to stick the "made in eu" sticker on.. everything else is done elswehere, including that companies original products. And we used to be a former socialist country that produced everything, from cars to computers, tvs, etc.... now we don't have enough basic electricians and plumbers for household work, before even thinking about building any kind of massive production facilities. Even kids want to be influencers, not assembly line workers (and we have to import those too).
High end custom stuff, sure... but at the end of the day, you need cheap shoes for millions of people to wear every day, and not a lot of those are made in US.
I live in a small eu country and here, the chinese (hisense) bought one of our companies, just to be able to do the final assembly stage of electronics, to stick the "made in eu" sticker on.. everything else is done elswehere, including that companies original products. And we used to be a former socialist country that produced everything, from cars to computers, tvs, etc.... now we don't have enough basic electricians and plumbers for household work, before even thinking about building any kind of massive production facilities. Even kids want to be influencers, not assembly line workers (and we have to import those too).