Le Monde reported a few days ago how, for example, small electrical appliances, such as toasters, found everywhere in American homes, are 99% manufactured in China.
And indeed the Financial Times writes : China sees an opportunity in Trump’s cultural revolution.
Politicians in Beijing believe they will benefit from destroying America’s global credibility
Below are Thomas Friedman’s thoughts on technology and tariffs: I found them enlightening.
Below: a Walmart shop in China, the economies are interconnected even if the US administration “doesn’t understand it”. the American chain has stated that its sales will slow down this year because of the Trump effect.
Excerpt from : Friedman: I saw the future and it wasn’t in America by Thomas L. Friedman
Trump’s magical thinking that we need only erect protective barriers around our entire economy doesn’t work
I was in Shanghai recently and wondered which world of tomorrow to visit, the fake one, the American-designed Tomorrowland at Disneyland Shanghai, or the real future, the massive new research centre, roughly the size of 225 football pitches, built by Chinese tech giant Huawei? I chose the latter.
It was a fascinating and impressive, but ultimately deeply disturbing experience, a clear confirmation of what an American businessman, active in China for decades, told me in Beijing: ‘There was a time when people came to America to see the future. Now they come here’.
Below in Pudong (Shanghai) in the 1990s when China was “the factory of the world” (I have been to China 7 times to import non-food for Esselunga. Read : From supermarkets to Esselunga superstores (part 2). Development).
I had never seen anything like it. Built in just over three years, Huawei ‘s campus consists of 104 individually designed buildings with manicured lawns, connected by a Disneyland-style monorail, and houses laboratories that can accommodate up to 35,000 scientists, technicians and other workers, with 100 cafes, fitness centres and other facilities aimed at attracting top Chinese and foreign technologists.
The new research and development centre is Huawei’s response to the US attempt to strangle it, starting in 2019, by restricting the export of US technology, including semiconductors, due to national security concerns. The ban inflicted huge losses on Huawei, but with the help of the Chinese government, the company tried to get around it by focusing on innovation. As the South Korean Maeil Business Newspaper reported last year, ‘Huawei stunned the world by unveiling the ‘Mate 60′ series, a smartphone equipped with advanced semiconductors, in spite of US sanctions’. Huawei continued on this path with the world’s first smartphone that folds into three, and unveiled its own mobile operating system, Hongmeng (Harmony), intended to compete with those of Apple and Google.
The company has also entered the business of creating AI technology that can be applied to everything from electric vehicles to self-driving cars and autonomous mining machinery that can replace human labour. Huawei executives said that in 2024 alone, the company had installed 100,000 fast-charging stations across China for its electric vehicles; as a comparison, in 2021, the US Congress allocated $7.5 billion for a network of charging stations, but as of November this year, the network had only 214 active stations in 12 states.
It is definitely alarming to watch this closely. President Donald Trump is busy determining which teams transgender athletes can compete in, China on the other hand is busy transforming its factories with AI to outperform ours. Trump’s Liberation Day strategy is to double down on tariffs by gutting the national scientific institutions and workforce that stimulate American innovation. China’s liberation strategy is to open more research centres and focus on AI-driven innovation to be permanently free of Trump’s tariffs.
The message China sends to the US is this: we are not afraid of you. You are not who you think you are – and we are not who you think we are. I prefer to express my patriotism by being brutally honest about our weaknesses and strengths, China’s weaknesses and strengths, and why I believe the best future for both nations – on the eve of the AI revolution – lies in a strategy called: manufactured in America by American workers in partnership with Chinese capital and technology. Let me explain.
Trump’s magical thinking
I agreed with Trump regarding the tariffs imposed on China during his first term. China was preventing access to certain US products and services and Chinese tariffs had to be reciprocated. For example, China tergiversed for years before allowing the use of US credit cards on its territory, waiting for its own payment platforms to completely dominate the market and transform the country into a cashless society where practically everyone pays for everything via mobile payment apps installed on their phones. When I tried to use my Visa card in a shop at the Beijing train station last week, I was told that it had to be linked to one of those apps, such as Alipay [by Alibaba] WeChat Pay, which together hold more than 90 per cent of the market [and with which the Chinese do “everything”, in the world, under the logo in a shop: the Chinese only pay with those two apps, even in Paris].
I have a problem with Trump’s magical thinking that all we have to do is erect protective barriers around one industry sector (or our entire economy) and within a short time US factories will be thriving and producing in America at the same cost, with no burden on US consumers.
Also wrong is anyone who thinks that China has only achieved global manufacturing dominance by cheating. Sure, it has cheated, copied [a classic: the trade fair in Guanzhou-formerly Canton-was full of samples copied at lightning speed: one day a product was in one booth, the next day it was in another], and imposed technology transfers. But what makes the Chinese manufacturing giant so powerful today is not only the fact that it can offer products at more competitive prices, but that it can produce at lower costs, faster and increasingly integrated by artificial intelligence.
The Chinese ‘fitness club
How does he do it? Jörg Wuttke, who was for a long time head of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China, calls it the ‘fitness club China’, and it works like this. China starts by focusing on Stem education – science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Every year, the country churns out about 3.5 million graduates in Stem disciplines, a number almost equal to the sum of all graduates in the university diploma, bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate programmes in all disciplines in the United States.
With that number of graduates in Stem disciplines, you can allocate talent to solve any problem more than anyone else. As Keith Bradsher, head of the Beijing bureau of the New York Times, said last year: ‘China has 39 universities with programmes aimed at training engineers and researchers for the rare earth industry. Universities in the US and Europe have mostly offered only sporadic courses’.
Over 550 Chinese cities are connected by high-speed trains that put ours to shame. And thanks to digitisation and pervasive connections, one can enter and leave a hotel room simply by facial recognition. The whole system is designed for speed – even if you defy Communist Party rule, in which case you will be arrested quickly and disappear quickly.
If we don’t build a similar fitness club behind any tariff barrier, we will only get inflation and stagnation. You can’t get to prosperity by dint of tariffs [ it’s like saying a company only needs cost-cutting, not development ], especially at the dawn of artificial intelligence
- Innovation and skills:I would point out that China does research in the field of food – in this case meat – in a completely opposite way to the West: Nestlé withdraws, they invest more.
And I sincerely believe that they, the Chinese, are right.Because they are building culture, and innovation while the White House is destroying Education and Research.
China will have the skills, America will not.
The confirmation comes, for example, from this news :
The Chinese digital RMB (Yuan) will now be fully connected to:all 10 ASEAN countries and 6 Middle Eastern nations
This is 38% of global trade volume, now set to bypass the US-dominated SWIFT system and flow directly through China’s digital RMB infrastructure…
the US dollar is under direct threat like never before…
- US debt: waging war against the holder of 8.92% of your debt ($759 billion, the world’s second largest holder after Japan) that you would like to refinance does not seem smart to me. And in fact China is disinvesting more and more: it was the first holder of US Treasuries, now it is the third after Japan and the UK.
Below : China exported $438.9 billion to the US in 2024 while China bought “only” $147.8 billion worth of goods from the US.
I won’t go into the current escalation but I do recall how China has been working to undermine the dollar for many years.
- Industry: Trump is probably offering it victory on a silver platter: the French economist Thomas Piketty, for example, said ‘In 2035 China’s GDP will be twice that of the US. The US is losing control of the world’ (paper-only edition of 13-14 April 2025).
And in fact its market share in manufacturing has risen from 6% in 2000 to 13% in 2023 (Le Monde of 18 April 2025).
What’s happening: Western companies claim that Beijing is requesting commercially sensitive information to protect rare earths as part of the export approval process. This includes production details, product and plant images and confidential customer lists, according to several companies and official guidelines. “They ask for a lot of things, really a lot,” said an executive whose company imports loudspeaker components to Italy from China.
Why it matters: the extensive requirements have raised concerns about potential misuse of data and disclosure of trade secrets, with some companies in sensitive industries finding it difficult to comply or even apply for export licences. China has significant influence as it dominates the sector. China introduced stricter controls in early April as tensions with the US increased, but has not stated whether it will abandon them as part of the framework agreement with the US.
Conclusion: on knowledge, innovation, skills, manufacturing, US debt and rare earths, China definitely holds more ‘cards’ than the US.
Africa does not have enough universities to educate its students, but China has organised an effort to recruit them while the US reduces its diplomatic, military and humanitarian efforts on the continent.
Below : China and the US battling over AI (where the former would take an advantage, The Wall Street Journal of 13 August 2025 and Fortune of 14 August 2025 .
