How America is failing to break up with China

When it comes to tracing the geography of global supply chains, few companies provide a better map than Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer. This year, the Taiwanese giant has built or expanded factories in India, Mexico, Thailand and Vietnam. The Chinese production sites once beloved by Western companies are firmly out of fashion. Souring relations between the governments in Washington and Beijing have made businesses increasingly fretful about geopolitical risks. As a consequence, in the first half of the year, Mexico and Canada traded more with America than China for the first time in almost two decades. The map of global trade is being redrawn.

At first glance, this is almost exactly what is desired by America’s policymakers. Under first Donald Trump and then Joe Biden, officials have put in place an astonishing array of tariffs, rules and subsidies – an executive order introducing outbound investment screening, the latest sally, is expected soon. The aim is to weaken China’s grip on sensitive industries and, in a motivation that mostly goes unspoken, prepare for a possible invasion of Taiwan.

This attempt to “de-risk” trade with China

is the cornerstone of the White House’s foreign policy. Yet despite extensive efforts, and the reshaping of trade seemingly evident in headline statistics, much of the apparent de-risking is not what it appears.