And the cross-strait crisis in early August added more fuel to the fire.” “The Shanghai lockdown was really a monster accelerant.
“There was some momentum in this direction as a consequence of the trade war and the pandemic,” Scott Kennedy, a senior adviser at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said about decoupling. Rising tensions over US ties with Taiwan and China’s unprecedented scale of military exercises in the Taiwan Strait have become the latest flashpoint offering a case for decoupling. The pandemic then ushered in President Xi Jinping’s strict virus-containment policies, which essentially barred travel and has left major areas locked down for extended periods of time. Under President Joe Biden, the $615 billion US-China trade relationship has simmered into a cold war following the commercial tensions under Trump that resulted in tariffs on a collective $360 billion worth of bilateral goods, along with US sanctions on key Chinese technology manufacturers like Huawei Technologies Co Ltd. Political headwinds in the US have been steadily leaning against US-Chinese integration. Of course, unanticipated events - like Europe and America’s rupture with Russia - provide a potent reminder of both the systemic risks of deep economic integration and the speed at which decoupling can occur. Unwinding those ties could end up taking just as long, and may result in lasting damage to an already battered global economy. But US technology firms invested more than two decades, and tens of billions of dollars, setting up complex production chains to provide essential goods for the e-commerce boom.
It’s one thing to look outside China for other makers of toys and t-shirts. “With China accounting for 70% of global smartphone manufacturing and leading Chinese vendors accounting for nearly half of global shipments, the region has a well-developed supply chain, which will be tough to replicate - and one Apple could lose access to if it moves,” BI’s report from analysts Steven Tseng and Woo Jin Ho said.Īn Apple spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. Scores of local component suppliers - not to mention modern and efficient transport, communication and electricity supplies - make it particularly difficult to get out of the world’s second-largest economy. But Bloomberg Intelligence estimates it would take about eight years to move just 10% of Apple’s production capacity out of China, where roughly 98% of the company’s iPhones have been made.
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