The USA is killing itself with their trade policies right now, just as an earlier post said. They are increasingly imposing more and more tariffs and trade restrictions with other countries. Did the depression teach these guy nothing?! While other countries are opening new free trade agreements with each other, the USA is moving in the opposite direction. Very bad news.
Umm, who will they trade with themselves? If they lose the US or European markets, China will be up the Amazon river without an inboard/outboard engine... China mostly takes, they give little...
One thing about metal parts, you can readily measure their demensions but you can't measure fatigue strength or ductility by appearance. When you buy steel springs, fasteners and/or high pressure steam piping you are betting your life that they company producing them is honest and knows what it is doing. As a metallurgist I have seen a number of unexpected failures because Chinese steel fasteners did not have the chrome, nickel and mag and other alloying elements necessary for the development of the specified strength, or they contained high levels of copper or lead which is common in free machining grades but is death in high strength fasteners, and I have seen supposedly 190 KSI fasteners that had been heat treated incorrectly. Nucor has the lowest labor cost per ton in the world, because it is the world's most efficent steel producer. But it does not sell much to China because the Chinese have nuturing a steel inductry as industral policy, so that they if not taxing they slow walk any shipments coming in the name of inspecting them. It is really not good for rolls of spring steel to be stripped of packing and exposed on the pier for a few weeks while it is "inspected". The main advantage that China has over US manufacturers is a low cost of capitol (0-3%) and freedom from raiders that borrow money against the value of the company to buy a controlling interest and then strip the company of it's R&D budget, retained earnings and operating capitol be voteing a special distribution to themselves. Then the raider has the company take out a huge loan and distribute that to themselves. Then they sell the now heavily debt encumbered company back into the stock market. Check out what happen to Huntington Alloys and multiply by a whole industry. The American Metals sector has been the subject of a capitol stripping operation for decades. Untold billions, probably trillions have been pulled out by these "private equity" firms. Labor costs are a totally trivial component next to capitol costs of publicly traded companies if the industry is never allowed to amortize one production line and retain earnings to build the next, but is always being forced to distribute the earnings and go into the debt market. In contrast Companies in China can get super low interest loans and keep their money and use it to do R&D. Hopefully they will soon learn to consistently tap the lead dross that one gets even in melted #1 scrap from the bottom before they add the grain refiners and sparge it to distribute it.
Every US trade dispute with china is like a little spat between siblings. No big deal, nobody is gonna die, we'll kiss and make up in a couple hours. We know we are stuck and reliant on one another. Relax, nothing to see here. The Europeans on the other hand, I don't know.
On the other hand, don't place tarrifs on China. Lets just have the government loan liberally and directly to manufacturing at zero to 3% as they do. Give American Manufacturing access to capitol in the same amounts and on the same terms that the Chinese provide to their manufacturing sector. That should level the playing field.
That will never happen. We are a net destroyer of productive capacity and a net exporter of debt. In 50 years the US will be a 4th rate nation with an undereducated population and hollowed out nation.