Think It’s Too Hard to Decouple From China? Think Again
It’ll take work for corporate America to set up new supply chains and develop new consumers, but then again, the Chinese market took work, too.
Thirty years ago, few imagined China would be such a big market for luxury goods.
Photographer: China Photos/Getty Images
China was supposed to be the promised land for American business — the lucrative, indispensable market of the future. But, as U.S.-China tensions escalate and calls grow louder for their two economies to decouple, CEOs across the U.S. are confronting a prospect that only a couple years ago would have seemed unthinkable: China may no longer be a reliable source of profits and production.
Sure, a nation with 1.4 billion increasingly wealthy shoppers and reliable supply chains isn’t so easily replaced. Companies will find it hard to hire skilled workers and replicate the networks of suppliers they enjoy in China. Many will hold onto their mainland factories to produce for the local market, regardless of global trade tensions.