{"id":4939,"date":"2026-08-05T07:10:52","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T07:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4939"},"modified":"2026-08-05T07:10:52","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T07:10:52","slug":"trumps-tariffs-were-supposed-to-boost-american-manufacturing-but-the-new-levies-are-actually-pushing-some-companies-back-to-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4939","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s tariffs were supposed to boost American manufacturing, but the new levies are actually pushing some companies back to China"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Alliance Consumer Group, a Texas-based flashlight company, encouraged its Chinese manufacturer to build a factory for its products in Thailand when U.S. tariffs on China ballooned last year, making it financially challenging to import manufactured goods from there. But now that the levies on Chinese goods have fallen to similar levels as other areas of southeast Asia such as Vietnam and Thailand, Alliance Consumer Group is reconsidering where it manufactures its flashlights.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4937\">\u2018Baffling\u2019: White House won\u2019t publicly release AI model evaluation framework it reviewed today with OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft and others<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cHave we pulled back to China? Yes, we have,\u201d Phil Laster, chief operations officer of Alliance Consumer Group, told the <em>New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>According to Mary Lovely, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), there\u2019s other anecdotes like this one. There\u2019s not yet quantitative data on how many U.S. companies are returning to Chinese suppliers as a result of tariffs, but a trend in this direction \u201cdoes make sense, given that the tariff differential between China and other countries has come down because of the invalidation of the Liberation Day tariffs,\u201d she told <em>Fortune.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The U.S. still has levies imposed on Chinese goods, but the magnitude of the taxes have fallen from the 145% imposed on Liberation Day last April. Under Trump\u2019s recent Section 301 tariffs, China and Vietnam face a similar 12.5% tariff rate, and Cambodia, Indonesia, and Malaysia have a 10% rate.<\/p>\n<p>While Trump\u2019s new batch of levies has effectively neutralized the advantage other countries have over China in exporting cheaper goods to U.S. companies, there have long been signs the tariffs have done little to curb America\u2019s reliance on China for key products like consumer goods. Moreover, the trickle of U.S. companies returning to China for those goods may be indicative of a larger phenomenon economists say is unlikely to resolve anytime soon: The U.S. is tethered to China when it comes to trade, and it means Trump\u2019s reshoring efforts will likely remain a fantasy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe story that it is bringing back manufacturing is really not the story,\u201d Lovely said. \u201cManufacturing is not coming back.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Indeed, between April and November of last year, the U.S. saw 59,000 fewer manufacturing jobs. While Trump\u2019s tariffs on China beginning in 2018 have correlated with lower rates of Chinese imports, that data point doesn\u2019t tell the whole story, Lovely argued. According to data collected by PIIE and published on Tuesday, the share of China\u2019s imports to the U.S. fell from nearly 18% in 2018 to about 11% today, but China\u2019s share of total value added in U.S. imports has remained at about 15% over the same time period.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The likelihood of the U.S. shrinking its share of Chinese imports in less than a decade is unrealistic, according to Lovely. For example, she explained, a tech company may expand manufacturing in India in order to dodge tariffs on China, but that facility in India may still source its components from China.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4935\">Trump meets AI giants, Senate Dems decry \u2018unpredictable\u2019 governance\u2014and cheap Chinese AI looms as giant security risk<\/a><\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s kind of hard to believe, and in fact, it is stupid to believe because what was happening\u2026is that a lot of these inputs just went through third countries,\u201d she said. \u201cThere has been a lot less decoupling than the top-line numbers indicate.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Even if the U.S. were to take more drastic action to decouple from China, economists warn the costs to do so would be prohibitive. EY-Parthenon calculated the U.S. would have to invest $13.7 trillion over the next 25 years in order to effectively stop its reliance on China for key goods. Those costs would include infrastructure build-outs, as well as research and development, transportation networks, and workforce training.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>This reliance developed as a natural result of globalization, but has grown more intense as U.S. companies continue to rely on China thanks to cheaper labor and manufacturing costs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou have this dynamic, this dialect between these two forces, which has always been there for many hundreds of years in one way or another, but which is now so pronounced,\u201d Mats Persson, EY-Parthenon UK macro and geostrategy leader, previously told <em>Fortune<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. has made strides beyond tariffs to try to cut its reliance on China\u2014including expanding rare earth refiners domestically and floating legislation that would increase transparency about foreign influence in Big Pharma\u2014but there are some products, including industrial supplies, where the U.S. will continue to buy from China, Lovely said.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s here where the U.S. is in a tough spot, she suggested. While the Trump administration can carve out exemptions for tariffs and impose levies to address certain products that can be manufactured in the U.S., reshoring efforts will also likely have to include subsidies like a Biden administration-era CHIPS Act, which is unlikely given the mounting U.S. debt.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cTariffs would probably be part of any serious policy package,\u201d Lovely said. \u201cBut it can\u2019t be the only one.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4933\">Trump claims he\u2019s talking with Iran as they hold talks with other nations<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThe story that it is bringing back manufacturing is really not the story,\u201d economist Mary Lovely warned. \u201cManufacturing is not coming back.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tariffs"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - 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