What if China just buys factories in other countries and ships their partially finished goods to Vietnam and elsewhere, so they only appear to NOT be made in China? Money is fungible and profits could still benefit the Chinese businessmen...
“What if China just buys factories in other countries and ships their partially finished goods to Vietnam and elsewhere”
Two separate issues.
1. Chinese-owned factories in third party countries. Bottom line is that is allowed. Chinese businessmen have been doing that for some time already, especially as Chinese labor costs rose. The real low wage jobs were off-shored from China to Ethiopia, Myanmar and elsewhere. Many Chinese businessmen also wanted to be free from the corrupt shakedowns from the Party Princelings, who take fat equity cuts for little real value - just a protection racket. But little of what gets exported to the US is from such factories, and China gets much less benefit from them.
2. Trans-shipment and percentage of content. This was a big consideration in the trade deals the Trump Administration renegotiated with all our other major trading partners (an unprecedented level of trade deal re-negotiation). A major emphasis was on closing such back doors to Chinese exports, to prepare for the use of tariffs.
The Administration also made epic trade war preparations with the tax reform of 2017, and the massive de-regulation effort - those made us much more competitive to pick up more of the business, before tariffs blast it out of China.