Chinese production and transplanting our technical and industrial base in China is the real problem.
At issue is the fact that thus latest generation of advanced manufacturing equipment is a huge leap forward that really enables high productivity lower cost manufacturing
The countries and companies that make the transition to this emerging next generation will own the future.
Our future depends on the investment in these new manufacturing plants being made here in America to modernize our aging and increasingly obsolete and worn out industrial base and support our population in the standard of living we have become used to
Trump is right. Slap a tariff on imports and be done with it. Globalist economic theory is killing the USA.
Mexico being correct is highly debatable. If they are correct, it is only with respect to very few dimensions of a larger dimensional development. They have only a small picture of the total; they definitely lack the bigger picture.
What Mexico and feeble politicians on the US side are missing is the loss of jobs in the USA created a vacuum that low-cost labor of their illegals filled, with support and encouragement of their policymakers who also acted to shift the cost of incarcerating their criminals to the USA. The cultural invasion created a backlash and now Mexico is going to pay. Basically, they flunked their opportunity to partner faithfully by hoarding the proceeds for themselves rather than lift up the standard of living in their country. If there should ever be a next time (and there won’t be), they might realize the importance of respecting the US border and its laws.
China will be defeated economically. Mexico will suffer. There will be revolts in one of these and likely both.
As for new decentralized manufacturing employing new generation AI software, the US has the handle on the technology. Cheap labor will wane as a result but the new problem will trend towards making human labor obsolete. Even agricultural labor will be supplanted by the new technologies as robotics are now as agile and dexterous as human beings:
https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/23/spotmini
The future is uncertain but there will be an industry to manufacture, upgrade and maintain all the intelligent and agile robots that are now emerging.
Later this century, looking back at the brief attempts of China, Mexico, and others to move as jackals in on the feast of the decline in American manufacturing industries, Americans will think of the crudeness and asininity of the era. What will happen to China and Mexico is not relevant. They will fall in line to follow the leaders as they have always done.
The real vision to acquire in the years during the Trump era will be found in answering the questions of what to do with all the free time? How will the quantity and distribution of goods be structured to meet new notions of what is just and appropriate in a society where many persons no longer work because work is made obsolete?