Onshoring, friendshoring, and the balancing act of “Made in America”

A SHARP escalation in US-China tensions – sparked by the balloon incident but dramatically intensified by US warnings over the prospect of Beijing providing military aid to Moscow – represents a fresh challenge to official US policy on China: “Invest, align, compete”.

It is also the latest move away from open, rules-based economic integration, and toward trade policies that favour national security – which The Economist, under the banner “Zero Sum” calls “the destructive new logic that threatens globalisation”.

The Biden administration’s CHIPS act – providing subsidies for the onshoring of semiconductor manufacturing – and President Biden himself, calling in his State of the Union address for infrastructure materials to be “made in America; made in America. I mean it”, are part of the same dynamic.