>How much of the tech industry goes poof if they decide to stop exporting to the US entirely? Seems like a precarious position.

How much of china's goes puff.

Yes they are more dependent on us than we are them, but this is irrelevant and does not actually address the question at all.

It is very relevant: the fear that china would immolate to cause us harm is deterred by the same reason all the people that surround you don't pick up a knife and stab you to death. Its not in their interest.

Trade wars are reasonable tools of diplomatic negotiations, and china does break some rules that harm the interests of the U.S.

It’s a double edged sword. It is a factor that’s considered somewhat in policy but at the same time it very hard to predict and generalize such conclusions because things can also land the other way.

For example it’s possible some permutation of trade war impacted US tech in the short term yet had the long term effect of reestablishing more manufacturing in the US. This kind of thing has happened, lots of examples.

Remember, China is not a manufacturing leader simply because people are working cheaply. There is a masssive ecosystem, self-reinforcing, supporting new growth, and in general making it easy to get things built there. These elements are critical yet not fundamentally tied to wage discussions.

They have fantastic systems and infrastructure in place to make it all possible at this point, that are mostly independent of what salaries are.

I don’t mean to imply wages don’t matter, they do influence things of course. It’s just that they are a highly visible point of contention compared other extremely important enablers that are not very visible to casual observers, who may still be very vocal on these debates.