Yes, exactly. Vietnam stands to reap the benefits. Factories are opening in Vietnam en masse. Once they're up and running, the lifting of tariffs against China won't matter. Chinese workers are higher paid than they used to be. Now China will have to make their way as an advanced, developed economy (with lower growth), just like everyone else.

The Chinese are also shifting a lot of their polluting heavy industry to Cambodia.

You know where those factories aren't opening?

The United States.

Which seemed to be the whole point of this exercise.

I don't agree with that. Some, though definitely not all, manufacturing is moving back to the US. But even getting manufacturing to shift out of China to other countries is smart policy, because it reduces the US's concentrated economic dependence on its main strategic rival.

I haven't heard of US factories being one of the main arguing points. Wiki has these listed [0]:

1.1 Structure of China's political economy system

1.2 Accusation of theft of intellectual property, technology and trade secrets

1.3 Forced technology transfer from US companies to Chinese entities

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_tr...

> 1.1 Structure of China's political economy system

So you're cheerleading, of all places, Vietnam?

> 1.2 Accusation of theft of intellectual property, technology and trade secrets

Will still take place.

> 1.3 Forced technology transfer from US companies to Chinese entities

This only happens if you want to invest in China. It's a trade-off that's up to each individual firm doing it to make.

Also, I have a hard time believing that Trump's base give two shits about any of these things, beyond a bit of nationalistic ra-ra-ra. None of this has any impact on the life of someone pissed off that their best life prospects consist of collecting dole in the rust belt.

I'd rather Vietnam gain access to military-adjacent tech than China, or grow their economy with factories from US companies, etc - because while Vietnam's main threat is China, China's is the US.

A bunch of mid-strength countries is better for the US than a superpower competitor.