Donald Trump was more than assertive when presenting the tariffs he decided to impose on the rest of the world from the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday, April 2: "Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country." However, bringing them back will not be an easy task. On the other side of the Pacific, China has continued to bolster its industrial advantage. And it is far from being limited to just its advantageous labor costs.

Over the decades, Beijing has indeed climbed up the value chain, now stumbling only on a few areas such as the production of a medium-haul aircraft (it still has to use a majority of foreign components for its own) and the latest semiconductors (still designed in Taiwan). As a result, the country's share in global production has only continued to grow. While it was 9% in 2004, China surpassed the European Union as the leading manufacturing power in 2011 and accounted for 29% of the global total in 2023, according to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. That is more than the United States, Japan, Germany and India combined.

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