On October 2, I tweeted the following and then pinned this tweet to the top of my Twitter page:
2.5 years ago, we predicted that China would become increasingly isolated. It has been a straight track towards China isolation ever since then.
This tweet linked to a our May 8, 2019 post, entitled, The US-China Cold War Starts Now: What You Must do to Prepare. This post, in turn, linked back to many of our previous posts in which we resolutely predicted US-China relations were going to go into a long term tailspin and warned against believing otherwise. The first heading to this post was “1. Worsening US-China Relations Should Be No Surprise and in that section we stated the following:
自中美贸易谈判伊始，我们就对达成协议的可能性持明确的否定态度，因此遭受了巨大压力——无论是通过仇恨邮件、网络评论，甚至来自我们部分客户的指责，他们指责我们对中国过于愤世嫉俗或过于悲观。 面对这一切，我们的回应始终如一：现在正是外国企业（尤其是向美国销售产品的企业）着力缩减在华业务规模的时机。
We first publicly sounded this warning in October, 2018, in China, the United States and the New Normal, though we had been warning our own clients about this for months. This “New Normal” post was an attempt to get in the face of those who had been sending our lawyers hate mail because we had in a September 2018 post predicted manufacturing orders from China were declining and would continue to decline:
昨天，我收到了一封措辞粗鲁且充满愤怒的邮件，这是对我的文章《关于中国关税的影响：这只是死猫跳吗？》的回应。在该文中，我预测未来几个月起，来自中国的制造业订单将出现下滑。这封邮件指责我“仇视中国”，企图“阻碍其和平崛起”，并“嫉妒中国的进步”。 这一切仅仅是因为，我们最近一直在撰文说明，我们律所的许多客户以及其他众多企业正在撤离中国，或正计划撤离中国。最近我们收到了相当多的此类邮件
In April of this year, the Wall Street Journal quoted me in a cover story, Trade Deal Alone Won’t Fix Strained U.S.-China Business Relations, saying the following:
“There is no way any deal between China and the U.S. will cause everyone on both sides to say, ‘We were just kidding,’” said Dan Harris, managing partner at Harris Sliwoski, a law firm that specializes in investment with China. “The tariffs and the arrests and the threats and the heightened risk have impacted companies and that will not go away.”
Then on May 4, 2019, (one day before President Trump’s May 5 tariff tweet that changed everything) I wrote The US-China Trade War: Winter is Coming on how no matter what happens in the US-China trade war, things would NOT revert back to the way they had been:
这种脱钩趋势的加速已成定局，没有任何贸易协议能阻止这一进程。这又何止于此？关税或许会取消或降低，但紧张局势仍将持续。我所的中国业务律师和国际贸易律师在各处都看到了这一迹象，无论是在美国对待中国企业的方式上，还是在中国对待美国企业的方式上。美国正以国家安全为由，严厉打压中国企业与美国企业的交易。 而中国也在竭尽所能，阻止本国企业与美国开展业务往来。
随后，我们整理了此前关于外国企业应如何应对针对中国加征关税的博文——其中大部分内容也适用于将于本周五凌晨12:01生效的关税：
于是我们便开始持续发文，敦促企业更深入地考察中国以外的国家。
That “Cold War” post concluded by saying: Winter is upon us. And as much as it pains me to say this, the US-China cold war starts now. And as is so often the case whenever we bear news that many simply do not want to hear, we got our share of hate emails, most of which made it seem as though we were cheering this on and our writing about it would make it more likely to occur.
If you have not seen today’s news, you may be wondering why I am bringing up this old news again now. If you have read today’s news, you know. This New York Times lede and subheading says it all: U.S. Signals Little Thaw in Trade Relations With China: The Biden administration said it would not immediately remove the Trump administration’s tariffs and would require that Beijing uphold its trade commitments. In other words, if you still believed that US-China trade relations would improve under Biden, today is the day that you should once and for all extinguish that belief and if you are getting your products from China, start looking for alternatives.
I know many have seen this news because I woke up to even more emails than usual from companies looking for help in moving their manufacturing out of China. And this is really why I am writing this post. I want to put up here our best posts on what it takes to move your manufacturing out of China (see below) and also to extend a one time 10% fee discount to any new or existing clients who retain us before the end of October to assist them in moving their manufacturing out of China OR to help them with their legal needs related to manufacturing in any country other than China. This includes our Mexico lawyers and all of our foreign business specialists, including those for Thailand and for Vietnam. I am doing this because I believe that the world will benefit from manufacturing leaving China for pretty much anywhere else. There, I said it.
Oh, and in answer to the inevitable questions, you should expect EU-China relations to proceed on a similar track, just maybe 4-8 months behind.
If you are contemplating moving your manufacturing out of China (and who isn’t these days?) I urge you to read the below posts most relevant to your situation:
1. Moving your manufacturing out of China.
Mid-sized American Companies are Already Moving Away from China and You Should Too
2. Mexico
Made in Mexico and the U.S.-China Trade War
3. Thailand and Vietnam
Manufacturing Outside China: It’s Thailand’s Time, Part 2
What are you going to do?
